Hello! I'm the head of developers at Enplase. I'm glad to introduce the new version of Ultima Website here. Comparing to the older version, It has some minor improvements, bug fixes and built-in FTP Uploader.
I want to notice that Ultima Website isn't a "Dreamweaver killer" :) and it isn't correct to compare them! (Especially taking into account that Ultima Website is free today and Adobe Dreamweaver costs $399). The program is intended for those people who doesn't know what is HTML, CSS and ECMAScript, but who want to have own site.

Ultima Website has an easy-to-use interface (just like Microsoft Word has!), that helps to create, modify and upload your site. For experienced people the program gives some advanced features like handling JavaScript's events.

I hope that our program will helpful to many people. Please, don't hesitate to leave a comment - your comments are the reason why Ultima Website is here today.

Thank you a lot and have a nice day!

Ivan Grynko  –  14 years ago  –  A fost util acest comentariu? da | nu (+233)

Tradu

Hi Ivan.

Thanks for giving us a taste of your software.

Let me give you my first impressions.

Installation: No problems. Activation OK.

Help file: None. No online help either. Tutorial: None. Instructional Screen video: None.
Really... Giving your users some information on how to use it is VERY VERY important!!!

The screen video that the 3D Ebook Cover people have on their web site is a good example of how easy it is to convey a lot of information in a very easy to make way. Use these methods. The current level of information is minimal/nonexistent. (3D Ebook was the GOTD software 4 or 5 days ago)

New project: Only one template? Surely at version 1.7 you could have created a few more. And I noticed it appears to be the template you have based your own web site on. Which gave me an idea for what might be a quick way to check one aspect of the software's performance, assuming you had used this software to create your own web site. So I entered your URL into validator.w3.org .... Hmmm.....

The header in the source of your web site's home page says:

DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"

I then created a project with the template and immediately used the Build Site function (which you have to find for yourself) to create the HTML code which I opened in Firefox and viewed the source. Then I noticed the code created by the program in its header reads:

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"

When I paste the code of the newly created index.html into the w3 validator page it passes with 2 warnings. I then let it re-evaluate your homepage forcing it to use 'HTML 4.01 Transitional'. A much better result. Still errors though.

Am I to assume this software is limited to making code that conforms to the HTML 4.01 Transitional standard or can it use other standards too?

Even though I expect the software being reasonably user friendly I still strongly suggest you should provide some help file/tutorial/instructional video and a few more templates. I once read that two thirds of the time developing software should be spent on coding and one third on writing the manual. I'm afraid that in real life most developers do not even come close to this amount of time spent on writing manuals/tutorials.

Having translated a book about Dreamweaver myself (while correcting quite a bit of wrong information in it) I don't expect to have too much trouble finding out how things work in your software. But a newbie really needs at least some help to get started.

Ben  –  14 years ago  –  A fost util acest comentariu? da | nu (+107)

Tradu

Certainly "Ultima Website" is simple to use. I can't help but feel that it is a tool so simple that it would be easily outgrown by even the most novice webpage creator.

I believe the time spent getting familiar using a FREE webpage designer such as Amaya is time well spent. Examples of the free tools that I would suggest can be found here:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-html-editor.htm

The point being, once you can do the basics such as place a button, a table, or an image - you are able to work with the code, style sheets, and form objects. As a user trying to learn website design, and confining the experience of creating webpages to Ultima, you are restricting yourself with no real payoff over other more "complete" tools.

Compare Ultima to the "always Free" Amaya or KompoZer and see how you fare. Ultima has potential - but still a long way to grow before I would consider it useful.

BuBBy  –  14 years ago  –  A fost util acest comentariu? da | nu (+77)

Tradu

Is this any good for a php learner?

The program can be helpful for you to create templates of your site, but there is no feature to edit PHP code. However, if you have ready PHP code it's possible to insert it to the page - for this purpose there is "HTML Block" component in Ultima Website.

Ivan Grynko  –  14 years ago  –  A fost util acest comentariu? da | nu (+45)

Tradu

I hope the software is less confused than its pricing.

Here on GOTD it's shown as a $49 program. On its homepage it's $69. On its features page, $49. And on its order page, $59.

JKEngineer  –  14 years ago  –  A fost util acest comentariu? da | nu (+36)

Tradu