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Lily is an idiot. She's dating the man who killed her husband, and this isn't the first time. Then again, her mother steered her toward the gold digger in
the first place (after she slept with him, of course), so it's clearly a genetic defect that runs in the family. And so the page turns.Many Web page editors are as stupid as so many characters on the soaps. They're
basically just gussied-up word processing programs with all the layout limitations of a word processor. They're trapped in a mind frame a house cat would find confining. NetObjects Fusion breaks the "Web as word processing document" mold
and frees you in the process. Software as liberator instead of software as soap. NetObjects Fusion doesn't just make it easier to create a Web site; it can change the way you envision one as well. Click on Page (or double-click on any of
the page icons in the site map) and you're taken to the wonderful world of Page View (in living color, no less), where you can create your site as you would in a page layout program, as opposed to a word processing program.
Now there are probably some of you out there who have never used a page layout program such as Quark or PageMaker or Ventura or Microsoft Publisher. If you're one of them, all you really need to know is that instead of just typing a lot of
text and putting a picture here or there, you draw boxes that contain the text or graphics, then drag them around the page with your mouse. This, of course, gives you a lot more freedom in laying out a page, and it's ridiculously easy (once
you get the hang of it). Click here to read more about the basics of creating a page this way. Free At Last! You have
almost complete freedom in Page View. You can create objects of any size and move them anywhere on the page. Other programs force you to try to figure out complex table arrangements to turn your vision into reality. NetObjects Fusion
turns your vision into reality, without all the technical tedium.If you've been designing sites for a while, you'll see how this new page layout system can change the way you view page design. Previous word-processing-like
programs made you think in terms of mechanics—"what do I have to do to get this to work..." to the point where your design was often simplified to match the capabilities of the software. But because NetObjects Fusion's Page View gives
you complete flexibility and pixel-precision when placing text or graphics, your designs can change as well. More sophisticated or free-form page layouts are suddenly easy. 
And being practical has never been easier. You don't have to constantly change the resolution of your monitor to see how something will look at the resolution most people use (640x480). You can set guides for different page sizes, then
zoom in or out on the page. If you want to design for V4 and newer browsers, NetObjects Fusion lets you create pages that support CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) placement (so you can overlap objects), and DHTML (Dynamic HTML) so pages can be more interactive (for example, when the visitor clicks on a picture of the cat
and a skunk chases your text around the page) and animated (I didn´t have a picture of a cat or a skunk, so chipmunks will have to do, to see them, click here.Not surprisingly, Navigator and Internet Explorer each want
things done a different way, so in other programs, this stuff can be so complicated it requires programmers with a lot of experience and a lot of time (not to mention mucho dinero). 
But in NetObjects Fusion, it's all point-and-click and bingo! it
works for both programs. If you've ever used a presentation program such as PowerPoint, you'll look at this and immediately say, "Ah, I get it!" Choose what you want to happen, and NetObjects Fusion makes it happen, in both
Navigator and IE. Smart. If you want simpler pages with the leanest possible HTML code, there's a text mode that gives you what you want. If you like getting down and dirty in the HTML (sounds kinda
kinky, doesn't it?), then you can use code you've hacked yourself or created in any other program. NetObjects Fusion will manage the files but won't alter a line of your precious "code." Act Locally, React Globally Every NetObjects Fusion page has what's called a
MasterBorder. (You there in the corner with the sandals and the dirty mind, stop snickering!) 
A MasterBorder is an area on the top, bottom left, or right edge of the page where you put objects you want to appear on any page that uses the same MasterBorder.
MasterBorders are where NetObjects Fusion's automatically created (and updated!) navigation bars live, but you can put anything you want in them. The advantage of this is that if you change one border, all the other pages in your site that
use the same border also change, instantly. Add a button or a graphic or your lawyer's favorite scary copyright text and voila—it's on all the pages that use that border. NetObjects Fusion's automatic navigation bars also update
automatically, so you can add a new section, rename or remove an old one and faster than you can cry "Oh, no, I´m going to have to update all my pages!" you don't have to update anything, Fusion's done it for you.
This saves you from having to do a lot of tedious and repetitious work, and also ensures that your site is up-to-date and consistent. MasterBorders also can be turned into frames, at the touch of
a button (well, actually at the click of a box). Some of us think that frames are the work of the devil and avoid them whenever possible, but if you love 'em, then go ahead and use 'em!
You can create as many different MasterBorders as there are grains of sand on the beach (all right, I'm exaggerating, there's probably some limit somewhere, but I've yet to run into it). This means that even the biggest, most complex site
can be automated but still have the level of customization you need for each and every page. Alternative Design Design is about experimentation. OK, it's about play (and hopefully getting paid for it). Back when we designed on paper, it was easy to make sketches and try different
variations—you always had those scraps around later to remind you of the things you tried.Computers make change easy—perhaps too easy, because when previous versions disappear from your screen, that may be the end of them.
Rather than having to create multiple NetObjects Fusion files to test out each new idea that springs into your overheated little brain, NetObjects Fusion lets you experiment (or play)
all you want and keep a record of these trials of error. You can have multiple "layouts" for each page. How does NetObjects Fusion know which layout to use when publishing a site? It uses whichever layout was visible the last
time you edited the page. Because NetObjects Fusion is handling the tedious background tasks of links and navigation, you can concentrate on the content of the page itself (including multimedia, such
as Java, ActiveX, JavaScript, VB Script, audio, and video). Data Basics
Sometimes creating every page by hand makes sense. Sometimes, it's a brain drain. If you use a database to keep track of things, then lucky you, NetObjects Fusion can automatically create pages from databases. You choose the
database, which can be Access, dBase, Excel, Foxbase, Lotus 1-2-3, Paradox, plain text (comma or tab delimited ASCII), or any ODBC database. (If you don't have a database, you can build one inside of NetObjects Fusion.)
You tell NetObjects Fusion which database to use, then which fields to use, and the order in which you want them sorted. You can even "filter" information such as "only include if state=california and piercings=nose."
NetObjects Fusion does the rest, building a page for each record. You have complete control over how these pages look—you decide what fields appear and where they appear with the complete layout control you have on nondatabase
pages. This means entire catalogs, parts lists, company directories, or virtually anything else stored in a database can be "fused" into Web pages automatically. Here´s an example: eFuse's own Stylizer was created using NetObjects Fusion´s database publishing feature. Even the
graphics are automatically imported into Fusion, just by pointing to graphics on your hard disk.Building navigation from database page to database page is also easy. NetObjects Fusion can create "smart" links that
take you from database page to database page automatically, without having to create every one of those links manually. This literally can save days, weeks, or years (depending on your speed or lack thereof).
If you're a designer: You didn't become a designer to have to do tedious repetitive work; you got into it to design, and NetObjects Fusion lets you do that, then handles the dirty work for you.
If you're just trying to build a site for your company: All this means you don't have to learn to be a programmer (or a designer for that matter; read more about this in
Style and Substance).
Hack This A lot of people think you have to hack HTML to build a good Web page. I say, you don't hand-code PostScript files to print
graphics, why hand-code HTML to make Web pages? Don't get me wrong. If you like that kind of thing, great, please continue to do it, and enjoy! But if your idea of a good time does not include debugging HTML, then you can use
NetObjects Fusion without even knowing what HTML stands for!Finally, if for you a day without HTML hacking is like a day without Dove Chocolate is for me, then you'll be pleased to know you can still hand-hack HTML in NetObjects Fusion.
You can use HTML you created with your own little fingers, or you can add your own HTML to any page or objects within NetObjects Fusion. What's tres cool is that not only is it easy to add your own
custom HTML to the <head> section of the HTML file, but when you add it to a MasterBorder once, it appears on every page that uses that border. Talk about a time saver for meta tags! Wait, I'm schfitzing.
The point is, NetObjects Fusion is simple, not simplistic. 
- Read about Navigation in Dot´s thrilling,
"Navigate This!"
Return to Dot Com´s virtual home.
- For an interactive tour of NetObjects Fusion,
click here.
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eFuse Special! 
