NetObjects - Fusion 8.0 review
Web site creation the easy way
Review date: 03 February, 2005. Review by: IT Reviews Staff
Fusion comes with a range of templates for Web sites, and with these you can have a multi-page site up and running in a matter of minutes. Whether you want to use some of the garish designs on offer is another matter, and you may feel more comfortable starting with a blank site and using the wizards to get things up and running.
Fortunately these wizards are pretty powerful and give the aspiring designer plenty of options. We found the Photo Gallery templates and wizard particularly powerful, especially if all you want is a simple gallery to impress friends and family.
NetObjects Fusion splits the working page into two sections; the masterborder and the layout section. Items located in the masterborder section will appear on all pages while items on the layout section are local to that particular page. The dimensions of these sections are easily modified and this provides a powerful mechanism to create a standard look and feel across your pages, while still allowing each page to have as much individuality as you wish.
Within these sections you can employ Frames as well, although working with frames in Fusion is definitely not intuitive, indeed to some extent the masterborder/layout split does away with the need to play with frames.
Creating navigation within your site is also handled automatically. Every page you create and add to the overall site is also added to the navigation system. You can stay with this automatic navigation or you can create custom navigation by only adding the pages you want the viewer to see in the navigation bar.
Modifying the properties of any of the items on the page is simplicity itself, thus changing the navigation properties is so simple that you would have to be lazy to stick with the automatic choice. Adding items to your site is a simple point and click affair, while resizing and positioning is simple.
Within Fusion you do not have to play with tables to create the layout you want; the application takes care of all underlying position code for you. Beyond all this simplicity there is a good selection of more complex tools to simplify making and controlling forms or complex picture handling, although we can't help thinking that if you want to create sites that make use of these tools, you really want a more advanced application. There is the ability to easily embed Java and other coded applets, and the application does include some useful applets.
If you need to get beyond the basics provided by Fusion, then things begin to come unstuck. It is not a simple process to go back and edit your work in HTML if you want to add more complex or interesting effects. Fusion does not really create raw HTML as you go, you have to actually publish the site prior to getting your hands on the underlying code, and then you fall outside of the simple development environment provided. We also had problems utilising some of the more complex tools once the site application was published.
Verdict
If you are not interested in HTML and simply want to publish a good looking, easy to use and simple to navigate Web site with minimal sophistication, this tool is excellent. It removes the trouble of layout and any requirement to know HTML and leaves you to concentrate on design and layout. The wizards are useful and powerful, although the standard templates are a bit ugly. If you want to go beyond that and become the next e-commerce millionaire then you'll want to consider more powerful utilities, as trying to edit HTML while using Fusion is not particularly easy or useful.
Company: NetObjects
Contact: 01752 895100
