Website Pros NetObjects Fusion 9 review

Website design software usually falls into one of two categories: simple software for home users or advanced software for businesses. NetObjects Fusion is an exception. It's easy to use but is best suited to small business sites.

Unlike editors such as Macromedia's Dreamweaver, which allows you to work directly with the HTML code that makes up each page, Fusion turns your page design into code just before it is published. You can view the code that makes up each page and add lines to it if you wish, but you can't edit or tweak the code that the software creates.

This will be of little concern to anyone creating their first website. The Site Wizard allows you to select a design template and choose the pages you need, followed by a product list and a page of contact information. You can choose a rough layout for each page or just accept the defaults. Once you have entered some simple information, such as your business address, Fusion creates the entire site ready for you to customise with text and images. When you're happy with each page, you can upload it to your web server using the publish button.

We've always been impressed by Fusion's simple online shop tool. This integrates with a number of online store services, including those provided by 1and1.co.uk and PayPal, and you can set them up in a matter of seconds. It won't rival Amazon, but if you want to sell just a handful of products with the minimum of fuss, it'll suffice.

Unfortunately, anyone with experience in web design is likely to find Fusion frustrating and limiting. Although it has many templates, none looks very professional, and many use garish colours. The templates didn't validate properly as HTML 4.0 Transitional and, when we examined the HTML output options, we were amazed to see it included compatibility modes for two completely outdated browsers: Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Navigator 4. There's no option to use the more modern CSS positioning method for page layout.

Creating your own layout from scratch isn't easy. Opting to start with a blank page brings up a page that's annoyingly far from blank, with an ugly header, two navigation bars and a dubious green tinge at the side. Removing these elements requires a trip to the style chooser, where you create your custom site style. As with the 'blank' page, this new style isn't really blank either, so to get a really fresh start you'll have to edit it.

There are a few things we like about Fusion 9. It's very simple for beginners, and you can generate a small business site with a PayPal shop without knowing much more than the login details for your web server. In most respects, though, Fusion 9 hasn't advanced far, and some of its features are stuck in the past. Beginners should consider it, but anyone else is better off using the expensive Dreamweaver or the free Notepad (www.notepad.org).