News :: 15MR: Website X5 v5.0.0.9 (Quick)
Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Website X5 version 5.0.0.9 by Incomedia—An application to quickly generate websites.
This review will be a quick review because of the depth of the application as well as the time taken to get registered, (it took 15 minutes to get confirmation email.)
Software Description
As Giveaway of the Day states: (Short)
“Create stunning Web site in 5 easy steps! WebSite X5 is a completely visual software: it does not require any HTML programming skills and it is the ideal tool for both home users and Web Designers who want to create and publish high quality websites with a professional look and feel.”
Quick Pros
- Interface is fairly simple to use
- Some built-in JavaScript functionality
- Nice selection of templates and color themes
- Files can at least be altered to allow customization beyond initial design
- Allows you to manage the site in a CMS style within itself
- Ability to build your own template handy
Quick Cons
- Installer did not detect primary drive; Default install to root folder
- File names for the HTML files are not descriptive (pg000.html, pg001.html…)
- Too basic for advanced or moderate users to use by itself
- Reliance on tables for templates I used
- CSS usage very minimal in templates I used
Expansion
Even though I didn’t have much time to tinker with the application, I was able to touch on a lot of the application. While I do my code generally by hand, it is nice to see an easy-to-use application to allow the quick and easy generation of a website for those who may not be comfortable at all with website building and dislike the results of Dreamweaver. While geared more towards beginners than an application like Dreamweaver, there are a lot of features that someone who is a moderate or even an advanced user can take advantage of, including the menus, various JavaScript and more. The fact that the application doesn’t encode or lock up the files so they’re unusable is a good thing. With the selection of templates and color themes, there should be enough for anyone to use or butcher to their own needs.
The few quips I had just quickly mashing up a site were fairly irritating to me. One was that the html filenames were not descriptive; pg000.html, pg001.html, etc. —Someone sends a link to someone else, and the link’s not going to explain what the link is at all. Why the application couldn’t have used the folder names and the titles of the files is beyond me. I was also bothered at the lack of use of the CSS file in the templates I used. The most recent one I have here only has 7 different CSS entries. I was also bothered that there was such a heavy reliance on tables; Granted, many site designs still need to use tables to get a good layout of the site where CSS (and specifically cross-browser compatibility) is a headache at best, the two templates I chose should have been easily done in CSS without any problems at all.
Final Verdict
While I may keep the application around for design inspiration, use of the menu generator and possibly butcher the heck out of a template; I myself would likely not ever use this application to fully build a site unless someone asked me to toss together something very fast. Primarily, I wouldn’t build a site with this application due to the file naming; I dislike non-descriptive filename/links with a passion.
As for beginners and intermediate users, (Especially those of you who hate Dreamweaver or some of the other applications out there,) This may be a good launching point for you. While granted I always feel the best way to build a site is learning to build it yourself, some don’t have the time or desire to do so. I would recommend this application to those who may be in this category. It is definitely worth picking up while it is free if you feel you are in this boat.
As for paying for this application; I know how time-consuming designing a website can be; And for beginners, it’s even longer to learn and build at the same time. If you really don’t want to learn how to build a site, this application may be more in your boat; And if you save 8 hours fighting just to get a basic web design complete when one of these templates may work okay for you, it may be worth the 34.95Euros for the lighter version or 59.99Euros for the full version (Evo)
Posted by BladedThoth on Friday, April 13, 2007
