What is Adobe PageMill 3.0?

Adobe PageMill allows you to create and edit web pages visually. Other handy features include seamless HTML editing and the ability to preview your webpage in a browser.

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Adobe PageMill 3.0 gives consumers a lot of bang for the buck, and for Web page and site development it’s about as good a bundle as you can get for the price. Creating simple Web sites really is a snap with this package, but there is more — and less — to PageMill 3.0 than meets the eye. For a number of reasons, even on its third try Adobe has not been able to translate the ease of use of its other consumer-oriented page-layout and graphics products to this Web authoring tool. If you’ve used PageMill 2.0 or competing products such as FileMaker HomePage, Microsoft FrontPage, or Symantec Visual Page, the basic structure of PageMill 3.0 will look familiar. Its two main components are the page-layout editor and the site-management tool (which was sold separately in the past as SiteMill) , and it’s easy to flip back and forth between the two modules — or, if you have enough screen space, to view both components simultaneously.

Adobe’s page editor is adequate, with capabilities that have been standard for a couple of years. The best feature is the client-side image map editor, which is both fast and easy to use. You can add and edit text, graphics, and forms, and you can drag and drop text and images from common Mac applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel, Corel WordPerfect, and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. A built-in pasteboard provides easy access to frequently used images. You can easily add, edit, and remove links from both the page editor and the site-management tool. The menu system is logical, but the task bar icons are small and often cryptic. PageMill 3.0 does live up to its billing as a WYSIWYG editor: What you see on the page is pretty close to what you’ll see in your browser.

PageMill 3.0 has some significant flaws, however. The page editor is very slow; it couldn’t keep up with our fast typing. Editing tables, rows, and cells is awkward and confusing. For example, to select a cell, you must place your cursor in the cell and then use the Command-9 key combination. You can also select the cell by choosing Edit, Table, and Select More from the drop-down menus. But why Command-9? Or why not Edit, Table, and Select Cell? In comparison, HomePage’s table editor is easier to use and performs the same functions.

Also, PageMill 3.0’s documentation is poor. The package comes without a paper manual, and the slim tutorial book is confusing, with instructions for both Windows and Mac versions merged. Plan on printing out the useful online help files.

On the plus side, PageMill 3.0 offers excellent tools for creating frames and frame sets, which can be a complex and confusing task. PageMill’s site-management tool is effective, too: When you make changes to one element — for example, changing a file name — PageMill 3.0 automatically updates other affected pages. In our tests it performed these updates flawlessly and fairly quickly. The site-overview interface is easy to understand and allows you to view and work with files in list view, detail view, and link view panes.

If you want to create a simple or moderately complex Web site, PageMill 3.0 is a very good product, and its price is hard to beat. Professional developers, however, should look elsewhere.

Merron, Jeff. (March 1999). Adobe PageMill 3.0. MacAddict. (pg. 46).

Download Adobe PageMill 3.0 for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver