Make complicated Web pages with 'Click to Convert'

Click to Convert is the first HTML converter than does this kind of thing perfectly.

technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Make complicated Web pages with 'Click to Convert'

Sept. 20, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   Making Web pages can be hard work.
   Simple pages usually don't take much effort. But complicated ones -- pages with a lot text that snakes around images, for example -- can be almost impossible to create.
   Not any more. I try not to fall in love with a software program because I can't be objective that way. But I'm head over heels in love with a new program that does something I thought could never be done.
   Before you read any further, I need to tell you the bad news. The good news is obvious -- this is a wonderful program and you'll love it. The bad news: Gulp! It costs $149.
   The program is called Click to Convert, from Inzone Software of New Zealand, on the Web at http://www.clicktoconvert.com/. It's a Windows program that will turn virtually any document into a Web page. You can order it online or download a free tryout version that works just like the commercial one except that it writes its own message across your page. (Call this "disableware," I guess.)
   I know, you've heard claims before about software that can convert documents into Web pages, right? But Click to Convert is the first HTML converter than does this kind of thing perfectly.
   Still skeptical? How long would it take you using standard HTML code to turn a newsletter containing graphics and two snaking columns of text into a Web page that looked EXACTLY like the original newsletter?
   And I mean exactly. They have to look so much alike that you could open them up side by side and have a hard time telling them apart.
   How long would it take? The answer, for most of us, is not a number. It's a plaintive sigh. We'd never be able to do that. HTML (hypertext markup language, the code used for all Web pages) was not designed to do fancy stuff like that. When you see a Web page that looks like a sophisticated design you might see in a magazine, you know someone put a lot of time into creating it.
   Or else they used Click to Convert. Pay attention if you're used to the normal way of creating Web pages: You open the document you want to convert, then click a menu item and click "OK." A few seconds later you have an Web page and all the images that go with it. A few seconds after that Click to Convert will have sent your page and its images to your Web site, all automatically. (It even creates and uploads a subfolder for the images in each page.)
   Click to Convert does this by mimicking a printer. It installs as a printer drive, and you use it by "printing" to the Click to Convert program. (Longtime Windows fax users might recognize that this is how fax programs usually work, too.)
   I tried dozens and dozens of different documents and was amazed to find that Click to Convert changed all of them into near-perfect replicas for the Web. Sometimes I saw minor differences, but most pages were exact twins of their original sources.
   Most of the time I used Microsoft Word documents for conversion to Web pages, but I also tried other typical Windows programs, and they worked fine with Click to Convert, too. Microsoft Word already has a helpful option -- you might have to install it separately if your copy of Word doesn't have it -- that lets you save any document as a Web page, but Word's method is dreadfully unreliable if your documents have images and snaking text. (Text "snakes" when it has to turn one way or another to avoid objects on a page.)
   Listen up. This is a Windows program, and that means every Windows user who buys Click to Convert will already have a way to create text documents that can be turned into Web pages. All that's needed is WordPad, the word processor included with Windows. (If you don't see it under Accessories, get out your Windows installation CD and add it to your system using the Add/Remove Programs part of the Control Panel. Choose Windows Setup.)
   And now for a more-or-less standard Technofile lecture. Web pages you create by any automatic method are no substitute for learning HTML. If you don't learn how to code pages by hand, you'll never be able to fix them if they are wrong. So use Click to Convert as a helper, not as your only way of creating Web pages, and you'll be far ahead of everybody else.