Review - NetObjects Fusion MX

NetObjects hits the bulls-eye with new focus and new price

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It's not often that the most exciting thing about a product's new version is the price, but that's the case with NetObjects Fusion MX. The price has dropped like a rock: version 5.0 was $299, while this latest is only $99.95 (with a $50 rebate for those upgrading). Does this mean NetObjects' features have been drastically scaled back? Not at all. Instead, NetObjects management shows a cagey strategy by putting the product in a completely different category.

At the higher price point, NetObjects Fusion was being compared with high-end products like Macromedia Dreamweaver, products which, frankly, have a lot more to offer the professional Web builder. After all, Fusion is one of the few Web site creation tools that doesn't allow the user to edit HTML directly. At this new, more thrifty price, Fusion is suddenly a different type of application. It's not a high-end Web-building solution-it's an entry-level Web-building solution. Fusion is meant for, and seems a perfect fit for, small businesses that don't have the money to hire Web professionals or the time to learn complex programs in-house.

At Your Service

One of the more helpful additions NetObjects Fusion MX offers the beginning site creator is the Services View. It's a continuation of the Online View found in version 5, but more fully-featured and helpful. The Services View lets the user select a number of productivity-enhancing features, such as a message boards, a site-wide search engine, and traffic analysis. Users select the services they want and NetObjects does the work of placing them appropriately and creating the code.

These services aren't free, but are provided by partner companies. When the users first request a service, they're brought to an online page to fill out a billing form. Our only quibble with the Services View is that prices are difficult to find. They should be included with the initial list of services offered. Instead, users have to wade through the online forms to find prices. That isn't much help for people who like to know the price of something before they agree to buy it, which would have to be just about everyone.

New for MX

Users will find a variety of other improvements to NetObjects Fusion MX (if you're wondering, no, the "MX" doesn't stand for anything; "version 6.0" must not have sounded flashy enough). The Auto Update feature will add incremental improvements to the application throughout the year. We hope NetObjects makes good use of it. We found, for example, that the navigation panel NetObjects generates for each page of a site can't display subsections. We were told that the Auto Update would take care of that in the upcoming months, downloading improved navigation capability to registered users.

While Fusion does just fine working on existing sites, and can even do a fair job of importing sites created by other applications, it seems best at making sites from scratch. To that end, Fusion MX has an improved Site Wizard which guides novices through the basic choices. Once users have all the pages they need, they can decorate them with a variety of themes. Fifty themes come with Fusion MX; two hundred more are available online.

When users are ready to upload their sites to the Net, they can choose and buy hosting from such companies as DellHost, Verio, and EarthLink. In the previous version, pages could only be published from the Publish View, which could be a cumbersome process. With Fusion MX, pages can be published from any view. It's also simpler now to delete remote pages.

Another time saver is the new User Profile. When first beginning a site, users fill out a brief questionnaire with site contact information. This info is then used to populate certain pages of the site, adding e-mail contact links automatically. It's also used when signing up for a new service or filling out a wizard.

What About Coding?

Experienced developers reading this might be saying, Okay, enough with the bells and whistles, what about coding? This isn't the tool for those people. For all its ease of use additions, Fusion MX doesn't know XML and WAP from alphabet soup. It does support DHTML and Cascading Style Sheets, as did the previous version. But the focus is squarely on the beginning site creator, so advanced features seem like an afterthought.

We give NetObjects Fusion MX a thumbs-up, but the mere fact that you're reading this site probably puts you above the target market. If you have friends, however, who need a business site and aren't overloaded with money or Web savvy, you'd be doing them a favor by steering them to Fusion MX. They'll thank you from the bottom of their wallets.

NetObjects Fusion MX: $99.95 street. NetObjects Inc., Redwood City, CA; 888-449-6400, fax 650-482-3200; www.netobjects.com.

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