RapidWeaver 4 review

We've always been impressed by previous editions of RapidWeaver, largely on account of the fact it knows what it does, and it does it very well.

Despite sharing at least half a name with Adobe's industry-leading web development tool, it has few grand pretensions. Instead, it takes things back to basics and provides newbies with the tools they need to deliver professional-looking sites in no time at all.

As a product reaches its fourth major revision, there's always a risk that it could start to suffer from feature bloat. So we were keen to see how Realmac Software had balanced the temptation to justify upgrades by bolting on handy revisions with the duty to serve its long-term, loyal users who revel in its simplistic modus operandi.

The first thing you notice on firing it up is that RapidWeaver 4 has been given a smart new look and an expanded set of templates. Old favourites remain, but the collection, which forms the basis of any site you build, now runs to 41. This means the chances of two RapidWeaver users linking to each others' identical sites is reduced, if not entirely eliminated -particularly as we suspect most will be drawn to the excellent new Caribou theme. Better still, developer Realmac Software now bundles all the necessary code and instructions for building your own themes into the download package, so there's no reason why you can't develop something unique yourself.

With your theme chosen, you can set about putting your site together, and here things feel comfortably familiar. Most pages will be written as 'styled text' - a mode that has been massively enhanced through the simple addition of a formatting toolbar that's reminiscent of that in a plain word processor - but that's just one of 10 page types.

Elsewhere, you'll find pre-defined outlines for movie albums, photo galleries and file sharing sites, as well as a blog section. This latter option will appeal to anyone who wants to integrate their blog with their homepage, but the limitations of a Mac, rather than server-based, blogging tool such as this leave us unconvinced that we could ever recommend its use to most buyers.

The more you work with version four, the more you come to realise that this release is all about consolidation and refinement - much like Apple's forthcoming Snow Leopard. The whole application feels more solid and finished. The Huds, which match the semi-transparent dialogs in iPhoto and Aperture, have a true iLife feel to them, and although they were present in version 3.6 - albeit in a different form - we found ourselves making better use of them here simply through more intelligent organisation of the toolbar and a more appealing presentation overall. The payback was obvious - we spent more time creating and less time working.

Under the hood, RapidWeaver 4 has a new XML-based file format that is bundled up as a package, and is developed as an open standard to allow other developers to dip in and develop their own tools that can read and write to it. To that end, it's well documented, with a readme file inside each package.

The export and publish routine has been smartened up too, and with an eye on mobile users, the old options for adding a Favicon and a logo have been joined by a new one for webclip icons that appear on the iPhone homepage. When even some newspaper sites are having trouble getting their heads around this problem, it's an impressive addition to a consumer application. There's also built-in support for Google Analytics using a dedicated box on the site set up form that drops the tracking code into the appropriate place on each page.