Internet - The World Wide Web
Nestcape Composer

Nestcape Composer

Considering that Netscape Composer is a free program (it comes with the Netscape Communicator browser software, and can be downloaded from the Netscape Web site), it is surprisingly good. Like the other programs reviewed, Netscape composer offers WYSIWYG page composition with clear and logical menus and buttons. Netscape Composer offers a good quality table builder, which is something that many other page generation programs have difficulty with.

Netscape Composer offers FTP uploads through a simple publish command and provides a spell checker as well.

Unfortunately, Composer has some very major drawbacks that may not be offset by the fact that it is free. When creating pages in Composer, they often look very different in the browser than when you are creating it. This is especially true of images. Both their look and placement can be very different when actually published. Netscape Composer does not allow you to drag and drop images, which makes changing their position once placed very difficult.

Composer also does some strange and unexpected things. Users have reported that it adds (DIV) tags at its own whim. Some users also say that Composer makes copies of graphics and images on its own. When using Netscape Composer it is good to have a rudimentary knowledge of HTML and how it works. When strange things start happening or when the page looks different in the browser than in the program, you can make any adjustments directly to the source code rather than fiddling around in Composer until it looks the way you want. A little knowledge of HTML and an HTML tag reference card can save you a lot of headaches later.

* Source - Everything Online Business Book
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