Web Page and Site Maintenance Tools
CS6204, Spring 1997
Macromedia Backstage Designer Plus
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Backstage Designer for page editing
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Backstage Manager for rudimentary site management
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xRes to edit images (almost full $419 product included)
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Server, which is O'Reilly's WebSite1.1 Web server, to test
forms and links
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Lots of clip art and page templates
Macromedia Backstage Designer
Backstage Desinger has a few more capabilities than Netscape Communicator.
Pros:
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Forms to insert
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Java applets
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Netscape plug-ins
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Active-X controls
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Unique viewing features: Split Windows and "Document Tree" view (ouline
of HTML tags)
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Allows creation of
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creation of image maps (you can graphically show regions on an image using
an editor built into Designer)
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creation of forms
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creation of frames
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direct editing of HTML
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selection of font family
Cons:
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No frames support (even in new 2.0 version)
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Lacks common key bindings (e.g., CTL-i for italics)
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Cannot have multiple windows open!
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My copy didn't show images in editing tool
Site Management with Backstage Manager
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Notion of local (under development) vs. remote (on Web server) pages
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Contains ftp client for remote pages
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File browser window to view structure of pages:

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You can fix broken links
Support for editing remote pages is much better than Netscape Composer:
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"Remote" icon in above screen you define set of projects (folders),
each a different set of Web documents.
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Designed to allow "offline" work on Web pages.
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GET and PUT menu items ftp files to/from your local machine.
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Red flag indicates which files are cached on your local machine.
New Features in Version 2.0
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WYSIWYG table editing, but with visual icons to manipulate table layout
(e.g., divide or join cells), to avoid awkard table property windows.
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C++ database-handling objects to
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acquire data from forms without CGI-bin scripts
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querry Paradox, FoxPro, dBASE, Excel, and Microsoft Access databases.
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Enterprise edition ($999) links to Oracle 6, Sybase, Informix, Microsoft
SQL Server databases.
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validate a database
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generate a report from within Web pages
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provide counter to track number of times page is visited
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collect info on browser used to display you Web pages, including IP address
of machine using our site and the last URL it displayed
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define conditions to control page display:
first time visitor could see different page from registered visitors
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Like Microsoft FrontPage, requires server support to use full features,
but server support is not available for UNIX servers.
Last modified on 20 June 1997
by abrams@vt.edu.
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