Anawave CoolCat

CoolCat follows in the footsteps of previous Internet apps released by Anawave Software. Like the Gravity newsreader, the WebSnake web agent, and the now defunct Postmark mail client, CoolCat enters an already crowded segment of the internet software scene with one goal in mind -- to be the most powerful and efficient client of its kind. With such a lofty goal despite the fact that the client has yet to be officially released, one might be too quick to dismiss CoolCat as yet another copy-cat client designed with the sole intention of making money off the continued popularity of the Internet and without really offering any value-added services that set it apart from the competition. But anyone who has taken more than a perfunctory look at the other Anawave clients will know that if any company can make real on such a claim, Anawave can. Anawave's latest offering is a strong representative of the new breed of web editors being developed and released by the major players of the Internet scene. Most of these companies have conceded the lower end of the market to text editors like TextPad and NotePad Pro and have instead focused on the higher end of web design. Editors like FrontPage 98, Dreamweaver, HomeSite 3.0, and HotDog Pro are complete web packages that offer a collection of tools, wizards, and everything else you need to create, publish, and maintain high-quality dynamic web sites utilizing the latest in web technology. In other words, the new breed of editors make it possible to develop the type of advanced sites that would be impossible to create using a conventional text or HTML editor. CoolCat joins these tools on the leading edge of web design technology and does its part to push the boundaries even farther than ever before. CoolCat supports nearly every type of web technology available from the earliest of standardized HTML tags to the latest proprietary tags and features from Netscape and Internet Explorer. The client covers the entry-level web tags -- everything up to the HTML 3.2 standard -- with efficiency and ease of use that serve throughout as the app's principal trademarks. Wizards and step-by-step editors facilitate the implementation of design tasks like tables, forms, frames, and client side image maps. These are just the beginning of CoolCat's support for the first generation of web design. CoolCat also offers extensive help documentation and an excellent online tutorial for guiding you through the process of creating a basic web site that employs the time-proven standards of HTML 3.2 and earlier. The tutorial doesn't end with its coverage of basic web sites, though, and thankfully, neither does the rest of CoolCat. CoolCat is also at the vanguard of web design, offering complete support for the proposed HTML 4 standard, WebTV tags, JavaScript and Java-based animations, Active Push Channels and the CDF standard, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), ActiveX applets, Dynamic HTML, and much more. Again, efficiency and ease of use are at the core of the CoolCat client. Intuitive wizards and guides make creating advanced web site elements a straight-forward, relatively simple process. An extensive library of pre-written JavaScript applets allows you to implement special effects and functionality in your web pages and also serves to help you get started with coding your own applets. However, coding more advanced scripts and applets is best saved for an app like Macromedia Dreamweaver that excels in this area. CoolCat rounds out its impressive set of features with usability tools like an automatic syntax checker, a powerful multiple find and replace tool, a spelling checker, a link verification tool, site management and uploading tools, the WebSnake Jr. plug-in for downloading web sites, bundled design animation and special effect applets, web site optimization via CoolCat's Download Stats and Optimizer tools, and customizable toolbar and interface elements. At just under $100, CoolCat not only matches the competition feature for feature, but it does so with a price tag that is second only to the $79 HomeSite 3.0. Despite its beta status, CoolCat is a complete web design package that is more than ready for primetime. Pros: Excellent set of features and support for the latest web technology; efficient, easy to use, and inexpensive Cons: Relatively slow start-up, lacks some of the competition's more advanced scripting and coding features For the latest information on Anawave CoolCat, check out: http://cws.internet.com/32html.html#coolcat