HTML Programs Comparison

Under Construction 2.9 ... $39.95

UC is a program offering a wide variety of features, and it pulls them off pretty well throughout.

Regardless of your HTML experience, you should be able to use UC from Day One. The program offers a lot of extras, such as several built-in javascripts and an image center (OK, image centre) that enables you to preview images anywhere on your hard drive before inserting them into your document. It also has wizards for tables, frames, stylesheets, and multimedia that are quite helpful.

Oddly, the program does not have much help for forms construction. You can, in an area called "web page assistant," get information how to make a form, but nothing that helps automate the process as you find with most programs.

UC allows you to drag and drop many items, such as tiles from the file manager, and toolbars. It supports the latest DHTML and HTML 4.0 tags, and it allows you to make your own custom tags.

The interface is quite adjustable but can be fairly busy without some tweaking. The big space eater is the color picker, and it cannot be placed elsewhere. However, you can take it off completely and return it as needed. Were it placed on the bottom of the screen, it would be more beneficial.

The program does a good job of internally previewing files, and externally in both major browsers.

If you like doing your HTML coding in Notepad, you won't care much for Under Construction, but most people will like its features.

ACE EXPERT 3.0 ... $49.95

AE3 is another program that features a lot of customization possibilities, and is somewhat reminiscent of Under Construction, although its color selector is superior.

Again, it makes its toolbars extremely configurable, but it also provides that same approach to most every other feature it offers.

When it comes time to insert a graphic, AE allows you to see thumbnails of all graphics within a directory as opposed to others who only let you see one graphic at a time.

Ace Expert also provides a dozen javascripts, five DHTML scripts, 50 java applets, 2,500 graphics, and 20 page templates that are easily modifiable.

Again, this is a program that may not appeal to the hard-core HTML author, but for most people Ace Expert has enough attractions to make it well worth the price.

LIQUID FX 4.5 ... $65

This is the most expensive of the programs in this review, yet it remains less expensive than many others who are far less powerful. It comes with several java, javascript, ActiveX and visual basic scripts to boost your site's excitement, but the best feature is its ease of use.

Toolbars are accessible at the top of the screen, but they do lack the adjustability of programs that have been released more recently.

FX does have an interesting feature in its wizard designer that lets you insert form-type items in a document and adjust them to fit the page as you go. It also has a wizard player that enables you access java plugins, page wizards, and plugin wizards.

Graphics can be previewed one at a time in a small window directly below the index. A click of a button turns that area into a place to see code snippets which you can save as needed.

The program has very nice WYSIWYG table and frames editors, an image map creator, a GIF animator, and a graphics optimizer all built into it.

While the program offers the usual external previewing in both major browsers, it also offers a real-time preview in either browser so you can show as you go.

Problems with this program have been few and far between, making it one of the more dependable HTML authoring programs around.

And now the ratings:

Comparison Chart with the ratings for various areas, with 5 being tops and 1 being the lowest: