ADOBE PageMill

[JQ Johnson]

Real Rodrigue asks about experience with PageMill.  I've played with it
a bit, and have some preliminary thoughts.  Bottom line is that for
a serious web developer it isn't enough (yet) but is getting close.  I
wouldn't be at all surprised if version 1.1 really DOES make it possible
for people to do significant HTML coding without knowing any HTML.

The problem with the current version is that it doesn't support quite
enough HTML, and thus can't generate a wide enough variety of page
layouts.  For example, there is no control over alignment (no support
for IMG with ALIGN=LEFT|RIGHT, no DIV tags, etc.).  It's not even easy
to get a <P> tag where you want one.  There's no TABLE support either.
There's an adquate FORMs editor, but forms aren't a particularly
high-demand feature around here.  One thing that I found very annoying
was that there is no way I could find to specify an IMG with an
absolute URL; you can apparently only include IMGs that point to your
own GIF or JPEG files addressed by a partial/relative URL.

Serious Mac HTML coders are likely to stick with their current
techniques (BBEdit?  World Wide Web Weaver?  Whatever.) for a while.
But people providing support and training for HTML novices on a Mac
platform should look at PageMill (even the current version) seriously.

 JQ Johnson                       office: 115F Knight Library
 Academic Education Coordinator   Internet: jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu
 1299 University of Oregon        voice: 541.346.1746
 Eugene, OR  97403-1299           fax: 541.346.3485