NetObjects Fusion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 NetObjects Fusion 9 |
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| Developer: | Website Pros (formerly NetObjects, Inc.) |
| Latest release: | 9.1 / September 28, 2006 |
| OS: | Microsoft Windows |
| Use: | Web design |
| License: | Proprietary |
| Website: | NetObjects Fusion homepage |
NetObjects Fusion (NOF) is a web design tool, developed and distributed by NetObjects, Inc. from 1996 - 2001, and from 2001 until today by Website Pros, which acquired the application in 2001. NetObjects Fusion has a graphical user interface and generates HTML through its own proprietary database.
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[edit] Origin
The origin of NetObjects Fusion reaches back to the 1980s. At Apple Computer, Samir Arora, David Kleinberg and Sal Arora did research in early information navigation applications - before the term “browser” was born and Mosaic was invented.
Development was transferred to the new-founded company Rae Technology, a spin-off from Apple Computer. At Rae, the two Arora brothers and David Kleinberg developed an object-oriented environment called SOLO (Structure of Linked Objects), which is the technological basis of NetObjects Fusion.
NetObjects, Inc. was founded in 1995 with an initial investment by Rae Technology to complete development of NetObjects Fusion.
[edit] Reputation and market share
To accomplish the development of NetObjects Fusion and to design its interface, Clement Mok, Victor Zaud and Susan Kare, renowned interactivity designers, were contracted.
Hopes at the new founded company were high [1] and reactions of market and IT observers to the first two releases of NetObjects Fusion in 1996 and 1997 very positive. Among other awards NetObjects Fusion received were InfoWorld's Analyst Choice award and PC Magazine's Editors' Choice.
After a few years of great success, NOF fell back in market share and in reputation against the competition, mainly Dreamweaver, though it always kept a dedicated user community. Lately sales seem to have become stabilized.[2]
NetObjects Fusion reached the biggest market resonance in Germany.
[edit] Interface
Strictly speaking, NetObjects Fusion is not an HTML editor but an HTML generator. NOF comes with a graphical user interface similar to desktop publishing applications like Pagemaker (now InDesign). The user has pixel-level control on a WYSIWYG page layout. User actions on pages get written into a proprietary database, which generates HTML code.
The software was targeted at users who have a traditional print design, authoring or journalistic background. The developers of NetObjects Fusion intended to give them a user interface and a workflow they are used to.[3]
After the first use of a pre-release version in 1996, photojournalist Rick Smolan said: "NetObjects was the only tool that would enable a team of the world’s top picture editors and writers to become instant Web page designers. It let them do what they do best —edit and write— and automatically generated finished, sophisticated Web pages that millions of people were able to see only minutes after they were designed."[1]
On the other hand, the NetObjects-specific graphical interface proved to be a barrier for programmers who want direct access to HTML. An external editor is needed to change HTML that NetObjects Fusion has generated. Manually changed HTML code cannot be imported back to NetObjects Fusion.
With later versions, more and more so-called "insertion points" have been implemented where pieces of HTML can be inserted into the NOF-generated code (like between HEAD tags or inside BODY tags).
[edit] Views
The workspace of NetObjects Fusion offers different views of the project, similar to project management software.
In Site view, the web project is laid out and structured (NOF is a site-oriented HTML editor). The visualization technology of NetObjects Fusion has been patented.[4] In a hierarchical tree structure, pages can be built and arranged. The folder structure on the web server can follow this layout or can vary - leaving the site structure only as a logical structure.
In Page view, the desktop publishing model is most obvious. The user operates with a draw-based layout editor very similar to DTP or CAD software. Toolbars offer text, image, table and other choices to design a page. Since version 8, basic bitmap editing capabilities are integrated in the image tool.
All objects can be placed accurately with pixel-level control on the page, can be aligned or evenly distributed with the same distance from one other. To enable pixel-level control, NetObjects Fusion generates complex hidden tables and blind GIFs leading to a code which was denounced as “bloated” by purists. However, supporters claim that customers do not care about "beauty of code".
Page design is divided into an interior layout and an outside masterborder area. Masterborders allow designers to have exactly the same set of objects on a given number of pages.
A tab on page view starts an integrated browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer) to show an immediate preview without leaving NOF. Thus NetObjects Fusion can not be installed without Internet Explorer.
Style view offers pre-installed or online-offered sets of designs with banners, navigation bars, backgrounds, text styles and so on. Styles can also be completely user-defined and based on Cascading Style Sheets.
Other views are Asset view, in which image and media files are managed; Publish view, which allows local previewing or remote publishing with a built-in FTP module; and Online view, which has been added with NetObjects Fusion MX (6), to get access to third party modules, tutorials or customer support.
[edit] Strengths
The user interface of NetObjects Fusion has been praised as elegant by users and observers.
NetObjects Fusion proved to be flexible for small to medium-sized projects. For instance novices are able to build a small site with styles that come with the product, and set up a simple online shop with the built-in e-commerce engine. Experts can take advantage of NOF's layout capabilities and use it as a mere front-end to PHP/SQL database or advanced e-commerce solutions.
Third-party support was one of the highlights in earlier times, but seems to have been discouraged by Website Pro’s policy to offer their own components. Many formerly popular components by third-party vendors like Coolmaps or Bitmotion have been discontinued or remain in the state of just maintaining compatibility to new versions of NetObjects Fusion without further development.
[edit] Limitations
Scalability is a known problem of NetObjects Fusion. Depending on complexity and the user's working method, a single project reaches its limit of performance and handling at a range between 100 and 200 pages. Bigger sites have to be broken into several projects causing higher managing efforts. Scalability does not affect database-driven sites built with NOF.
The lack of direct access to HTML is seen as critical flaw by many web developers.
[edit] Latest developments
Compared to the pace of development at NetObjects, Inc., Website Pros has scaled down development efforts to a level that seemed suitable for the company and has outsourced engineering to Romania. However, Website Pros kept a steady pace of new releases with enhanced functionalities.
The latest version 9.1 (update 3 on release 9) offers full W3C compliance and substantially improved CSS capabilities.
Starting with release 9, Website Pros also distributes NetObjects nPower, a collaborative content management solution, to use with NetObjects Fusion.
[edit] Support
User support is granted by the company itself over various online channels and by an active user community. Newsgroup support[5] is regarded as one of the better ones in the software industry. Some web sites like gotFusion, Beyond Fusion, or NOF-Club (Germany) offer third-party support.
Daniel Will-Harris published Efuse.com with a broad range of articles and tutorials on web design from 1997 to 2001. Most of the examples ware based on NetObjects Fusion. The web site is still online.
The publication of books covering NetObjects Fusion has decreased with shrinking market share. For the latest version only the official manual published by the vendor itself is available.
[edit] Versions
All versions have been released in English and German. The given release year is for the English version.
- NetObjects Fusion 1 (1996) (Windows/Mac)
- NetObjects Fusion 2 (1997) (Windows/Mac)
- NetObjects Fusion 3 (1998) (Windows/Mac) Review
- NetObjects Fusion 4 (1999) (Windows)
- NetObjects Fusion 5 (2000) (Windows) Review
- NetObjects Fusion MX (2001) (Windows)
- NetObjects Fusion 7 (2002) (Windows)
- NetObjects Fusion 7.5 (2003) (Windows)
- NetObjects Fusion 8 (2004) (Windows) Review
- NetObjects Fusion 9 (2005) (Windows) Review
The latest update is #3 on version 9 bringing it to release 9.1 (2006).
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Maloney, Janice, NetObjects - Web publishing software, Fortune, July 8, 1996.
- ^ Website Pros Reports Record Third Quarter 2006 Financial Results. Website Pros. Retrieved on November 10, 2006.
- ^ Site Seeing. Daniel Will-Harris. Retrieved on October 19, 2006.
- ^ NetObjects Files Patent Applications. NetObjects, Inc.. Retrieved on October 20, 2006.
- ^ NetObjects Online Newsgroups. Website Pros. Retrieved on October 19, 2006.
[edit] Sources and links
- http://www.netobjects.com (Product homepage)
- http://www.efuse.com (Daniel Will-Harris' tutorials)
- Webster, Timothy (1996). NetObjects Fusion Handbook. Indianapolis: Hayden Books. ISBN 1-56830-327-0.
- Mok, Clement (Ed.) (1997). Killer Web Design - Designing for the Web with NetObjects Fusion. Indianapolis: Hayden Books. ISBN 1-568-30340-8.
- NetObjects (2005). NetObjects Fusion 9 User Manual. Website Pros, Inc. ASIN B000FDVK9C.
