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[ Go to March 1997 Table of Contents ]
WinLab Reviews
-- by Joel T. Patz
Nothing quickly turns existing documents into Web pages quite like HTML Transit. The program creates fully formatted Web pages from your word processing, FrameMaker and Interleaf Publisher files. When I put HTML Transit through its paces, the program inspected the Heading 1 and Heading 2 styles in my Word document and created the appropriate HTML tags. It also placed graphics I specified in the template. You can create one Web page per document or split a document into several pages. There are no restrictions that force you to use certain styles within your original document. You can also define your own patterns (such as two carriage returns to signify the next line is a heading) At the heart of HTML Transit is the template-specifications determining how the input documents are to be translated. While learning HTML Transit may seem challenging at first, the documentation and helpful tutorial will make you a pro in no time. The latest version adds a new Transit Wizard to facilitate building a template. The program works so quickly that you can afford to experiment with and preview all of its nuances. The main menu is designed to move you through the stages of building your Web site, though I sometimes found myself hunting through all the tabbed dialog boxes. HTML Transit adds the ability to generate horizontal and vertical frames for the index and table of contents; frames can be sized by percent of screen or by the number of pixels. Table formatting is also improved-my two-column, 20-row table was perfectly translated. You can control the table's width and border, background color, size and location on the page, and the color and format of the text within the cells. Though almost everything about HTML Transit is automatic, the latest version's improvements also let you take advantage of leading technologies and embed HTML tags and custom code, including Java applets, into your pages. The program can generate text bars as navigational aids. As with everything in HTML Transit, you have a wide range of control, from selecting which heading level is used to various formatting options. The program works as adroitly with graphics as it does with text. It accurately translated my embedded bitmap into a GIF file and placed it properly on the page. With so many options, the program's flexibility means even users with advanced needs shouldn't hit a brick wall any time soon. Meanwhile, its speed assures you'll build a Web site from existing documents in record time. It definitely deserves a place on our Recommended List.
Windows Magazine, March 1997, page 160. |