As briefly reported, Microsoft Corp’s updated beta web site creation and management tool, FrontPage 98 is available for download from www.microsoft. com/frontpage (CI No 3,224). The software giant claims it has revamped the tool with several new features, tightening integration with Microsoft Office and focusing particularly on ease of use. At a street price of $150 industry experts reckon FrontPage 98 will blow away its only real competition, Adobe PageMill, which doesn’t have as many features. The difference between FrontPage 98 and the previous version is like night and day, for the better said one early beta tester. According to officials at the company users will find new WYSIWYG tables and frames support, and a stock of design themes to help them apply a consistent look across their sites. FrontPage 98 also supports the latest web technologies such as Dynamic HTML, push or channel definition format CDF, and Cascading Style Sheets CSS. A redesigned FrontPage Explorer includes the new navigation view, to help users plan and organize the structure of their sites. It also automatically generates Navigation bars and hyperlinks. Symantec Corp also introduced its Visual Page Web authoring tool, last week and thereby making its first foray into this market. Industry experts have said the product also ought to fare well against chief competitors Adobe Page Mill and Claris Home Page. Visual Page includes a tool kit, templates and drag- and-drop controls for creating and modifying tables, frames and images, claimed the company. It also provides Java support. The program is available now for $80. A free 30-day trial version is available for download from Symantec’s Website at www.symantec.com.
