Instant Home Pages

Got a few hours? That's time enough to build a basic but professional-looking Web site.

When it came to building a home page with text, a few graphics, and a link or two, our testers discovered that Claris Home Page 2.0 was best for the job. It earned passing marks for all four usability factors: formatting, importing, creating links, and updating links. Home Page made it easy to accomplish them all because its intuitive interface works like that of a word processor. For example, testers could immediately import images by dragging and dropping them into place.

A close second to Home Page for basic page design was Microsoft FrontPage 97. As with Home Page, its word processor-style interface made it easy to get started; but when it came to creating links, testers ran into some trouble learning FrontPage's approach to linking. They also had difficulty completing many tasks with NetObjects Fusion 2.0, due in part to its confusing, cluttered interface.

Familiar Style:Claris Home Page looks and acts like a word processor.

If your Web publishing needs are limited to creating a few simple pages that will change very little, the affordable Claris Home Page is for you. But if you expect to make changes to your pages regularly or want to expand your site, it's worth spending a bit more for FrontPage's flexibility.