Every software manufacturer in the World seems to have a program that will make designing your Web site easier than buttering a slice of bread. Unfortunately, a lot of the programs out there don't live up to their claims. I won't name names here, but this includes some of the major players. One company that has continued to make life on the Web easier and more interesting is Macromedia. Their immensely popular Director and Shockwave products have become Web standards, allowing many multimedia functions to be easily integrated within HTML pages.
April 8, 1997
Macromedia Backstage Internet Studio 2.0 (Backstage) is a powerful tool for building dynamic multimedia Web sites. An integrated Web design, development, and management package, Backstage provides the tools you need to produce top-of-the-line sites quickly.
Backstage is a visual tool for building database-powered Web sites. The program provides the core components needed to design a site from the ground up, including: a WYSIWYG editor, a site manager, an object server, and ready-to-use objects for use on your site. It also includes Macromedia xRes, a very powerful image editor, and multimedia applets for adding animation, sound and graphics to your site.
Backstage comes in two editions, Desktop and Enterprise. The Desktop Edition connects to popular desktop databases, including Microsoft Access, FoxPro, Excel, Borland Paradox, and dBase. The Enterprise Edition connects to client-server databases such as Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and Microsoft SQL Server as well as desktop databases.
The Backstage Internet Studio features 4 main components.
The Backstage Designer offers WYSIWYG Web page authoring; visual object insertion; a word processor interface with spell check and search and replace; and support for Multimedia Java PowerApplets and Shockwave movies.
The Backstage Manager has a project-level Web site management system. Features include drag-and-drop Web pages without breaking hyperlinks; quick repair of broken links; editing of Web pages from any PC with Internet access using a built-in FTP client, and easy administration of user accounts.
The Backstage Object Server offers database connectivity, Auto-Web Server configuration, HTML on the fly and session maintenance.
Backstage Objects allows a user to develop Web-based applications without programming. Objects featured include a library of eight database objects, enabling front-end database creation. The eight additional objects include threaded discussion groups, automated e-mail, login and authentication, and page hit counts.
The program ships with a nice collection of clip art and templates that include hundreds of images, Web page templates, and example applications.
Backstage lets you start creating HTML documents immediately from a blank page, without ever seeing the HTML tags. One nice feature is that Backstage also lets you directly edit the HTML code if you want to. Backstage's easy access to the HTML code gave me the best of both worlds, letting me use the generated HTML for basic tasks, while writing my own HTML tags or editing the generated HTML at will. With Backstage, you'll enjoy WYSIWYG Web design without switching back and forth from editor to browser. You can also add links with the ease of using a single button. In addition, simple toolbars make it easy to link, format text, spell check, and search & replace.
Although Backstage doesn't offer page-creation wizards to jump-start an "instant" home page, the program doesn't abandon you to your own devices entirely: It offers many sample page templates. Backstage simplifies insertion of state-of-the-art Web components, such as Shockwave and Java applets, into a Web page by adding them as a simple menu command that automatically writes the appropriate tags for you. I've spent many an hour cursing as I attempted to add Java to my pages using other programs. Using Backstage turned it into a very simple process.
If you want to customize the behavior or appearance of these applets, you can easily edit parameters from a dialog box, which prompts you for parameter name and value. You can also use HTML to create database front ends for desktop database packages like Borland's Paradox or Microsoft's Access. Really advanced designers can opt to create their own Web objects through the Xtras Developer's Kit. These Web objects can be written in almost any programming language (though C++ is probably best) and can then be wrapped in Macromedia's object wrapper. After that, they'll support any Web server or browser and can be reused anytime.
Backstage ships with a few basic Java and Shockwave applets and includes clear instructions on how to insert them into your own Web documents. It also offers understandable suggestions for modifying the parameters to suit your needs. You can use these samples, along with their directions, as a starting point for creating your own advanced tools.
Backstage also comes with many pre-designed objects to facilitate the creation of your own Web pages. You can effortlessly inject a generic horizontal rule (or a custom one) using the Insert Image command. You can also add several Backstage Objects, including hit counters, navigational buttons, date and time stamps, and tables. The package comes with a huge clip-art collection, along with backgrounds and images, that can greatly enhance your page's professional appearance.
Backstage Internet Studio 2.0 lets you create sophisticated Web pages in an intuitive point-and-click authoring environment. Unlike other stand-alone Web page authoring tools such as Microsoft's FrontPage or SoftQuad's HoTMetaL Pro, Backstage adds database connectivity to Web pages without the need for complex CGI programming.
At the Macromedia Web site (http://www.macromedia.com), the section on Backstage offers a tutorial on building a Web site in less than a week. It's very well-done and I suggest anyone interested in building a site visit these pages and learn from them.
I'd recommend this program to anyone contemplating the creation of a sophisticated Web site. It's user friendly, and unlike some of the many Web authoring tools out on the market, this one works very well. It is somewhat expensive (see sidebar), but well worth the investment, especially when viewed in comparison to what a Web design firm would charge you. And, chances are, they would be using the very same program as you would be - Backstage.
