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Claris Home Page: Apple's bruised Web toolMost of the people who know the name Claris think of it fondly. Many know it as the semi-independent software division of Apple Computer, and one of the few divisions to escape Apple's recent cuts. To others, it is simply the provider of the redoubtable ClarisWorks, a smooth and well-integrated alternative to Microsoft's own Works mini-suite, or the similarly admired FileMaker Pro database program. No surprise, then, that it has followed Microsoft and Corel in wooing its consumer and small business constituency with an entry in the crowded field of Web page creation program. Claris Home Page 2.0 runs on Windows 95, Windows NT and the Mac. Lighthouse has reveiwed only the Windows 95 version. Like its rivals, Home Page aims to insulate users from the HTML code which forms Web pages. Like its rivals, it wants to let users create Web pages the way they now create printed documents, dragging borders and graphics into position, clicking buttons to left-justify text or mark it as bold.
Some think it delivers. Last December, ZD Internet Magazine named Home Page the best of 14 Web editors, praising it above FrontPage and Fusion as "Claris's $99 gem". In March, NetGuide magazine awarded version 1.0 the prize as 1996's Best Web Authoring Tool. Lighthouse doesn't rate it so highly. Desktop publishing styleOf course, Home Page does the basics: you can type text into a page, build in hyperlinks, images, forms and Java applets, choose page colours and a background graphic, find and replace text, and check your spelling. But Home Page also caters to plug-ins such as Shockwave, and assesses how long your pages will take to load over various types of connection. And it lets you automatically upload your pages to your server. It also creates client-side image-maps and preview background images, notable omissions from version 1.0. Home Page's most alluring features are its editors for tables and frames, which allows you to drag-and-drop borders just as you would in a desktop publisher like Adobe's Pagemaker. Tables are perhaps Web page design's single most important tool, so Home Page's table editing gives it an edge. Nevertheless, the table and frame editors work less smoothly than they could: although Home Page runs under Windows 95, you can't change your tables by right-clicking, and you can lose data inside a table with worrying ease. You must manipulate the frames within a separate window, where they display as white rectangles. Those glitches exemplify the clumsy, uneven quality to the program's inter- face. Another example: many programs allow you to create e-mail links by pressing a button and then typing in the correct e-mail address. Home Page, however, takes a much more cumbersome route and finishes by asking you to type "mailto:userName@host". Doing it the hard wayIndeed, for a program designed to hide the HTML code, Home Page seems surprisingly often to demand that you know it. Take the HTML <meta> tags which many search engines use to index your page. You can add these tags, and many other features, only by typing HTML code in a special window. The help file and printed manual don't make the process much easier. Nor does the manual illustrate any of Home Page's none-too-inspiring clip art. Unless pictures to be used in pages are already in Web-ready form, they're converted to GIF Format - not always the best choice, although novices won't know that. And while you can preview your work in an external browser, such as Netscape Navigator, the program opens a new copy of your browser for each preview. On its own, none of these problems would prevent Home Page ranking as a great buy. Collectively, though, they leave the program suffering against the $139 Microsoft FrontPage 97 and Corel's Web.Designer, and the free AOLPress and Netscape's Navigator Gold and new Composer beta release. Claris's disappointing Home Page for Windows 95 - rather like its Apple parent - looks increasingly vulnerable in a market where only the strong survive. By the way, Claris's Home Page page boasts that "Whether you're a novice or an expert, Claris Home Page software gives you the ability to create dynamic web pages that look great"
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In an increasingly crowded market, Home Page's strength is affordable simplicity. It doesn't offer to manage entire Web sites, like Microsoft's more ambitious and intimidating $A149 FrontPage 97 or NetObject's even pricier Fusion. But it does promise easy page-creation ("build dynamic Web pages in minutes") for just $99.
Download Home Page 2.0 evaluation version from Claris