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“All Aboard!”
As any good captain would do, an inspection is our first task at hand. Researching the web site, WebEditor4 (WE4) looks like it has some qualities which makes creating dynamic web pages a breeze. Inside a WYSIWYG
environment, Namo’s WE4 gives you control of:
Page and table editing HTML editing Site Management Database Support DHTML, CSS, JS support XML, PHP, ASP support Document and Word support Auto-correcting/Spellchecking Image Retouching Vector Button/Banner Editor Multimedia support Library of Images included More
Pretty impressive “boatload” of goodies so far! So, let’s see how WE4 does, as we set sail on the high seas and dangerous currents of web development!
“Fishing With Good Hooks But Dead Bait”
If you haven’t already, you can download a trial version of WE4 here. The trial version will last you 45 days, though it does come with some disabled and limited features, which will frustrate you when you try to access them. On the other hand, those disabled features might also be enough bait for you, at which point you can simply purchase WE4 at the Namo site, for a fairly reasonable price.
Once you’re able to download the software, (the Namo site seemed “up and down” over the last couple of weeks.....most likely due to the influx of visits), the installation is fairly clean. On some systems, you’ll
find the initial file is not a “.exe” as it looks. Double-clicking it caused some systems to stall. If this happens, just treat it as a zipped file, and then look for the setup.exe in the extracted files.
Once installed, WE4 runs smoothly. After a good week of sailing WE4 on the “high seas” of code tweaking, pasting external files, switching views, and more, it never took a dive! This shows that stability is a
good thing.
“You Have The Con”
Let’s jump on deck, and look at the controls inside Namo’s WebEditor4. The learning curve of WE4 is fairly short, but if you’re a beginner to webbing, you’re probably going to find yourself wanting to learn a lot
about tweaking code.
At the helm of WE4 is a simple interface that at first, almost makes you feel you’re simply staring at a word document! Well, as any self-respecting webbie would do, I immediately went scouting the program for all
the goodies! There’s a lot in there, you just have to look for them.
Namo WE4 Screenshot
Straight and to the point!
Once you get passed the “plain” look, you’ll find WE4 has a large selection of “templated” pages you can drop into your site any time. The 4 categories of Document, Frameset, Component, and Greeting
Card, each have a large selection of “pre-formatted” pages. This makes creating simple forms, as well as specific page formatting like headers and footers a snap.
Templated Pages
with a “preview” window
Along with this page editing view, you can quickly get to the code through tabs on the bottom. WE4’s code is clean and to the point, and does offer some
color coding of code. The other tab is the “Preview tab, which WE4 does a good a job switching between these views (even pulls external sites in for checking links, etc).
Checking links inside WE4
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