Customer Reviews

HotMetal Pro 6.0

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've spent many hundreds of dollars looking for a good, easy web page design program. This is the best one I have seen. You can use templates and just fill in your info or make your own entire web page. You have total control! If you are looking for the best program for web design, this is it!

This program is just awesome.

Robust and custimizable. I particaly like the "tags on" view, which is an unique feature to HoTMeaTaL. I also like how it has bulit in ftp and the "mapings" feature so you "choose" SRC and it automaticly inserts the proper code to be releative or abs, according to how you configure it. This product is also considerbly cheaper to it's competitors. Reasons HoTMeaTaL is beater than Front Page:

1) Front Page forces you to use abs urls(http://domain.com/html) instead of relative(html/) HoTMeataL doesn't. This also allows you to compose and test your pages localy before you publish them.

2)If HoTMeataL doesn't have a feature you need, it ok, because HoTMeataL produces readable code, so you can edit it by hand, Front Page code is inreadable

3)HoTMeataL uses regular ftp, it doesn't require special "extensions" that are well known to be an crackers attraction.

4)HoTMeataL offers all these features and advantages at an lower price.

I hope you find my opinion informative: Robby Robson

Hotmetal Pro 6.0 is the best tool I've found. It's simple enough for the novice yet packed full of power professionals. Hotmetal's HTML code is clean and compact. It's built-in error checking alerts you to potential problems and can fix common mistakes. The ability to create and manage complex Web projects is outstanding!

Based upon the rave reviews of this product, I bought it and attempted to put together a webpage for my law firm. After hours and hours of frustration, trying to figure out what the tutorial was saying, etc., I finally gave up. This is not a program for the average non-programmer who has no experience in this field! The wizard, which is based on templates and looked promising, is much too rigid to conform to the needs of a broad variety of businesses, and was useless for my purposes.

I have no doubt that this is a very powerful and fabulous program for those who understand how to build webpages from the ground up. But the average person will be overwhelmed and will find the documentation of little help.

I am very computer literate and can program in several languages, but I had never programmed in html or even set up a website before. I kind of planned on letting HoTMetal drag me through the learning process and maybe a little trial and error too. HotMetal was easier to figure out than I expected and its power for more advanced applications is obvious right from the start. The several views from WSIWYG to source code view let you really understand what is going on at all levels and really adds to the learning experience. I would recommend HoTMetal highly to anyone that is very familiar with word processing and has a little programming experience; any less than that and you don't need as powerful a program.

I downloaded the 30 days trial version of this product from the Softquad web pages, and built my very first personal website using the trial version(no tutorials etc. etc) over a weekend.

It is a very simple and intuitive product, yet it let's you create professional looking web pages. 10 days before the end of the trial, I purchased the full version from amazon.com. The product price at Amazon is much lower then the sale price offered by the vendor Softquad(USD 129). If there is such thing as Price/Functionality for software, Hotmetal beats the competition (Frontpage, Dreamweaver etc. etc.) with a huge margin.

The full version comes with an improved version of WS_FTP as well as Ulead system's earlier releases of Photoimpact, GIF editor and Photo Eplorer. Buy and enjoy it. It is fun to work with the product, it makes you feel like you know what you are doing and you are an expert in creating web pages.

I just felt I had to come back and post my opinion about the tutorial for HoTMetaL after I found myself stuck again in the tutorial. All I can say is... it seems as if the tutorial was just slapped together in a hurry and many of the directions are not clearly expressed. (don't get me wrong, the tutorial is good, but there are parts that are vague)I have lost alot of time just trying to figure out what the author is trying to get me to do in the vauge parts. However, I feel once I get through the tutorial, I will have unlimited potential with this well made program.

I have had HotMetal Pro loaded for several hours now, and in general am delighted with the product! I have numerous hours of internet surfing and am very comfortable on the computer, but have never done any programming or web design. It appears that the program is going to be exactly what I need: fairly easy to get up and running, but nothing I'm going to outgrow in six months. After a few hours of work, I have already designed a practice page that looks pretty darn good. The choice of working in WYSIWYG, Tags On, or Source view is really nice. However, the one problem I have found is that the users manual and tutorials are either poorly written or haven't been updated recently or both. I have flown right through numerous steps, but other directions have left me pulling my hair out! Often, what the book says you should see on the screen isn't exactly what shows up and you just have to play around until you get what they are asking for - very frustrating.

Overall, the program seems excellent and I am extremely pleased! The User's Guide could definitely use a little work, but is useable with a little patience and common sense. I would recommend this for web design newbies, with some practical computer knowledge. Probably not the best choice for those whithout some experience in general computer usage, due to the shortcomings of the manual.

When I first started using HoTMetal 6.0 I was pretty happy with it. If you are making one or two page websites it is fine. The larger the website, the less I liked it. I have had a number of the URL conversion and publishing features not work, with no apparent work-around. If you want a website you can view on your computer, but not on the world wide web, this is the program for you. If you need a dependable program for a small business, look somewhere else.

There's an awful lot to like here and a little bit not to like.

First, it writes darn good code. Not perfect HTML but good HTML. That is a huge step compared to other products.

Secondly, it's easy to use. This is a very intuitive product and using it just made a ton of sense to me. It was my first HTML generator and it worked well.

And it's an excellent value when compared to it's competition (Dreamweaver or Front Page). If you are new to web development don't even consider the other options.

It's bad is liveable but it is bad. First, it crashes occasionally. I don't know why but it does. There's no consistency to it. Secondly, the button generator is clumsy and it has a JavaScript error (at least on my version). So, everytime I went to make a button, in addition to stumbling around with it, I could count on an error. The program still ran, it just gave an error. Lastly, the product doesn't look clean. It looks cheap and old. An interface update would do wonders for it's value.

Having said all of that I still give this product 5 stars because it's easy, it works and it writes clean code. I beat my head against the wall using other products and I never did that with this one. It gets 5 stars for that.