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PASSING THE TEST: NEW C3 MACS RATED,
Aare Ryle Ws 9S:
aL WOT
THE ESSENTIAL MACINTOSH® RESOURCE
www.macworld.com
AN iMAC MUST-READ: \
BEST MAG SITES!
BEST MAC\ BROWSER!
TOP SEARCH TIPs!
ESSENTIAL WEB UTILITIES!
——_S “
s ., . Ciel ee
. o 2 '* a . as
www.lacie.com/mwtx.htm loCie TX-8000 and the LaCie logo are trademarks of LoCie, Lid. ©1998 LaCie, Lid. All rights reserved. es
- * ‘ c
ASTRONOMICAL.
The capacity of the LaCie TX-8000°
__ is simply colossal. It can store up to
one quarter terabyte in eight RAID
. accelerated drives with either Ultra2
taal
SCSI or Fibre Channel host controllers.
And four scaleable towers combine
to total one terabyte (1000 GB).So,
go ahead, think as big as you please.
en
ACI ' Made for ideas.
2
66
74
80
||
Features
Cover Story
The Macworld Web Traveler's
Companion
BY SHELLY eRisoin All plugged
in with too many places to go?
Streamline your online excursions
with Macworld’s guide to the best the
Web has to offer. Plus: the best
browser, search tips, and utilities
every traveler should have,
Put Your Files in the Fast Lane
BY BRUCE FRASER Fasten your
seat belts! Which server operating
system is the swiftest for the way
you work? Macworld Lab put Mac
OS, Windows NT, and Unix to the
test to see which gives your files the
fastest ride.
The Beauty of the Beast
BY STEPHAN SOmMoGY! The
power of Unix can be yours on the
Mac today—but it’s not for every-
one. See how Linux and Mac OS X
can bring speed and stability to a
Mac near you.
April 1999 MACWORLD
The definitive travel guide
for discerning Web
wayfarers, page 66.
‘Are you being served fast
enough? page 74.
PR eet Tk Tae
worid
93
97
103
Incorporating MacUser
ON THE COVER
Mlustration by Paut Rogers
Create
Mation
Presenting with HTML
sy JIM HEIO. Use the language of
the Web to make truly portable
presentations.
Web
Dynamic HTML without Tears
ay TOM NEGRINO Create groovy
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Print
Extend QuarkXPress
By DAVID aLATWeR Learn why
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ionship, and which are its choicest
XTensions,
All sped up with nothing to
burn: media-less 8x CD-R drives,
page 29.
27
28
28
29
30
News
NetBoot Your Mac
Apple's new Mac OS X Server
opens up the door to network
computing.
QuickTime Sprites Finally
Take Flight
New animation programs take
atures in
ntage of interactive f
Time 3.
Quit
Packin' In the Pixels
Epson unveils the high-resolution
Expression 800 flatbed scanner.
Product Watch
‘The latest products for your Mac,
including a slide scanner from
Polaroid and 3-D-modeling soft-
ware from auto-des-sys.
Building for the Forbidden
Interface
Mi
ions and Formac
expansion cards for the iMac’s
ro Conve
Underused QuickTime animation
goodies finally get their day in the
sun, page 28.
17
23
164
10
87
89
Presto, change-o—your URLs
are now under control,
page 87.
Opinion
The Vision Thing
BY ANDREW Gore What
lurks in the dark shadows of
e-commerce
The Desktop Critic
BY DAVID poGue The
unvarnished truth about cable
modems.
How to Contact Macworld
Bigger, faster, better: the new lomega
Zip 250, page 56.
Secrets
URL Magic Tricks
by JOSEPH SCHORR Wrangle
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Quick Tips
By ton pooce Tips, tricks,
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32
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Reviews
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www.macworld.com April 1999 3
BUY YOUR MAC FROM APPLE
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To order call
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GCC Tehclois is reir vadema of GCC Teco, Ire
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isit our web site, www.gcctech.c
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April 1999 MACWORLD
‘Macworld
orToR Ww che Andrew Gore
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT Cynthia A. MeDonald
EDITORIAL
fo1roR Michael Penwarden
SEnWOR SOITORINEWS AND REVIEWS Stephen Beale
SeMOK EOITOR/ORPARTMANTS Naney Peterson
| ston roronrearons Jason Snell
| stmoe associate rorrons Allyson Bates,
Linda Comer,
Scholle Sawyer
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Brooke C, Wheeler
ASSISTANT EDITOR Michael Gowan
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
David Biedny, Henry Bortman, Christopher Breen, Bruce
Fraser, ‘Ted Landau, Deke MeClelland, Rik Mystewshi, ‘Tom
Poole, St
Negrino, David Pogue,
N. Tester
Franklin
INTERNATIONAL EDITORS.
Steven Noble, Australia; Bernard Le Du, France; Andreay
Horchert, Germany; Enrico Lotti, Italy: Yoshi
Mori's Jap:
Tomasz Bitner, Poland; Daniel de Blas, Spain; Len
Hikansson, Sweden; Fred Jame, Taiwan; Bahattin Apak, Turkeys
Jary, United Kingdom
tag
ecnneat ommteron Jeff Pteelkaw
Las ointcron Kristina De Nike
Stw0K caw anacysrs Jelly K, Milstea
Kevin Mitchell
ASSOCIATE LAB ANALYST Gil Loyols
| wun coonomaton Ulssis Bravo
copy eolT ~
‘manacine cox108 Cire H. Breen
AssstANT MaNACiNG EDITOR Paul-Michael King
corr ent Jon Zoberien
Suwon core to1t0% Flissa Rabellina
ART AND DESIGN
Otsicn OIRECTOR Eleanor Lei
ART DIRECTOR Sylvia Chevrier
ASSOCIATE DESIGNERS Martha Katt,
‘Michael Rattary
DESIGN ASSOCIATES Jackie Goodman,
Jonathan Woolson
| ONLINE
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oumector oF content Matthew Rothenberg
sewoR onune sorrow Philip W. Dyer
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DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT FOR ONLINE Nicholas Harvey
ACCOUNT MANAGER Diana Berry
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& April 1999 MACWORLD
USB Floppy Disk Drive Macworld
pacsiount aNd c60 Colin Crawford
ASSISTANT TO THE ctO. Sharon Sanderson
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Stephen Daniels
ausiness MANAGER Eos de Feminis
ACCOUNTING coOROINATOR Ronda Bitiner
irassistanr Christian Semmel
DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES Sue Murphy
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGER Marisa Chow
DISPLAY ADVERTISING SALES
VICE PRISIOENT, SALES, & PUMLISHER Matt Sweeney
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Steve Plevin (415/243-3509)
SALES COORDINATOR Karla Kyrias (415/278-8542)
‘sats ASSISTANT Bryan Farnsworth (415/243-3577)
NATIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAGER ——_Jessics Ros (415/243-3583)
NATIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAGER Sara Culley (970/327-4499)
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PRODUCTION
VICE PRESIOLNT OF MANUFACTURING Anne Foley
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Cynthia Neustade
MANUFACTURING TECHNICAL BIRECTON Clayton Haberman
DIGITAL AD COORDINATOR Mac Seutt
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Choose 203 at www.macworld.com/getinfo
MACWORLD
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Think
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Copyright ©! 1999 Asantd Tectinologies, Inc: Al brand names and products are traclomarks or registered trademarks of thovr respective holders. All features and specications subject to change without notiog
LE MEOMANON
~~ Tellers
On the Road
N HIS ESSENTIAL EXTRAS FOR THE
PowerBook G3 (“Road Gear,” January
1999), Stephan Somogyi noted that
unless you own the PowerBook G3/300,
you'll need to get the DVD-Video Kit
from Apple.
I've had an order in for a DVD-Video
Kit since July 1998. My local Apple deal-
er has received zero kits. I've been round
and round with Apple’s customer rela-
tions, all to no avail. The bottom line is, if
you already have your PowerBook, forget
about getting a DVD-Video Kit. You'd be
better off returning your existing machine
and purchasing new, because the only way
you are going to get the kit is to buy one
of the high-end machines that includes it.
Curisropner Raxts
Sioux City, lowa
N “ROAD GEAR," YOU MENTION THE
wireless modem service of Metricom’s
Ricochet but miss the best part. Rico-
chet works in many airports, in addition
to the areas it officially covers. By stay-
ing ata hotel close to an airport, I always
have access to the Net without any
hassles. I used to run an ISP, and I
know—Ricochet is a very good ISP.
MARK SHAPIRO
San Jose, California
Ricochet does work in several airports. For a full
list of coverage areas, go to www.ricochet.net
Aeoverage/citylist.btml.—Ed.
PowerBook Blues
i FOUND MANY OF THE TIPS IN
David Pogue’s “Survival Skills” very
interesting (January 1999). At one point
he says there is never any need to shut
down the PowerBook between routine
uses. While this is theoretically true, I
have discovered some problems with the
sleep feature. Often, when the Power-
Book is reawakened for the second or
third time, I run into memory problems,
slower processing, more frequent freeze-
ups, and control-strip malfunctions. Over-
all, the PowerBook G3 has not met my
expectations for performance and often
does not meet my modest needs.
Jonau Victor
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Share More
ERIOUS SHAREWARE" ONLY SERVES
)Oas a reminder that Macworld should
regularly cover shareware, since it is such
an important part of the Macintosh expe-
rience (January 1999). I suggest that you
make shareware coverage a monthly fea-
ture. I am sure every reader will be disap-
pointed that some favorite item was not
covered (although previous issues have
mentioned many shareware applications
and utilities in passing). Outside such indis-
pensable interface enhancements as Finder-
Pop, GoMac, Kaleidoscope, and Window
Monkey, my favorite is the PIM Consul-
tant, which is so sophisticated it could easily
be marketed as a commercial product.
Dana SUTTON
Corona, California
We love shareware and agree that it is worthy of
as much coverage as it can get. However, until
someone finds a way to download shareware by
clicking on paper, the Internet is still the ideal
medium for shareware coverage. :-) That is why
we maintain the www.macdownload.com site
(through ZDNet), which is loaded with reviews
of shareware products —Philip Dyer
Making the Grade
READ DEKE McCLELLAND'S REVIEW.
of Ilustrator 8 (Reviews, January 1999)
and was surprised to see in the summary,
“Cons: Gradient Mesh tool is more sizzle
than substance.” Maybe it needs more
control, but I think it is the best tool I
have ever seen in 2-D design. Whatit can
do is very impressive and high-quality. In
addition, some effects are quicker with
this tool than with the previous gradient.
BERRY FARAH
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
NUM-ing Upgrade
COMPLIMENT STEPHAN SOMOGYI
on his review of Norton Utilities for
Macintosh 4.0 (Reviews, January 1999). Te
was thorough, fair, and deservedly critical.
Tve relied upon Norton's software since
continues
www.macworld.com April 1999 17
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Ever wonder what it would be like to
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Total control over your Mac is just a
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1999 CE Software, Inc. Quickeys is a.
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18 April 1999 MACWORLD
LETTERS
my first Mac purchase five years ago, and [
have al found it strong rand reliable.
But that changed with my upgrade to
version 4.0. Merely opening the program
freezes or crashes my PowerBook 1400.
Norton hasn't been able to suggest how to
get the program to even run. Somogyi hit
the nail on the head in stating that this
release was not yet ready for sale.
Terener A.
Tunasevn
Los lngeles, California
Into Intuos
EKE MCCLELLAND'S REVIEW OF
D the Wacom Intuos (Revie r
1999) described its ¢ new ayia
rotation, simultaneous multiple pointing
devices, tool memory, zoom, combination
buttons, and ergonomic design (am I for-
getting anything?), then marked it down
because current software doesn’t yet si
port all of its newest features and its dri
er isn’t compatible with older tablets.
This is like docking Sherlock because
most Web sites’ search engines don’t sup-
port it, Come on! All other reviews of the
Intuos I’ve read give it excellent marks.
GGNN BOPARA
nova
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Missing Link
S$ CHRISTOPHER BREEN NOTED,
A MacLinkPlus Deluxe has room for
improvement (Reviews, January 1998), Lf
MacLinkPlus Deluxe wasn’t like the
opposite sex (can’t live with it, can’t live
without it), it would be easier to take.
When is someone who understands Macs
going to work for DataViz? Apart from
the problems Breen pointed out, there are
several others, ranging from annoyances
to serious problems, For instance, Apple-
Works 5 isn’t supported, and the program
crashes regularly on Word files, I'm
thinking of divorcing version 10 and
going back to my old flame—version 9.7.
Davip Crowe
via the Internet
Remember the Faithful
TJ HY IS THERE NO SERIOUS COVER-
W age of high-end programs such as
Newtek’s Lightwave 3D? T appreciate
David Biedny’s fondness for Electrie-
Image Animation System 2.8 (Reviews,
January 1999), but that is not the only
high-end 3-D program on the Mac!
In general, Macworld doesn’t seem to
bother with high-end applications. The
iMac is here—we kvow already. I under-
stand that you want to pick up all the new
members of the Apple family, but you
must remember who else is reading your
magazine. A lot of us are trying to push
the envelope a litte, and we would like to
stay on the Mac platform.
Scovy Davis
New York, New York
Game Options
IULIP DYER FORGOT ONE, OTHER
low-cost option for playing PC
games—the low-end PC (The Game
Room, | y 1999), Especially when
compared with the cost of Orange
Micro’s “solutions,” you really come out
ahead. Right underneath my copy of
Macworld is a pile of PC ads and cata-
Jogs that have 200MHz to 300MHz PCs
for under $600! A good PC box and
an A/B monitor switch work great for
my job, where I constantly encounter
both platforms. We tried the Orange
Micro cards and, for the money, we were
adly disappointed,
Jov Drew
Virlparaiso, Indiana
“VE ALWAYS BEEN JEALOUS OF THE
ariety of titles available for Windows.
s Philip Dyer points out, PC emula~
tion—using software or hardware—is
slow and expensive.
‘There's another, hidden problem with
PC emulation: it reduces the incentive for
game companies to make Macintosh ver-
sions of their games. Why hire Mac-savvy
programmers and pay more production
costs if the Mac users are buying the Win-
dows versions? PC emulation js fine for
an occasional spreadsheet, but
as a long-term solution to
gaming, Mac-native games will always be
too little, too late, and too slow.
‘The Mac just isn’t a gaming platform.
Why make a silk purse from a sow’s ear?
Either bite the bullet and buy a full-
fledged PC, or save yourself a thousand.
bucks and get a game console.
if we use
Artie MOFFA
Antherst, Massachusetts
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right purchase decisions. Whether you
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Choice award, a five-mice
rating, or the authoritative
test data presented in
our benchmark charts —
you can put our lab to
work for you.
Something obvious happens when a publication is backed by
the most experienced, capable and thorough product testing in
the Macintosh industry — more serious Mac buyers rely on it to
make smart purchase decisions.
Macworld
Macworld
$5595
20 April 1999 MACWORLD
LETTERS
Put the ‘Book Back
ANADA'S NEW NATIONAL
paper, Nationa! Post, launched
ber 26 using Macs from end to end.
Our executive editor gave ever,
reporter a choice: we could take either a
desktop or a PowerBook.
After wrestling with the choice,
almost every reporter here, including
me, went with the desktop. Yes, it would
be convenient to take the PowerBook
home, but it would be a hassle to plug in
the power cord and hook into the corpo-
rate network every day.
The desktop’s full-size keyboard is
still more comfortable than a portable’s,
and a 17-inch monitor is still a lot more
screen real estate than a PowerBook
offers. And while the TrackPad is a great
pointing device, I’ve yet to find the per-
son who prefers it to a good old-fashioned
one-button mouse.
Portable computing devices, includ-
ing the PowerBook, may one day free us
from our desks. Here in Toronto, though,
reporters of National Post, when given the
chance to be free, decided to stay down on
the cubicle farm.
David AKIN
Oakville, Ontario, Canada
Letters should be sent to Letters, Macworld, 301
Howard St, 16th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94105; vin
fax, 415/442-0766; or electronically, to letters@
macworld.com. Include a return address and day-
time phone number, Due to the high volume of mail
received, we can’t respond personally to each letter.
We reserve the right to edie al letters. All published
letters become the property of Macworld.
To clear the RAM disk on a PowerBook,
press $-option-P-R (“Survival Skills,”
January 1999).
In “Comin? at Ya” (January 1999),
the captions for Micro Conversions’
Game Wizard and ATI Technologies’
Xclaim VR 3-D accelerators were
reversed, Also, Tomb Raider II needs
Rage II or better for RAVE to work,
not Rage Pro,
In the infographic “The Lay of the
Land” (“Road Gear,” January 1999),
the VGA-out and S-Video-out labels on
the PowerBook G3 were reversed. m
We could tell you lots
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Bargain Hunters, Beware
The Vision Thing
by Andrew Gore
WITH A LITTLE COMMON SENSE, YOU CAN SHOP THE WEB SAFELY
F YOU'VE EVER BEEN IN
midtown Manhattan, you've
probably seen the Going Out of
Business businesses, You know:
“Lease Expired! Closing After
20 Years! Our Loss Is Your
Gain!” Banners like these are
spread across the windows of
dozens of little shops, declaring
unbelievable discounts. Of course, most
of these shops have been going out of
business for a decade or more. In fact, the
only thing you're less likely to find in
New York than a polite cabbie is a Going
Out of Business business that actually has.
And as for those big discounts, it’s true
you can save 50 percent or more—if you
don’t mind that the original price was
double the normal retail price. These
stores bank on the gullibility of casual
consumers, impulse buyers, and tourists.
Only in New York, right?
Caveat Emptor
As it turns out, the Internet has proved
to be fertile ground for its own unique
breed of hucksters. With just a little bit of
pocket money, a savvy designer, and a
Web server, anyone can set up an elec-
tronic storefront that looks slick, profes-
sional, and credible faster than you can
say Ponzi scheme. Internet newsgroups are
bulging with stories of Web merchants
who have overcharged customers, not
delivered products as promised, or just
plain taken the money and run.
Even with the Web's honest operators
it can still be hard to know if you're really
getting the best deal. It’s amazing how
many Web sites claim to have the lowest
prices for a particular item. Let’ say you're
trying to buy a copy of The Truman Show
on DVD. First you check out Amazon.com
and find your DVD in stock for $20.99—
about 30 percent off the retail price. Not
bad, but at VideoBuy.com it’ only $14.99.
And even at that kind of price, the
Web's not necessarily a bargain. None of
these discount prices include shipping and
handling or taxes. At VideoBuy.com and
Amazon.com that's an extra $4.95, That
can kill your savings in a hurry.
Of course, all this assumes that the
products you want are in stock. Suppose
you're ordering several DVDs, and one is
on back order. You have wo choices: wait
several weeks for that one title to arrive, or
split your order in two parts and pay sepa-
rate handling charges for each.
And just because all this shopping is
being done via computer, don’t assume
there’s no opportunity for human error.
I’ve ordered products that weeks later I
was told never existed, This past Christ-
mas I used Amazon.com to buy my
mother a book about yoga for people
over 50. The company shipped her a
book on modern architecture, complete
with festive holiday gift wrapping.
‘To its credit, Amazon.com quickly
shipped her the correct title and credited
me the shipping charge. But still, imag-
ine my mother’s surprise when she
unwrapped her Christmas present.
Tips for Safe CyberShopping
Now, you might think I'm down on
Internet commerce. I’m not. What I am
down on is the unqualified enthusiasm
with which buying over the Net is being
pushed these days. I believe shopping on
the Web is a good thing, since it gives
busy consumers another way to save time
and money, but it’s good only when used
wisely. To help you avoid some of the pit-
falls I’ve run into, here are five tips:
1. Size Matters For now, it’s too
hard to tell the good guys from the bad,
so stick with the big-name sites, unless
you know someone who’ already had a
good experience with a no-name vendor.
2.Research Gotoa good newsgroup
site, like DejaNews, and do a search on
the name ofa site. If you find 10,000 mes-
sages that start off with “Boy, these guys
stink,” you may want to shop elsewhere.
3, Shop Around Even
among the major brands there
can be a real difference in
price. And don’t forget to fig-
ure in the shipping charges!
4. Start Small Keep your
first purchase from an unfa-
miliar site relatively inexpen-
sive. This way, ifyou get stuck,
you won't be out much money.
5. Click "No" When in
doubt, just click “no.” You can
always come back later and
pick up where you left off,
hopefully with a higher com-
fort level.
‘Take these few common-
sense precautions, and you
increase the odds that your
online buying experience will be a good
‘one. It amazes me that while people will
obsess over sending their credit-card
number over the Web, they won't give a
second thought to the much more likely
possibility that what they order will come
late, broken, or not at all.
Oh, yes, and one final tip: just like
those Going Out of Business come-ons, if
a deal seems too good to be true... itis. m
Has Andy got a deal for you: send bim
your comments at vistonthing@macworld.com,
and he'll read them—no charge!
www.macworld.com April 1999 23
IT TAKES ONLY
ONE LITTLE THING
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APRIL, 199-9
Apple Introduces 0S X Server
NETBOOT FEATURE LETS
MACS SHARE SYSTEM
FILES, APPLICATIONS
by Stephen Beale
he scene during Steve
Jobs’s Macworld Expo
keynote was impres-
sive: a network of 49
iMa mounted in a
grid of metal racks, each run-
ning a QuickTime movie
from the same server. It was a
dramatic demonstration of
NetBoot, a feature in Apple’s
new Mac OS X Server that
allows multiple Macs to be
booted and configured from a
single machine.
NetBoot comes close to
fulfilling the dream of a net-
work computer: cheap PCs
that share applications, data
fil and other resources
stored on a powerful server.
You don’t even need a hard
drive or any other local stor-
age on your Mac. Instead, the
Mac boots from a partition on
the server, which you also use
to store your documents and
system preferences. On a fast
network it should be nearly
transparent: you might have
to enter a password to access
your files, but otherwise the
Mac experience won't be
much different.
kless iMac? Thanks to
NetBoot, Apple could theo-
retically offer steeply dis-
counted iMacs, sans local
storage, in bundles that
include Mac OS X Server.
Indeed, as part of his demon-
stration, Jobs showed an
iMac, its hard drive removed,
booting from the server.
However, citing econ-
omies of scale, Apple si
diskless iMac would not be
much cheaper than a standard
model, and the company has
made it clear that it has no
a
intention of offering such a
machine. NetBoot's main sell-
ing point, in Apple’s view, is
the control and convenience
it offers network administra-
tors, not cost savings made
possible by stripping down a
popular consumer machine.
With NetBoot, you can
perform a single installation
of system software and appli-
cations and make them avail
able to any Mac on the net-
work. NetBoot also includes
system-management tools
that allow you to control
access to applications and
other files. For example, some
users on the network might
have rights to all applications,
while others are restricted to
using Microsoft Office. Be-
cause the files reside on a
server, you can use them from
any Mac on the network as
long as you have the correct
access privileges.
continues
www.macworld.com April 1999 27
Going to School “The cen-
tralized control that NetBoot
permits will have particular
appeal for schools, which can
use the software to run a
classroom full of iMacs from
one Mac OS X Server. Even if
schools have to pay close to
retail price for the iMac
clients, the server itself won't
strain most budgets: Apple
charges $995 for a software-
only version or $4,999 for a
version bundled with a
400MHz Power Mac G3.
NetBoot, of course, is just
one part of Mac OS X Server,
which evolved from Apple's
Rhapsody development efforts.
At the server's core is the
same Mach microkernel that
will provide the basis for Mac
OS X, Apple's next-gener:
tion operating system. The
server also includes the BSD
4.4 version of Unix; the
Apache 1.3.3 Web server; and
WebObjects 4, a development
tool for large-scale dynamic
Neb sites. The latter repre-
sents the Macintosh debut of
the Web authoring softw:
[ Mews
which was previously avail-
able only for Unix and Win-
dows NT workstations.
Adobe Brings
CyberStudio
into the Fold
GRAPHICS TITAN GETS
PRO-LEVEL WEB TOOL
by Jason Snell
Adobe S$:
(408/536-
www.adobe
hen
tems
6000,
com) announced
y that it
a tems,
maker of the popular GoLive
CyberStudio Web authoring
ge, many industry ana-
ed, “What took them
so long?” But for loyal Cyber-
Studio users, excitement
about the acquisition has to be
Midrange Scanner Packs In the Pixels
IT'S NOT THE CHEAPEST FLATBED SCANNER YOU CAN BUY,
but the new Expression 800, from Epson America (310/782-
0770, www.epson.com), offers 36-bit, 800-dpi optical reso-
lution for less than $1,000, Three versions are available: the
$699 Executive bundle, which includes Xerox Textbridge
OCR software and a limited edition of Adobe Photoshop 5.0;
the $799 Artist bundle, which adds Monaco Profiler Lite for
scanner calibration; and the $999 Professional bundle, which
further adds a transparency adapter—MACWORLD STAFF
28 April 1999
MACWORLD
mixed with some trepidation.
‘The deal appears to make
sense. CyberStudio users tend
to be professional designers
and developers, the same folks
who rely on such Adobe prod-
ucts as Photoshop, Illustrator,
and ImageReady. Adobe's
only foray into HTML edit-
ing is PageMill, a consumer-
level tool that has long been
eclipsed by CyberStudio,
Macromedia’s Dreamweaver
software, and other packages.
Lessons Learned? Adobe's
track record with PageMill is
ng fears among Cyber-
Studio boosters that their
favorite Web tool will get
short shrift. Once the toast of
the Mac Web design crowd,
PageMill stalled when Adobe
turned its attention to creat-
ing a Windows version. The
result was a dated Mac pro-
gram that couldn't handle
many of the hottest new Web
innovations.
CyberStudio loyalis
understandably — concerned
that Adobe will again turn its
attention to the Windows
market and deprive Mac users
of a top-notch Web design
tool. There's no doubt that
Adobe will offer a Windows
version of CyberStudio:
GoLive was working on one
even before the Adobe deal
went through.
Nevertheless, Adobe mar-
keting vi
¢ president Bruce
ys that Adobe has
Jearned the lesson of PageMill
and recognizes the need to
ep CyberStudio as a Web
design counterpart to its
other professional-level soft-
ware packages. A cross-plat-
form presence could even
offer unexpected advanta;
for CyberStudio users: many
Ww Jeb
authors who prefer
tudio were forced to
Adobe
id when the program
available on Windows.
has not
will be
CyberStudio’s develop-
ment team in Hamburg, Ger-
many, will continue to devel-
op the software as Adobe
employees, and GoLive CEO
Andr Politza will join
Adobe as an Internet-strategy
consultant—both signs that
Adobe intends to exploit Go-
Live's Net savvy, not crush it.
PageMill Prospects? Pag
Mill’s future is also up in the
Chizen and Politza say
they will compare the tech-
nologies in PageMill and
CyberStudio and decide
whether Adobe needs a con-
sumer-level Web design tool.
Their choices? Merge the two
programs, continue selling
PageMill as a low-end prod-
uct, or kill PageMill and offer
an entry-level version of
CyberStudio similar to Go-
current $99 Cy
Studio Personal Edition.
air.
per=
QuickTime
Sprites Finally
Take Flight
QUICKTIME ANIMATION
PROGRAMS DEBUT
by Jeffy K. Milstead
he interactive-anima-
tion features buried
within QuickTime 3
will soon get their day
in the sun, courtesy of
new tools from Electrifier
(formerly Lari Software; 919/
968-0701, www.clectrifier
com), ‘Totally Hip Soft-
ware (604/685-6525, www
stotallyhip.com), and others.
programs — support
ime’s new wired sprites
graphic elements that can
perform defined actions based
on user input.
After an ex-
tended paid beta period, Elec-
trifier has finally shipped
Electrifier Pro 1.0, a $595
program that lets designers
integrate any QuickTime-
supported media into an
interactive movie, The pro-
gram’s long gestation has
resulted in many refine-
ments for an initial
release, including a
tab that provides an
instant preview of
your movie.
Electrifier lets you
place graphic elements
known as actors in a
movie window. You can
then assign actions to
each element by dragging
icons from palettes. These
actions control how an actor
will respond to mouse-clicks
or behave over time. For
example, you can attach a
URL to a moving graphic, or
define on/off buttons for
playing an embedded Qui
‘Time movie. Movies can
incorporate the full range of
QuickTime media, including
QuickTime VR panoram
A 30-day trial version. is
available from Electrifier’s
Web site.
Electrifier has already
announced version 2.0 of the
software. Set to ship by mid-
year, it is expected to add fe
tures Apple’s
upcoming QuickTime 4
release. (Apple was set to
unveil QuickTime 4 at the
recent Maeworld Expo in San
Francisco but delayed the
announcement for unspecified
reasons. ‘The new QuickTime
will reportedly offer real-time
streaming capabilitie:
Scripted Sprites “Totally
Hip’s new LiveStage softwa
takes a different approach.
Targeted at Web authors who
might otherwise turn to Java,
DHTML, or Flash to pro-
duce animations, LiveStage
provides a QuickTime script
ing language that resemble:
Macromedia Director's Lingo.
tage project con-
sists of sprites driven by
relevant to
ssions and variables
to program complex. behav-
iors, from simple mouse-
over button effects to a com=
plete game of Tetris or
Minesweeper. It’s all deliv-
ered to the user’s Web
browser as a single, compact
QuickTime file.
‘Totally Hip offers a $199
developer release bundled
with Web Painter 3.1, the
company’s Web animation
program, and Apple’s Quick-
‘Time 3 Pro software. The ini-
tial version will support only
bitmapped and vector imag
System 7 sounds, and MIDI
sound files. You can build
wired QuickTime VR movies
by setting up. sprites—such
as navigational controls—in
LiveStage and then using
QuickTime Pro to composite
them with a QTVR panora-
ma. ‘Totally Hip offers a save~
disabled demo version of
LiveStage on its Web site.
Although they support
multiple data types, Electrifier
and LiveStage rely on Quick-
‘Time's vector format to keep
file sizes small. While
Lives its bundled
companion program, Web
Painter, to generate still
graphics in the vector format,
Electrifier can directly import
Adobe Illustrator files and
convert them to the Quick-
‘Time format. Unlike bit-
pped graphic formats,
¢ files are minuscule and
age uses
th
can be smoothly enlarged to
full screen,
More Wires Other ven-
dors have introduced their
own tools for creating wired
sprites. Deep Forest. Multi-
media (www.mountain-inter
snet/~bmeikle/) is offering a
demo version of its forth-
coming WiredZone, which
will sell for $99, Squamish
Media Group (www.smgvr
.com/msVRmain.html) — hy:
announced mapsaVR, a $99
program that lets you add
sprite-driven directional indi-
cators and navigation controls
to multinode QTVR pane
A. freeware program
pritz (heep://home
arthlink.net/~dmegavran/
spritz/download.html) — lets
you create wired QuickTime
movies that function as simple
interactive clements, such
button bar for navigating a
Web site. The
requires Mac OS 8.5
program
Media Limited
for 8x CD-Rs
VENDORS SLOW TO
OFFER DISCS CERTIFIED
FOR NEW RECORDERS
by Michael Gowan
I CDs are not creat-
ed equal. If you want
to take full advantage
of the new 8x CD
recorders from APS
‘Technologies, Smart and
Friendly, and others, you'll
need 8x-certified CD-R
media, As of mid-January
1999, only a handful of medi
vendors were offering certi-
fied discs, but most of the
leading players plan to offer
8X media in the near future.
Sensitive Layers A re-
cordable CD is constructed of
multiple layers, including dye
and polycarbonate _ plastic
use it records at
such a high speed, an 8x
mechanism requires a dye
continues
Product
WATCH
Latest LaserJet Is there still a
place for monochrome laser print-
ers? Hewlett-Packard (800/752-
0900, www.hp.com) thinks so.
The HP LaserJet 2100, which
replaces the LaserJet 6P/M, offers
1,200-dpi_ resolution and a 10-
pages-per-minute print engine in a
$699 package. The LaserJet
2100M, with HP's PostScript-
clone interpreter and extra RAM,
costs $799. The LaserJet 2100TN,
with an HP JetDirect EIO print
server and an additional 250-
sheet paper feeder, costs $999.
Modeler Marches On auto-
des-sys (614/488-8838, www
formz.com) has released version
3.0 of Form-2, its flagship model-
ing program for 3-D-graphics pro-
fessionals. Added features include
a customizable user interface, ani-
mation tools, and a host of new
modeling functions. The base
package sells for $1,495; a ver-
sion with rendering capabilities
costs $1,995.
XTension Trio Gluon (212/
343-1755, www.gluon.com) has
released three new QuarkXTen-
sions. XPressimage lets you
export QuarkxPress documents in
a variety of formats, including GIF.
The $149 utility can use hot fold-
ers to automate the export
process. QC is a $225 quality-con-
trol tool that locates problems in
text formatting, spot colors, and
other document elements. Cloner
XTension, priced at $129, copies
an element or group of elements
to any page or page range.
continues
Product
WATCH
For Older Macs Looking to
resurrect that old Mac Quadra or
Centris? Sonnet Technologies
(949/261-2800, www.sonnettech
com) has announced the Presto
PPC, a $399 upgrade card that
features a 100MHz PowerPC 601
and a1MB L2 cache. Sonnet is also
shipping G3 upgrades for the
Power Mac 5400, 5500, 6400,
6500, and other “upgrade-chal-
lenged" Mac systems; prices range
from $399 to $599.
Slide to Your Mac The new
SprintScan 4000, from Polaroid
(800/816-2611,
.com), scans 35mm slides, film-
www. polaroid
strips, and Advanced Photo Sys-
tem film at 4,000 dpi, The scanner,
with a street price of about
$2,000, can capture a slide at full
resolution in less than a minute,
Scheduled to ship in March, it’s
bundled with PolaColor insight Pro
scanning software and Adobe
PhotoDeluxe.
New Homes? Don't be sur-
prised to see some familiar Mac
products in unfamiliar territory.
lomega (801/778-1000, www
-iomega.com) announced that it
has acquired the assets of SyQuest
Technology, which declared bank-
ruptcy this past November.
SyQuest products include the
SyJet and Sparg removable-media
drives; lomega has not announced
its plans for the storage devices.
- CalComp, developer of the
Creation Station graphics tablets
and CrystalJet large-format print-
ers, has ceased operation and is
seeking a buyer for its products.
—EDITED BY MICHAEL GOWAN
that marks easily and a poly-
carbonate layer with clearly
defined ridges. You can burn
4x CD-Rs in an 8x drive, but
only at the lower speed.
Fortunately, you probably
won't have to pay a premium
for the higher-speed discs.
APS Technologies (800/862-
6831, www.apstech.com) and
Smart and Friendly (818/772-
8001, www.smartandfriendly
.com), which sell CD-R drives
that use the same 8X Sanyo
mechanism, both offer 8x-
certified recordable dises for
$20 per 10-pack, about what
you'd pay for name-brand 4X
discs. The drives themselves
sell for about $500 each, com-
pared with $300 for 4x drives.
Brand Plans Among
name-brand manufacturers,
TDK (516/625-0100, www
stdk.com) offers 8x dises for
about $2 each. Imation (888/
466-3456, www.imation.com)
says it will soon offer 8x
media—at prices 10 to 15 per-
cent higher than what it
charges for 4x discs. How-
‘APS Technologies, one of two vendors with an 8x
CD-R drive, also offers 8x media.
ever, in Macworld testing, we
were able to record Imation’s
4x-certified d at 8X on
both 8x recorders.
Maxell (888/262-93
wwwamaxell.com), Sony (9417
768-7669, www.sel.sony.com),
and Hi-Val (714/953-3000,
www.hival.com) say they plan
to offer high-speed discs but
have not provided timetables
for doing so.
Maxell currently offers
6x-certified media; Sony says
its CDs have been tested at up
to 6X but are certified only for
| News
4x recording. Hi-Val, a dis-
count brand available at
CompUSA, offers 4x CDs for
about $1 apiece.
iMac Boards
Use Forbidden
Interface
NEW CARDS PLUG INTO.
iMAC MEZZANINE SLOT
by Kristina De Nike
hen Apple devel-
oped the iMac, the
company made it
clear to hardware
vendors that one
component was off-limits:
the mezzanine slot on the
iMac motherboard. But the
engineers at Micro Conver-
sions (817/468-9922, www
-microconversions.com) and
Formac (www.formac
.com) didn’t listen,
Both companies
have developed ex-
pansion boards that
plug into the forbid-
den slot—despite
warnings from Apple
that customers may
void their iMac war-
ranty if they use the
products.
iMac Wizard
Micro Conversions has
announced an iMac version of
the Game Wizard, a
3-D-graphics accelerator
designed for use with popular
computer games. The $199
board features 3Dfx’s Voodoo2
chip, which has become a stan-
dard for game acceleration in
the PC market. It sports 8MB
of RAM, compared with a
maximum of 12MB for the
PCI version. The card is tight-
ly sandwiched between the
iMac motherboard and chas-
sis, and concerns about heat
ventilation preclude additional
memory, the company says.
Thin scsi. Formac, a Ger-
man company that designed
the Vision 3D Pro graphics
cards sold in the United
States by Mactell, has intro-
duced a $100 Ultra Wide
SCSI card that plugs into the
mezzanine slot, letting you
use scanners, external drives,
and other SCSI. peripherals
with your iMac, The card fea-
tures a single external SCSI 3
connector; these are thinner
than standard SCSI connec-
tors and the cables can be
hard to find, but they are
available. Drives connected to
the card be used to boot
up the iMa
Formac will bundle the
card with its Power RAID
Control software, which lets
you set up RAID levels 0 and
1 storage systems. Formac
ys the card will work with
other drive-formatting pack-
ages as well. The card is
scheduled to ship by the time
you read this. The company
also plans to offer a $149 me
zanine board that incorporates
a SCSI connector, a TV tun
and an S-Video in port.
No Piece of Cake [
ing a mezz rd can be
tricky: you have to open the
iMac and remove five screws
that hold the motherboard in
place; the slot is on the flip
side of the motherboard. To
install the Game Wizard, you
must also reroute the iMac’s
internal video cable to a con-
nector on the board. Micro
Conversions and Formac
expect that most customers
will opt for dealer installation.
The new
multiflavored
nine slot,
rds will work only in
blue
Bondi
model, However, Formac
it is developing an adapter
that will essentially restore
the slot to the newer iMacs,
allowing use of the mezza-
nine cards.—JEFFY K. MILSTEAD
CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT,
g
Mitsubishi Is Changing The
Face Of Desktop Monitors.
Introducing Mitsubishi’s Award-Winning
Diamond Pro” 900u With The Breakthrough
DIAMONDTRON NF* CRT.
Mitsubishi's new DIAMONDTRON NF
(Natural Flat) CRT technology represents an
unprecedented improvement in the way you'll
look at monitors from this moment on. The revo-
lutionary, truly flat-faced CRT creates distortion-
free, intuitively correct images that are much
easier on your eyes. Conventional CRTs produce
curves and distortions that are hard on your eyes,
increasing fatigue and reducing productivity.
DIAMONOTRON NF CONVENTIONAL FLAT
yi awe:
Irs Siac a
Hine sucfug,
You've come to expect crisp, clear images from
Mitsubishi's award-winning DIAMONDTRON
monitors, and now the innovative Diamond
Pro 900u takes monitor performance to an even
higher level. The Diamond Pro 900u delivers
consistently accurate image quality — side to
side, center to corner. In addition, Mitsubishi's
patented CRT manufacturing process makes the
Diamond Pro 900u stay brighter up to twice as
long as conventional CRT designs. First in a
family of DAMONDTRON NF monitors, the
19-inch (18.0-inch DVI*) Diamond Pro 900u has
a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200/75 Hz. For
added flexibility it also features a self-powered
USB hub that allows two independent computers
to share the display and a single set of USB
devices. DIAMONDTRON NF monitors are
just flat-out better. 1998
For more information Eddy
contact Mitsubishi WINNER
Electronics today. EDITORS’
CHOICE
April 1999 January 19, 1999
+ 800-843-2515 + Canada: 800-387-9630
IKFAX: 800-937-2094
www.mitsubishi-display.com/pb/pwd/900u
4
¥
MITSUBISHI
DISPLAY PRODUCTS
ic Innovation On Display,,
Choose 261 at www.macworld.com/getinfo
ed trae
e
DESKTOP MACS'
ENHANCEMENTS ARE MORE
THAN SKIN DEEP
NE GLAD AT APPLE’S NEW
two-toned Power Macintosh G3
series reveals that the iMac was no
aberration. With their bold blue-
and-white design and inclusion of
such new technologies as FireWire and
USB, the new Power Mac G3’ continue
down the road paved by the iMac.
‘The new desktop Macs are as notable
for what they lack as for what they
include, For example, you'll find no
floppy drives or serial ports on these
machines. Thankfully, neither will you
find the underpowered graphics chip sets
included with earlier M: All four mod-
els include ATI's powerful Rage 128 2-D/
3-D graphics card with 16MB of
SDRAM, along with two FireWire ports,
two USB ports, an ADB port, and a
10/100BaseT Ethernet port.
You'll notice no mention of SCSI.
Apple has drawn a line in the sand with
this series of computers—FireWire is in,
SCSI is (mostly) out. If you want SCSI,
you'll find it in the 400OMHz model in the
form of an Ultra Il PCI SCSI card; if you
want it in the less powerful Macs, you
must purchase a SCSI card separately.
Kind of Blue
Initially, the most striking features of the
new Power Mac G33 are the translucent-
blue faceplate, backplate, and top; the ice-
Power Macintosh G3’s
colored side panels revealing the ghostly
G3 logo beneath; and four sturdy handles
protruding from the corners of the case.
‘The front panel sports a CD-ROM or
DVD-ROM drive, an empty drive bay, a
speaker port, a power switch, and pro-
grammer’s and reset switches.
The keyboard and mouse—dead
ringers for the iMac’s—may disappoint
some users. This keyboard feels cheap
compared with the huge Apple keyboards
of old, and some people may mourn the
loss of three function keys, the end key, and
the option and control keys on the right
side of the keyboard. (Kudos to Apple,
however, for including a USB extension
cable for those who plan to store their new
Mac under a desk.) And although the
mouse looks great, many users will find it
ble: because of the round design,
ble to tell the top of the mouse
from the bottom by touch.
Open Sesame
You may forget your disappointment with
the input devices of the G3's when you see
their side door, which folds down to
expose the inner workings. With the door
open, you have ready access to every com-
ponent you're likely to touch—the moth-
TTAVET TAG Reviews you can trust: Macworld rates only final shipping products, not prototypes. What we review Is what you can actually buy.
REAL RATINGS OUTSTANDING: $$9¢% VERY GOOD: $48$ Goon: $48 FLAWED: ## UNACCEPTABLE: $
32 April 1999 MACWORLD
erboard containing the G3 processor,
four SDRAM slots, four PCI slots (three
33MHz, 64-bit slots and one 66MHz, 32-
bit slot, occupied by the graphics card),
modem connector, and internal battery is
attached to the doo: flat when
the case is open. Thi illiant design.
‘The layout for internal drives is just
At the bottom of the
Power N
the Ultr
two additional internal storage devices.
‘To mount a new device, simply remove a
single screw, disconnect the data and
power cables from the ATA drive, and
slide out the metal tray. ‘To place addi-
tional drives in any of the free, numbered
spaces, fasten the drives, put the tray back,
and plug in the drives. Note, however,
that placing a 1.6-inch drive in the middle
space makes it impossible to close the
door. ‘Tivo additional power connectors
are included, although you must provide
your own data cables.
It’s swell that the internal workings
of the new Macs are so easily accessible,
butit’s unfortunate that opening the door
rev 0 few PCI slots, With virtually no
FireWire p Is available at the
moment, users who need fast external
storage devices must rely on SCSI and
therefore tie up one of the three open PCI
slots with a SCSI adapter card.
riphe
High Performance
It should come as no surprise that these
machines turned in convincing MacBench
scores (see the benchmark, “Blue Blaze:
New G3°s Shine”). As you might expect,
the new 300MHz model, with its 512K
backside cache, fared worse in the Pro
sor test than our baseline system—the for-
mer top-of-the-line Power Mac G3/300,
which has a IMB backside cache. The Pro-
cessor scores for the more powerful Macs,
with their 1MB cache, fell just about where
we expected—I4 to 30 percent faster than
New Desktop Systems Compared
Blue Blazers: New G3's Shine
Best results in red. Reference system in italics, MacBench 5.0 scores are
‘relative to those of a first-generation Power Mac G3/300, which is assigned
a score of 1,000 for each test. The Adobe Photoshop 5.02 scores are also
relative to that of the baseline system, which is assigned a score of 1.0.
MACBENCH 5.0 PHOTOSHOP
Ere Tespall cee ee
"processor Disk Graphics Overall Score
‘Apple Power Macintosh G3/300 —— == 926 ED. 1,272 EN 2,608 Neo 1.1
‘Apple Power Macintosh G3/350 Gm 1045 1,362 2,882 1.2
Apple Power Macintosh G3/350 OVO — 1,143 337 26 42
‘Apple Power Macintosh G3/400 310 40S 3019
Apple Power Macintosh G3/300 "+ "* ~ 7,002 EB 956 1,404 10
Wee ta ae beter
vevious G3 architecture.
Test unit citfered from MacBench reference system in OS versi
screen resolution, and hard drive,
Behind Our Tests
We performed five tasks in Adobe Photoshop 5.02 (Gaussian Blur, image resize,
RGB-to-CMYK conversion, file sa
ind scroll). We averaged results and then
‘normalized them to the baseline system. For detailed information on our tests, see
www. macworld.com/tests/,—Macworld Lab testing supervised by Gil Loyola
that of the bas
cline system,
ising—and welcome—
cores. With the ATT
Rage 128, the entry-level Power Mac
achieved a Graphics score nearly twice
that of the baseline machine; in the more
powerful new models, the card yielded
more than double the graphics perfor-
mance of the baseline Power Mac. Also
impressive was 3-D-gaming perfor-
mance: Running the RAVE version of
Quake, none of the new Macs pulled
fewer than 50 frames per second (fps)
from the game, The bi stem,
which uses a Rage Pro graphics chip set,
achieved only 23 fps.
Adobe Photoshop tests revealed the
benefits of having a SCSI drive for certain
operations. The ATA drives in the
300MHz.and 350MHz models were not
quickas the baseline system’s SCSI drive at
performing Gaussian Blur and image-
resize operations (adding more RAM to
the new Power Macs improved Photoshop
performance). On the other hand, Photo-
shop scrolling was much sprightlier on the
new Power Macs—approximately twice as
fast on all configurations,
Macworld's Buying Advice
“The beauty of these new Macs goes much
deeper than their striking exteriors. The
are clearly the fastest Macs to grace the
market; they're also solidly built, easy to
upgrade, and attractively priced. Although
users with legacy SCSI and serial devices
will have to add a SCSI PCI card as well a
jal adapter to use their old peripherals,
these components are readily available and
not prohibitively expensive. Less forgivable
for professionals are the small alloument of
PCI slots and the inclusion of input devices
that emphasize form over function. But
these inconveniences are mitigated by the
fact that the new Macs introduce FireWire
and USB to the desktop—technologies that
are sure to be staples of computing in the
twenty-first century.—CHRISTOPHER BREEN
Mouse List Price Backside ¢p/Dvo Zip
‘Company Product Rating (as tested) Phone Cache RAM Hard Drive Drive Drive
‘Apple Computer Power Mac G3/300 oeee $1,599 408/996-1010 512k 64MB—_6GB Ultra ATA 24x CD-ROM C
Power Mac G3/350 fr $2,499 408/996-1010 IMB 126MB_—I2GRUIaATA 24x CD-ROM
Power Mac G3/350 DVD $988. “51,999 408/996-1010__1MB 64MB_——6GB Uta ATA 32K DVD-ROM
Power Mae 63/400 iT $2,999 408/996-1010 «1MB —=«128MB_—=«SGBUltraliSCS!_ 24x CD-ROM
© = yes, =n.
www.macworld.com April 1999 33
| Reviews
Macromedia Director 7
MULTIMEDIA TOOL BECOMES
AKE A DEEP BREATH AND
recite the full name—all 18 sylla-
bles of it. Macromedia Director 7
Shockwave Internet Studio is the
most Web-savvy Director yet.
Not that Macromedia is ignoring cre-
ators of games, CD-ROM titles, or
interactive kiosks; many of Director's
new features are just as welcome in these
non-networked applications. But the
program’s Internet focus is unmistak-
able. And for creating hybrid projects—
such as a CD-ROM that retrieves
updates from a Web site or a multiuser
game that enables distant players to lock
horns—Director 7 is
dream.
In Director's Chair
Director veterans will feel at home in
Director 7. It has all the familiar trap-
pings: the Stage, where you position and
arrange your project’s media elements;
the Cast, which holds media elements that
you import or create using Director's
built-in tools; and the Score, a timeline-
like window where you choreograph your
project's flow and interactivi
Creating a project in Director gener-
ally involves working with these key com-
ponents as well as with Lingo, Director's
built-in programming language. You're
also likely to work with behaviors, which
are canned Lingo scripts that perform
common tasks. When you've finished,
you can create a projector, a double-click-
able version of your project that you can
distribute to others. For Web-destined
projects, you can create Shockwave
movies that rely on Macromedia’s popu-
lar browser plug-in. You can also create
Java applets, although these provide only
limited support for Director's capabilities.
Director 7's body may be similar to
that of previous versions, but its engine is
new. In Director 7 you can have as many
as 1,000 channels in the Score window, up
from 120 in Director 6.x. Projects can
play back at speeds of up to 999 frames
per second, up from 500. In short, it’s
hard to imagine a project that would
exceed Director 7’s playback capabilities.
One downside of this engine
rebuild; Director 7 bids farewell to
680X0 Maes and to Windows 3.1. It's
34 April 1999 MACWORLD
MORE POWERFUL—AND MORE APPROACHABLE
bad enough that you can no longer
develop projects o7 these systems—you
can't even create projectors for them. If
you want to create titles for elderly com-
puters, Director 7 isn’t for you.
New Media, New Control
Director has long provided built-in tools
for creating richly formatted text and bit-
mapped graphics, In Director 7 ther
new data type on the block: vectors, Direc-
tor 7's new Vector Shape window provides
Better Behavior
Director's heritage as an animation pro-
gram has always complicated the creation
of interactive projects. Implementing
simple interactivity—such as creating a
set of buttons that enable users to branch
to different screens—meant writing
scripts in Lingo.
Director 6 streamlined authoring a
bit by introducing behaviors—canned
scripts that perform common tasks. In
Director 7, behaviors are dramatically
improved, A new Library
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tedster a=
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earn
Baten
Play Dore
BB palette provides fast access to
dozens of behaviors in ca
gories ranging from animation
to navigation to Internet
streaming (see “Director
Behaves”). ‘To assign a behav-
e-
Director Behaves
dozens of built-in behaviors that simplify authoring.
a FreeHand-like pen tool for drawing
bandwidth- and memory-friendly shapes,
complete with Bézier control points and
optional solid-color or gradient fills.
Director 7 automatically antialiases vector
shapes. Even better, you can control every
property of a vector shape using Lingo
scripts, Combine this with Director 7’s
Internet-access features, and you could
create a dynamic bar or line graph that
changes depending on certain data
retrieved from a Web site.
Director 7 can import bitmaps con
taining alpha channels, thus simplifying
the creation of special transparency effects,
such as feathering and drop shadows.
Director 7 also adds support for the PNG
graphics format and for animated GIFs.
Director 7 greatly simplifies such
common animation tasks as rotating
media elements. For example, to create
an animation of a spinning star in previ-
‘ous versions, you had to create multiple
versions of the star, each rotated to a dif-
ferent angle, and then laboriously swap
one for the next to animate the rotation.
In Director 7 you can simply use
keyframes or Lingo to rotate or skew any
media element. That means much less,
work for you, and smaller, more mem-
ory-efficient projects.
Director 7's Library palette is the gateway to
ior to an item, you simply drag
and drop that behavior’s icon.
Director 7 provides
behaviors for the most-com-
mon interactivity chores, and they work
well. Even if you don’t know a lick of
Lingo, you can create an interactive pro-
duction containing branching buttons,
QuickTime movies, animations, and
streaming audio.
Lingo still lurks beneath the surface
of every behavior, and You'll need Lingo
mastery to modify a behavior’s scripts. But
the good news is that unlike Director 6.x
behavior scripts, Director 7’s are laden
with comments that make them easier to
understand and twea
And speaking of Lingo, it too has
evolved. Programmers can now use
space-efficient dot syntax to get and set
properties. Common in modern lan-
guages such as JavaScript, dot syntax
makes for less verbose scripts.
Text (and HyperText) Power
Director has had first-rate text features
since version 5 introduced the word
cessor-like Text window, antialiased text,
kerning, and the ability to import Rich
‘Text Format (RTF) files. But Director
developers always faced the specter of
missing fonts: to ensure that text would
look as intended, they either had to
license and distribute custom fonts or set-
tle for using ubiquitous (and often boring)
fonts such as Helvetica and Times.
Director 7 changes this by enabling
you to embed any fonts installed in your
system directly in a project. Director
compresses its so-called Shocked fonts $0
that they take up only about 10K to 20K
apiece. You can trim this even further by
embedding only those characters that you
actually need. Shocked fonts are available
only to the project in which they're
embedded, so there are no licensing or
copyright issues to contend with,
Also new is the ability to import
HTML files with most formatting intact.
You can even import Web pages over the
Internet by entering a page’s URL in the
Import dialog box, although this often
yielded error messages in our tests. Direc-
tor7 does a reasonably good job of retain-
ing a page’s formatting, recognizing
tables, fonts, and common formatting
tags. Director 7 doesn’t import images
referenced in HTML pages, but it does
retain hyperlinks. You must use Lingo
programming to have a hyperlink launch
a Web page, but one of Director 7's built-
in behaviors can handle this for you.
Director 7’s other Internet-related
enhancements include behaviors that post
text entries to a CGI running on a Web
server, and a new multiuser server that
makes it possible to create networked
games and cl
For bandwidth-friendly audio, Direc-
tor 7 also includes Headspace’s Beatnik
Xtra, which includes behaviors that let you
play and control Beatnik music files.
Director 7 also supports the Shockwave
Audio format, which lets you deliver
streaming audio using a conventional Web
server (see “Making Waves with Stream-
ing Audio,” Create, February 1998).
on cast ember Properties =
Tribeworks iShell: Free Authoring at a Price
IF YOU DON'T LIKE DIREC-
tor—or you can't spend
$1,998 to develop for both
Mac and Windows—look into
iShell, from Tribeworks (415/
732-7004, www.tribeworks
com), From the developers of
Apple's defunct Apple Media
Tool, iShell combines solid
authoring features with an
unbeatable price tag.
Tribeworks has put a
unique twist on the open-
source software-distribution
approach popularized by
Linux, iShell is free: register at
Tribeworks' Web site, and
you get a download pass-
word. To create a Mac or
a project, you register for a
free run-time license file.
Tribeworks hopes you'll
like iShell enough to pay
$2,000 for a one-year “full
membership," which gets you
technical support, the ability
to create run-times without
registering each project you
create, and the full source
code to iShell itself.
iShell’s interface differs
from that of Apple Media
Tool (AMT), but the pro-
grams are conceptually simi-
lar. As with AMT, iShell's only
content-creation function is a
rudimentary text too—you
create your content in other
programs and then import it.
As you import media ele-
ments, you can assign events
and commands that branch
the screen, and so on.
‘Many of iShell’s author-
ing features pale alongside
Director’s. But iShell provides
excellent support for Quick-
Time, including QuickTime
VR and QuickTime 3 effects.
The program can't display
HTML pages—as Director 7
can—but can access files over
the Web, making possible CD-
ROM-Web hybrid projects.
iShell lacks Director's
depth and maturity, and its
documentation is literally a
work-in-progress. Still, iShell
deserves a look. Budget-
minded developers will love
its price tag, and Director
haters will appreciate its
object-oriented authoring
style. If Tribeworks' open-
source gamble pays off,
iShell could evolve into a
Windows run-time version of
But remarkably, the Macintosh ve
sion of Director 7 provides no way to
compress Shockwave Audio files; the
manual tells you to use Macromedia’s
SoundEdit 16, which is no longer includ-
ed with the Director suite.
Bundle of Joy
How has Director 7’s supporting cas
changed? Gone are the Xres image editor
and Extreme 3D modeler. For image edit-
ing you get Macromedia Firework
which is a solid, all-around image editor
particularly adept at creating Web graph-
ics (see Reviews, October 1998).
For sound editing, Mac
users get Bias’s Peak LE while
Windows users get Sonic
Foundry’s Sound Forge XP.
Both are scaled-down versions
of first-rate audio editors. We
prefer Sound Forge XP to
Peak LE—it was more stable
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(ABCD! cerginat sont:
AaBbCeDdl oe
I
e
ca
Comedy
in our tests and its interface is
less cluttered—but either is
sufficient for simple sound-
editing and conversion tasks.
Even if you already have
sound- and image-editing pro-
Fonts and Vectors
characters in a project to ensure typographic fidelity. Also visible
here: Director 7’s new Vector Shape window.
Director 7 can embed some or all of a font's
grams, you cannot buy Direc-
tor 7 separately unless you're
a registered user of a previous
version, in which case you can
movies, move items across
to other screens, play
major contender.
buy the upgrade for a steep $449. Macro-
media should make Director 7 available
separately, You'll still need to buy the
Windows version of Director to create
projectors for the Windows platform.
Macworld's Buying Advice
For a major upgrade, Director 7 is
remarkably well behaved. But it isn’t per-
fect. Some bugs in its text-handling fea-
tures can cause crashes in text-heavy proj-
ects. And a change in the way the Stage
works causes display problems with
movies in a window, which many Direc-
tor developers use. A little Lingo script
generally fixes this. But by and large,
Director 7 is an outstanding upgrade,
packing more power and introducing new
features that finally make Director
approachable for beginners.—i1m ne10
RATING: $$$§ PROS: Simplified authoring;
excellent Web features; beefed-up playback
engine; vector and alpha-channel support.
CONS: Mac version can't compress Shockwave
‘Audio files; some text-handling bugs; application
not sold separately. COMPANY: Macromedia
(415/252-2000, www.macromedia.com), LIST
PRICE: $999 (Director-only upgrade from earli-
er versions, $449; full Studio upgrade from ear-
lier versions, $499),
www.macworld.com April 1999 35
| Reviews
Dreamweaver 2
MACROMEDIA DREAMS UP IMPRESSIVE UPDATE
V VERSIONS OF MACRO-
media’s Dreamweaver were solid
but hard to love, with a clunky
interface that discouraged the
exploration that allows mere users
to become wizards. But with a new empha-
sis on usability, added to new cutting-edge
features, Dreamweaver 2 promis
delight both designers and code ge
Winning Features for Designers
Dreamweaver 2 is packed with improve-
ments to its page-design tools, The best
addition, the ‘Tracing Layer, recognizes
the fact that in many shops, a designer
creates a comp for a Web page in Adobe
Photoshop or QuarkXPress and hands a
color printout to a Web jockey, who then
apply text and other formatting to rows,
columns, or an entire table; select and for-
mat noncontiguous cells; and sort table
content Splitting and merging table cells
snap, and an included JavaScript
‘ion lets you swap the axes.
Previously, Dreamweaver’s many
floating palettes were a recipe for screen
clutter. [n version 2, you can dock palettes
together into a single tabbed window.
‘The program now makes excellent use of
contextual menus and has fewer annoy-
ing modal dialog boxes. It also includes
precoded objects, such as one that lets you
quickly create image-rollover effets, And
anew, smart eyedropper tool lets you pick
up a color from anywhere on your des
top; Psa? sap it to the nearest
Wows, Views, an
tone This Month's Book Review
Senins Bauk Review Heath
Howtews | sha
apiaions
The Geile -
nlions about the wortd of avaseriyt
“Dr amweaver takes advan-
tage of all the features in the
4.0 browsers but also offers
ward compatibility. You
can lay out pages using laye
and then convert the layers to
ard-compatible tables
ingle menu command,
Script behay-
witha
You can use Ja
iors that target specific brows-
er versions, or go for lowest-
‘ common-denominator effe
Comp Tracing
based on the position of the comp image in the Tracing Layer (vis-
ible as a dimmed image in the background).
re-creates the page in HTML, Dream-
weaver lets you take a GIF or JPEG
comp image and place it in the back~
ground of the document window as
guide (see “Comp Tracing"). New rulers,
snap-to guides, and grids make it easy to.
match the comp.
Once you've created a page, you save
it as a reusable template with both
editable and locked regions. Combined
with check-in/check-out page control
(which tells users when a particular page
is being changed), Dreamweaver’s tem-
plates give designers the comfort of
knowing that writers and editors can
change content without inadvertently
mangling the page’s design,
Dreamweaver's support for table edit-
ing is also vastly improved. You can now
36 April 1999 MACWORLD
I'm moving this Dreamweaver 2 layer into place,
Because it’s available for both
Mac and Windows, Dream-
weaver tries hard to cover all
the platform and browser
bases. As before, you can ch
for HTML compatibility ag
of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft
Internet Explorer, but version 2 adds pro-
files for Opera Software’s Opera and
Microsoft's WebTV browsers.
Happy Geeks Are Productive Geeks
Nothing annoys HTML. coders like hav-
isual tool arbitrarily rew
honed code. Dreamweaver has
ays respected custom HTML, and the
new version continues and extends this
tradition. The program won't change tags
it doesn't recognize, instead highlighting
ite their
unknown tags in yellow; italso recognizes
(and won't change) code that works with
server-side tools,
Dreamweaver comes with a nice set of
prewritten JavaScript behaviors, includ-
ing form validation and layer and timeline
control, and can trigger Shockwave or
Flash content. You can preview multi-
media content right in the Dreamweaver
document window, without having to
switch to a browser.
The new version catches up to
GoLive CyberStudio (now an Adobe
product) in site management by adding a
visual site map, the ability to check and
repair broken links, and an improved
FTP tool for uploading and downloading
sites. The supercharged find-and-replace
function fixes tags and files throughout a
site and accepts regular expressions.
A feature unique to Dreamweaver is
the program’ amazing extensibility, going
far beyond mere scripting. While com
petitors such as CyberStudio allow devel-
to create new JavaScript functions,
supports a Document
lodel that lets programmers use
ipt and HTML to write custom
menu commands, behaviors, inspector
palettes, and objects, There's even a way
to create plug-ins in C.
Dreamweaver 2 seems to be faster
than previous versions, though just as
RAM-hungry; with larger sites, the pro-
gram complained about memory until T
boosted its RAM footprint from the sug-
gested 20MB to 32MB,
Macworld's Buying Advice
‘Thanks to its interface improvements,
Dreamweaver has outgrown its ugly
duckling phase and is much easier and
more fun to use. Smart innovations [i
the Tracing Layer show that Macro-
media has been paying close attention to
the way designers work in real produc-
tion environments, and Dreamweaver’s
first-do-no-harm approach to HTML
shows a nice appreciation of the chal-
lenges that Web coder Fully com-
petitive with CyberStudio, bur with
unique strengths of its own, this striking
upgrade should win Dreamweaver many
new conyerts.—1om NEGRINO
RATING: $686%1 PROS: Superb table han-
dling: excellent design and layout tools; very good
code control; excellent extensibility. CONS:
RAM-hungry and not always polite about it
COMPANY: Macromedia (415/252-2000, www
mactomedis.com). COMPANY'S ESTIMATED
PRICE: $299,
Fool God.
Introducing the revolutionary series
of Sony FD Trinitron displays.
~e
x If you think God is in the
details, then we have the display
for you. The new, virtually flat FD
Trinitron display series is the most
revolutionary advancement in image
technology since the invention of
Trinitron in 1968. The colors are
remarkably sharp and bright, the
resolution incredibly high, and the
focus amazingly precise from top
to baltom, side to side and corner
‘to corner, In fact, the images on
screen are so real, they can fool
just about anyone.
Sony FD Trinitron displays
give you the tightest aperture grille
Ditch (0.22mm) and the broadest
“horizontal scan range available. Not
to mention USB peripheral ports
that make connections miraculously
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when it comes to image perfor-
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screen) for unprecedented
sharp and clear images.
DIGITAL MULTISCAN* TECHNOLOGY
for broadest horizontal scan
range and highest resolutions:
30-121kHz for resolutions up to
1800x1440 @ 80Hz (F500);
30-107 kHz for resolutions
up to600x1200 @ 85Hz (F400).
SMART CABLE DESIGN for shorter
display depth oadesktop.
Unique DisplayMouse™ contro! for quick, smooth adjust
‘ments of digital controls through comprehensive OSD.
HIDENSITY™ ELECTRON GUN Wit!)
Enhanced Elliptical Correction
System" technology for consistent,
accurate focus throughout the
screen — even in the corners
GEOLOCK PLUS™ CIRCUITRY fOr
improved color and brightness
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ACTIVE SIGNAL CORRECTION (ASC™) -
technology for one-touch instant
image sizing and centering.
DUAL INPUT CONNECTIVITY
provides 15 pin mini D-sub
and 5 BNC connectors for
simultaneous connection to
two computers,
USB Hut connectivity prts (1 upstream, 4 downstream)
for easy connection to USB peripherals.
www.sony.com/FD
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FD Trinitron
[Reviews
Offline Web Tools =
ONCE BENEFICIA BENEFICIAL, Now NECESSARY?
S$ THE MAG AND ITS BUNDLED
software applications adopt new
features, some third-party soft-
ware is relegated to the “old and
in the way” pile. Take Microsoft
Internet Explorer 4.0 and Mac OS 8.5’
Sherlock search utility, for example.
aie that Internet Explorer lets you save
Web pa;
ties that perforin a similar function still
s offline archives, are utili-
that support Internet Explorer channels.
Each of the applications also has a
more comprehensive set of filters than
does Internet Explorer. With the latter,
you can exclude files attached to a Web
page in only a general way—you can fil-
ter all images, sounds, and movies. With
Web Buddy and WebWhacker, you can
be more selective about which MIME,
types you download.
While Web Buddy and WebWhacker
share some advantages over Internet
Explorer, they aren’t twins,
Web Buddy is the easier to use
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when you're surfing the Web,
because it’s available to you
from within your browser; to
use WebWhacker, you must
switch from your browser into
the WebWhacker application.
And if you want to perform
scheduled downloads, Web-
Whacker must be running;
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Web Buddy launches itself at
the appointed time.
Web Buddy offers other
convenient features you won't
find in WebWhacker: you can
create and file bookmarks with
Gea) Come Caner
asingle click, and a translation
feature lets you turn Web
Delivery Service
to determine when your favorite Web pages are downloaded
rank them by relevance—do you need a
like-minded utility? Those are the ques-
tions we put to two offline Web-brows:
ing utilities—DataViz's Web Buddy 2.0
and Blue Squirrel’s WebWhacker 3.0—
and a Web-searching utility, Leptonic
Systems’ SurfJet Agent 1.0.
Working the Web
Although Internet Explorer allows you to
save a single page as well as anything
linked to that page, Web Buddy
WebWhacker's other tricks are com-
pelling enough to justify buying the pro-
grams. Both let you dig deeper into a Web
site (up to 99 levels) than does Internet
Explorer (5 levels). And both applications
let you schedule times to download any
page or site. Internet Explorer offer:
similar feature, but it works only with sites
‘You can configure Web Buddy 2.0's schedule
pages into word-processing
documents. (You can export
files in WebWhacker as well,
but only as separate HTML and graphics
files.) Regrettably, Web Buddy’
tion is a hit-or-miss affair—some pages
translate complete with text and graph-
ics, while others fail to translate at all.
WebWhacker isn’t entirely outdone
by Web Buddy, however. Unlike Web
Buddy, WebWhacker allows you to
search for text in the pages you've down-
loaded. And most important, Web-
Whacker is compatible with Mac OS 8.5.
In my tests, Web Buddy 2.0 froze three
different Macs running OS 8.5 whenever
a scheduled event initiated a dial-up
Internet connection. (The problem
st under OS 8.1.)
Sherlock's Smarter Brother?
SurfJet Agent is another program that
might fare better if there weren’t a free
alternative. Much like OS 8.5's Sherlock,
SurfJet Agent logs on to the Internet and
queries search sites based on keywords
you've entered. As with Sherlock, you can
include a wide variety of terms ina single
search, but unlike Sherlock, SurfJet Agent
lets you indicate your level of interest via
sliders to help determine the relevance of
the search results.
However, SurfJet Agent failed to find
sites easily found by Sherlock. When I
tested both applications, using my name
as the search term, Sherlock found more
than a dozen references; Surflet Agent
ed to locate a single one. And adding
sites to Sherlock is easy—just drop
them onto the System Folder, SurfJet
Agent requires that you enter the URL
for new search sites as well as arcane pre-
fix codes such as &TERM_1=, Let's hope a
future version of the program searches
farther afield and is easier to configure.
S
Although Web Buddy 2.0 i:
ble and feature-packed offline Web read-
er than WebWhacker 3.0, it gets only a
conditional recommendation due to its
continued problems with OS 8.5. Surflet
Agent 1.0 is off to a good start, but it
needs to offer a friendlier way to add
search sites,—cHRisToPHER BREEN
SurfJet Agent 1.0
RATING; $$$ PROS: Helpful relevancy rank-
ing. CONS: Difficult to add search sites; searches
not always broad enough, COMPANY: Leptonic
Systems
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