Quask FormArtist Presto Edition review

Designing and publishing a Web site gives you the chance to communicate with thousands of people.

You can say pretty much whatever you want to them. But what's the point if there's no way for them to respond? For that, you need to provide a Web form.
You'll have come across Web forms before. Whenever you register with a site, compose an e-mail on Hotmail, or type in your address for an online shop, the information that you enter is collated and sent to its destination using one. Web forms are simple to use, and they provide a high degree of control over the way people communication with you.
FormArtist is a piece of software that's designed to make it easy to create Web forms - and to control the processes behind the scenes that make Web forms work. The main program screen is very slick and clean-looking, with plenty of helpful icons. When you first open the software, you're presented with a wizard that gives you a list of the basic tasks FormArtist can handle - designing forms, deploying them to a Web site, notifying others of your site and fetching and analysing data.
The design wizard is straightforward enough, offering as it does the usual choices of designing from scratch, picking from a template or using a pre-defined form. These templates and forms aren't bad, but the choice is limited and you'll quickly tire of them. However, the tools provided are flexible enough to enable you to produce your own designs without too much trouble.
Setting up your form on a Web site is where the fun really starts. Not even FormArtist's straightforward approach can shield you from some of the techie details that you'll need to know if you want to get your form to actually do something - but with careful use of step-by-step wizards, it helps you get the job done. In the Presto edition of the software, the range of options is fairly narrow, essentially limiting your finished form to sending you an e-mail containing the information that visitors have entered. Posher versions allow more flexible options.
FormArtist Presto helps you to design a simple and professional-looking way for users of your Web site to get in touch with you. This is great for home users who are Web design enthusiasts, but even better for small businesses that want customers to be able to send them feedback, but don't have the technical know how to design such forms from scratch.