Homepage Penguin

Reviewed by Colin Polonowski

What better way is there to show what this excellent program by Matthias Jaap is capable of than by using it to put this review together?

What I have actually done is create a template with Homepage Penguin (HPP) and then I have manually gone in to make the page fit in with the overall layout of the magazine.

Creating HTML documents with HPP is extremely easy. In fact the program itself feels like the 'wizards' in Windows 95. It consists of a number of consecutive screens which ask you questions regarding how you want your page to look.

Most HTML documents are made up of both text and graphics. HPP makes it easy to incorporate both - and it takes just a few clicks. Instead of having an inbuilt text editor, HPP allows you to load in prewritten text.

As with most new GEM programs, HPP is multitasking compatible - this is pretty much essential in the modern Atari market. As well as this, HPP has been written to take advantage of all the facilities available. For example, if you have OLGA installed you can load CAB alongside HPP and any changes you make to your HTML file will automatically be passed on by OLGA and displayed in CAB.

The actual interface is well designed and makes use of all the more advanced GEM functions. On-line help is supplied in the ST-Guide format so if you have any problems the solution is usually just a button press away.

All in all, Homepage Penguin offers an excellent introduction to the HTML language. However the facilities it offers are fairly basic at the moment and support for the more advanced HTML features is limited. If you need to produce a webpage in a hurry, but you dont want the hassle of learning the syntax then HPP offers most of what you need to produce clear easy to read pages.

Homepage Penguin is shareware with UK support by CyberSTrider. The registration is just £10.