NetObjects Fusion MX NetObjects Fusion MX is Elegant Power and Great New Features!
What's New? If you have visited Winplanet in the past you might remember a review we did last year about NetObjects Fusion 5.0, a rapid development Web authoring tool with lots of features. Well, NetObjects is back with its latest offering, NetObjects Fusion MX(MX), which is dubbed the complete solution for your small business. Right out of the gate we noticed the interface is more intuitive than its predecessor with emphasis on integration. The redesigned Control Bar is easier to use, especially accessing the Service view, Preview and Publish Site choices. Even the lower contrast colors are easy on the eyes. New to this release is the Service View which gives you instant access to product news, update information, online resources, the Matrix Services (also new), Site hosting options, along with help links and past site projects. The Site Wizard now allows novice users the ability to get up and running quickly. Set up a new User Profile and adding repetitive information becomes a snap.
There have been many improvements added in the Style View area. Over 200 SiteStyles you can be accessed via an Online Styles Viewer. Start with one of those and you'll benefit from speedy development. NetObjects has done their homework and added Page View Service Components. Located just below the Zoom Tool is a New Services Tool that lets you drop third-party services components right on the your page and it uses unique scripting language so that you can interact directly through the third party's Web site for registration and maintenance. Wizards walk you through the process. The new Fusion Scripting Interface(FSI) uses ActiveX technology as an API allowing you to directly interact with NetObjects Fusion via your Web browser. Publishing your completed Web sites is simplified but with higher customization. You can view and delete remote files on the hosting provider's Web site, and the new Automatic Updates feature keeps you current with the latest versions of the software.
The Auto Site Recovery feature to MX will detect when something is wrong automatically and prompt you for a recovery process replacing the old site with the newly repaired one. Rounding out the new features are the Site Re-Optimization which lets you manually invoke the Auto Site Recovery feature, and Improved Import of MX generated sites just in case you lost the original files.
The Good and the Bad MX is truly an easy to use solution for Small business or any individual who wants to develop a great looking site in a very short time, with features that would take other programs hours or days to develop. In the past, the strength of NetObjects Fusion has been its ease of use and rapid development. MX makes the process more intuitive and powerful. One of the best enhancements is the Services View which greatly enhance how you use MX, giving you all sorts of options from a single location. You can check for updates, all types of Wizards are available from here and there are links to all types of information and third party resources. The new Auto-Update feature is a site for sore eyes, polling is done while you are online and any updates are available the next time that you access the software. Site Import needed improvement and is greatly enhanced from prior versions. With the newly improved import capability the sites come through with very little degrading from the original.
As powerful a product as MX has become it still lacks some of the features when it comes to ODBC and Database handling. You are really limited as to the viewing of data fields and, if you need to incorporate search functions, you still have to incorporate some sort of scripting or third party tools to get specific results. Support for either Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM) or Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC) is available which should cover most of the various types of data that you will use. Also, we constantly had trouble updating our program when a new version was available. It seems that when you select update from the Service View sometime the update just doesn't always work. This should just be a glitch of the beta version we tested and the new release should take care of that.
How Does It All Stack Up? NetObjects Fusion MX is by far the quickest Web development tool that we have ever tested. Using either the Site Wizard which will develop a complete professional looking site for you, or the basic blank page method, you can make it all happen in half the time as all of the rest hands down! Several WYSIWYG type editors that share the market with MX are Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, and SoftQuade HotMetal Pro and they all do a fine job developing great looking Web pages, but none with the rapidity and consistency that MX gives you. Dreamweaver offers more control over your code and with an upgrade to the UltraDev you get great database management. ODBC ability can't be matched by MX for sheer power. With the cost, ease of use and ability for a novice to complete a great site in a very short time-- MX is our pick!
