The first thing you’ll notice about Fusion 7 is that everything looks the same - but different. I felt like Alice in Wonderland as I explored the program. Some menus had grown, while others had shrunk. (They’d clearly been eating mushrooms.) There were some cute little palettes in the corner that needed a closer look, but I hardly dared. Was that a pile of new tools? Hey, look at all those dead bugs!

The temporary feeling of disorientation was soon replaced with euphoria. Website Pros hasn’t tried to reinvent the wheel - Fusion’s the same, thank goodness, but with improvements, enhancements and new tools woven into all the places you’re most likely to look for them. Like Alice in Wonderland, let’s do the whole thing backwards. Here’s my summary of the features we’ve not yet explored!

Please note: Fusion 7 contains so many improvements and new features that I haven’t been able to find them all, let alone review them all! Where there’s more to read, it’s marked accordingly!


Q: WHAT’S HOT?

Site View: What’s Hot?

• You can now make single page or multi paged templates - you don’t have to export the whole site
• Templates are stored in standard zip format making them easier to use and share
• Spell check your entire site or selected pages. Has optional smart spell checking to speed work rate
• Find and replace works globally now, too
• Big improvements to Masterborder handling of imported templates
• Astonishingly good importation of its own sites. Fusion recognises both MX or Fusion 7 code and reconstructs a whole working site just from that. Impressive
• Better drag and drop facility. Pages now move easily in Site View
• Home page can now be replaced. Yippee!
   

Page View: What’s Hot?

• Brand new Photo Gallery tool. It makes thumbnails and can frame them and the photo output.
• Flexible rearrangement of photos, titling and captions even straight on the published page. Wide choice of settings for size, compression etc.
• Hypercool extensions to nav bar functionality
• Nav bars offer multi level selection with optional child pages
• Optional javascript submenus (flyouts) containing next level pages
• Alignment and width settings for vertical nav bars
• Text delimiters can be customised to great effect
• Text Nav bars now auto-wrap to multi lines, or can be confined to one line
• Current page can be unlinked, creating appearance of text highlighting
• Total control of nav bar imaging. Ability to customise bars using other Site Styles, giving different look while retaining total site functionality
• Names on buttons can be changed from Nav Bar properties as well as Site View
• Targetted linking. Make pop up windows in a snap from within the program
• Anchor handling more comprehensive and intuitive
• Paste special function for importing text
• Fusion now handles Word documents properly - no longer need to go via Notepad!
• Advanced toolbar provides easy handling of Flash, Shockwave, Activex and Windows Media Player
• There are now resizable easy-to-use navigation aids instead of clutzy menus. No more having to constantly swap page views
• HTML code can now be inserted easily anywhere in the page
• Section 508 - some requirements met for you automatically. Fusion helps your sites become more accessible

Style View: What’s Hot?

• Wide range of attractive new Site Styles
• Emphasis on mix and match - you can team a banner from one style with buttons from another (in Page View)
• Potentially millions of different combinations now possible - less likelihood your site will look like everyone else’s
• Banner and button text can now wrap to multi lines
• Precise pixel control for button text. Place it just where you want it

Online View: What’s Hot?

• Shop from within Fusion - choice of components, graphics, tools, hosting etc.
• The Fusion Support community is brought right to your door

OK: So What’s Not?

• Photo gallery image compression needs attention. Gif quality poor because of heavy dithering (dots in image). But there are workarounds!
• Can make pop ups now, but not resize them. Need to know code or use your favorite component
• A few new bugs sneaked into the nests abandoned  by the old ones. The black-spotted, bad-tempered nasty nested table bug never left. Beware him.

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