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Homestead's Best Web Editor Yet

Free, self-service Web page editor now works on any host site.

By Richard Jantz, PCWorld   

Homestead this week released the beta version of Homestead Publisher, the newest in its family of easy, drag-and-drop Web page editors. The program is downloadable free from the Homestead Web site.

Homestead Publisher has the same features as its older sibling, Homestead Online (formerly called Homestead Editor), with two main distinctions. First, you can use Publisher offline to create and edit your Web pages, which frees a phone line and makes the program portable. Second, you can use it to publish your pages to the Web site of your choice.

Previously, Homestead's software limited you to posting pages on its own Web hosting service. Now you can also use Publisher to post your pages on other popular Web hosting sites, such as GeoCities and Tripod, or on your local ISP. And you don't need to know FTP to publish to other sites. With just a few simple clicks, Homestead Publisher transfers the HTML files for you in the background.

Easy but Limited

I tested a beta version of Homestead Publisher and found it refreshingly easy to use. Within a few short hours, I was able to create a series of Web pages using the program's templates, ample clip art, and other tools to add buttons, text boxes, backgrounds, and graphics. You can also implement interactive Java applets--such as a guest book, voting box, chat room, or hit counter--anywhere on a page using simple drag-and-drop tools.

But as easy as Publisher is to use, its bare-bones tools can't compete with a full-featured Web authoring package, such as the $149 Microsoft FrontPage. Missing, for example, are Web management tools that give you hierarchical and graphical views of your site's pages. Publisher also lacks such simple editing features as the ability to select multiple elements or copy and paste objects onto different pages, and an Undo command to correct unintentional edits. These omissions might not bother Web newbies, but they're bound to frustrate veterans.

I used Homestead's free Web site service (12MB of disk space at no charge) to post my test pages, and Publisher transferred them without a hitch. And I found Homestead's lack of required advertisements (such as ad banners) a refreshing change.

Whether Homestead Technologies can become an 800-pound gorilla in the free Web publishing market remains to be seen. But with Homestead Publisher and its already excellent free Web site services, this company is ahead of most of the competition.