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Adobe Presents ...Web Tools for 1998

PageMill update and new ImageReady

by Jack Corcoran

 

THE DACS General Meeting in July covered what may be the hottest topic in the computer field today, tools for generating Web pages. Philip A. Nelson, .account manager of Adobe's Graphics/Internet Division, led us through a demonstration of two of these tools, Adobe's PageMill and ImageReady.

Adobe PageMill 3.0 BoxThe first half of Phil's presentation covered PageMill 3.0, an Adobe standard product that is exactly what its name says, a Mill to grind out Web Pages. It provides a table (a kind of a grid) into which you can type text and drop graphics, Java applets, text, animations, and most anything else from your multimedia treasure chest. Once elements are positioned on the table, a comprehensive set of PageMill tools and commands are available for manipulating and modifying the elements to give them that dazzling effect that will catch and capture the Web surfer.

What PageMill actually does is generate the HTML code that structures the page. You actually don't really need PageMill at all, but then you would have to read the HTML manual and do stuff that resembles programming. You also would also have to visualize the page layout in your head. For $100 (street price) you don't have to do any of that stuff, and you get substantial Web page management capabilities as well.

PageMill 3.0 Screen ShotAs for browser integration, PageMill is intimately linked with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Netscape aficionados will have to play a few games to use PageMill effectively, but it's doable.

The second half of Phil's presentation covered Adobe's new product, ImageReady. This program is a tool to help you create spiffy graphics for Web pages. It is essentially a stripped-down version of Photoshop with specific features for Web pages, aimed at SOHO and the general user rather than the graphics professional. But it includes about all the Photoshop features that the SOHO level user would use anyway. At a street price of about $190 compared to $600 for Photoshop, it is a great deal and will probably sell very well. It will also initiate a lot of users who will eventually move up to the full version of Photoshop.

Phil made several incidental remarks worthy of note. He pointed out how Adobe is establishing a user interface for its various products that has as much similarity, common icons, and consistency as possible. This is great marketing and is as welcome by users as it is by Adobe salespeople. The similarities become evident when you look at the sales brochures for ImageReady, Photoshop, Illustrator, and others.

Phil also told us that later this year Adobe will come out with Web tools at the professional level. This promises an easy upscale move for Web developers who start with PageMill and ImageReady.

On the lighter side, Phil suggested we produce and distribute our newsletter with Acrobat. Mmmm … did he not know we use Adobe's PageMaker for page layout and that DACS members can already download the.doc from our Website using Acrobat?

Phil's presentation was warmly received by the DACS audience. He spoke well and was in complete control of his material. It was obvious, however, that a one-person show in which the presenter has to type in all the input and talk at the same time drags. Previous DACS meetings where there have been two people, one at the keyboard, say, and the other talking, have been much more effective in keeping the audience locked into the topic. Rule #1 for a salesman is never stop talking, but if you have to cope with key entry mistakes and system glitches, you can't keep the gab going. Phil's hour and a half presentation dragged because of that. At the end of the PageMill coverage there were ten minutes of questions from the audience. At the end of the ImageReady part, there were no questions are all.

The presentation was also more of an in-depth demo of system features than a wine tasting. This was fine with the Webbies, of whom there were many in the audience, but Phil was preaching to the choir. He missed the opportunity to show the rest of us just how we would use PageMill and ImageReady when we get ready to launch our own home page.



Jack Corcoran is a retired computer programmer who has distant memories of doing real work with a computer rather than making pretty pictures but prefers it this way.


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