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December 1996 Reviews This Month
By Paul Silverman
Why pay $50 for a Word-based tool when Microsoft's similar Internet Assistant for Word is free? Despite its comprehensive editing tools, WebAuthor 2.5, Quarterdeck's attempt to improve upon IA, has only succeeded in frustrating me.
WebAuthor, which integrates with Microsoft Word 6.0 and 7.0, offers many customizable formatting and editing options. It's certainly not unusable. It has a table editor and a style area, which displays the type of element you've inserted. You can easily change any element by double-clicking and selecting a new style from a pull-down list.
However, the rest of the application is rarely as friendly or intuitive. You will have to convert all files you create to HTML, since the program saves them as .DOC files. And I couldn't edit the hyperlink text, or drag-and-drop my Web images, without adding several extra steps.
The WebImage graphics editor and conversion tool isn't integrated into WebAuthor, making it difficult to manipulate images.
Even if Quarterdeck lowered the price, WebAuthor would need a redesign, with more powerful tools and a better interface, before I'd consider it a serious competitor.
-- INFO FILE --
Price: $49.95
Platforms: 3X, 95, NT
Quarterdeck Corp.
800-683-6696, 310-309-3700
WinMag Box Score: 2
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