The most recent articles from PC Magazine

ON4

Kelvyn Taylor — 2004-08-20T11:04:00.000Z

Kelvyn Taylor, PC Magazine, Friday 20 August 2004 at 11:04:00

Get instant communications with this telephony services.

On4 is the latest voice over IP (VoIP) service from a new company called On Instant. If you've heard of Skype, you'll be familiar with the idea - using secure peer-to-peer Internet connections to talk (or send voicemail or text messages) to other On4 users.

The free download is only about 6MB, so it's not too onerous to try it out, and registration requires only basic personal details.

After installing and logging on you see the main On4 screen, which is uncluttered and self-explanatory. You can search for contacts worldwide, or invite friends to join by email.

The privacy level can be set so that only contacts in your address book can call you, but if you're feeling adventurous you can let any On4 user get in touch.

Audio setup is poorly implemented at the moment - there's no built-in audio wizard and no online help - but On Instant told us that it's rectifying this side of things.

On4 works with any microphone/speaker setup or USB handset, but we had to fiddle about with Windows' audio settings to get our USB handset to co-exist with our PC's speakers. A human operator is always on hand to help you get started.

Voice quality is superb, with little discernible lag and none of the cracks and pops usually associated with VoIP traffic.

On4 is really an interim release - version 2 is imminent, with a totally revised client and extra services such as conference calling and, eventually, the ability to call landlines or mobile phones.

It?s free, so give it a try and see what you think. Business users should take a look at On Instant, a paid-for service based on the same technology.

Contact:On Instant (01534) 746533

www.on4.com

Specifications:

OS support Windows 2000/XP Home/Pro.
Minimum memory required 128MB
Hard disk space 5MB
Other requirements DirectX 8 or later; sound card; headset, speakers/microphone or USB hand/headset

Price:

Free download.

GoToMyPC 4.0

Kelvyn Taylor — 2003-11-19T12:25:34.000Z

Kelvyn Taylor, PC Magazine, Wednesday 19 November 2003 at 12:25:34

Remote access to your PC.

It's happened to all of us. You're out of the office, at home or on a business trip, and you suddenly remember there's an important file you need. Unfortunately, it's securely out of reach on a network drive accessible only via your office PC. This is where GoToMyPC comes in - it's a secure, Web-based remote-control service that promises 24-hour access to your PC from anywhere in the world, from any system (not necessarily a Windows PC) with a Java-enabled Web browser.

It's very simple to use - after signing up, you download a small (1.4MB) System Tray applet and your host PC is ready for remote access. Security is well addressed - as well as your email address and password, you assign an access code to each host PC that's stored on the host PC, not on the GoToMyPC Web servers. GoToMyPC uses end-to-end 128-bit AES encryption and its hosting site has TruSecure SiteSecure certification. It's billed as firewall-friendly, although some personal firewalls such as Zone Alarm might have to be configured to allow the host service to access the Internet.

For individual accounts, you manage your registered PCs from your account page on the GoToMyPC site. Connecting to a host PC launches a Java applet that initiates the connection and then starts the Viewer applet. No software is downloaded or installed onto the local PC, which is very useful if you're in an Internet cafe, for example. Once you've entered the correct access code for the host PC, the viewer launches the remote Desktop. Corporate and Pro packages include a central administration application - this is limited to adding and removing users and basic reporting in the Pro package, but the Corporate version adds group management, centralised accounting and enhanced file-level security features.

The Viewer is freely resizeable and you can run in full-screen mode. Response speed will vary depending on your Internet connection and the screen resolutions used - it's a good idea to run your host PC at as low a resolution as practical for this purpose, and disable unnecessary graphics.

You can cut and paste text and graphics between the host and local PC by using standard Windows commands, but to transfer files you launch a separate utility from the Viewer menu.

It's a real shame you can't launch this application independently without running the remote Desktop. Other features are the ability to invite a guest via email to view (or even control) your host PC and use an on-screen text chat facility or annotate your screen. You can also print remote documents locally to any available printer.

In addition to the PC-based Viewer, there's a neat feature called PocketView that lets you use a PDA or any Windows CE/Pocket PC device to operate your remote PC. The procedure is the same as explained above, with a small PocketView utility downloaded to the PDA. You can't transfer files with this utility but you have full control of the host PC. The Viewer can be rotated and zoomed to suit your PDA's display and it's actually remarkably good.

Personal pricing is based on a per-host fee: each PC you want to access is charged separately. There's comprehensive help available on the Web site. Overall, it's an invaluable service for heavy-duty travellers, and the pricing is reasonable if you intend to use the service a lot.

Contact: Expertcity (0870) 345 1096

www.gotomypc.com

System requirements:

Host PC
Windows 9x/2000/ME/NT 4.0 /XP/Server 2003; Client PC
Any Java-enabled Web browser; PocketView client
Pocket PC 2002/2003/Phone Edition, Windows CE 4.0
CPU 300MHz Pentium
Memory 64MB
Browser Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator 4.0 or later

Ipswitch WS_FTP Pro 7.5

Alan Stevens — 2002-08-20T13:35:10.000Z

Alan Stevens, PC Magazine, Tuesday 20 August 2002 at 13:35:10

A worthwhile update for regular users.

Released at the beginning of April, version 7.5 of WS_FTP Pro further enhances the security, reliability and usability of the market leading Ipswitch FTP client for Windows.

On the security front, there's support for 128-bit SSL encryption, while new auto-retry and resume facilities add to the reliability by attempting to restart failed sessions and interrupted downloads automatically.

The most obvious changes are at the user interface, starting with step-by-step connection help in a new Assistance Centre window. This is accessible using the 'classic' and 'explorer' interfaces, with access to local and mapped drives added to the explorer front-end.

A new Site menu and wizard make it easier to save an FTP connection for reuse, create new sites from scratch and organise favourites. In addition, a new upload wizard simplifies tasks such as uploading HTML files to remote websites.

Most of us can make do with a browser for FTP transfers, but for webmasters and others needing to transfer files on a regular basis, this release of WS_FTP Pro has some valuable new features.

Price: £33; upgrade £7.50 (ex. VAT).

System requirements:

Intel Pentium; Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP; 8.2MB free disk space.

Contact: Unipalm 01638 569600

www.unipalm.com

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX

Cliff Joseph — 2002-08-20T13:33:46.000Z

Cliff Joseph, PC Magazine, Tuesday 20 August 2002 at 13:33:46

An impressive web development tool with powerful back-end and server-based technologies.

Dreamweaver has primarily been known as a tool for developing the front-end of a website, the pages users view when they visit a site.

Last year, though, Macromedia announced its intention to merge with Allaire, a company known for its back-end, server-based technologies. The result can be seen in Dreamweaver MX.

Dreamweaver's existing graphical design features remain in place, but the new features in this upgrade concentrate almost exclusively on programming and the development of interactive, database-driven web applications and services.

The list of new features is awash with technical jargon: for example, there's support for XML, ASP VBScript, J2EE, PHP, accessibility compliance checking and many others.

Macromedia is aware of the potential culture shock for people who have a design background so, when you launch the program for the first time, you're given a choice between working with the traditional Dreamweaver interface or the new Dreamweaver MX.

You're then confronted by a Welcome window that provides three sets of introductory files relating to the program's graphical design tools, hand-coding features and application development tools.

The new MX interface is certainly different. The traditional tool palette on the left-hand side of the screen has vanished and has been replaced by a series of tabs that run across the top.

Each tab provides access to different sets of tools relating to elements such as text, forms, tables and frames. Running down the right-hand side of the screen is a series of panels containing more complex tools for code editing, creating cascading style sheets and application development.

All these panels can be collapsed or hidden to keep them out of sight if you want to reduce screen clutter, but they contain many of the new features.

There are numerous new options for hand-coding your HTML pages, such as code 'hints', which are a bit like the predictive text technology on modern mobile phones. As soon as you start to type a tag, the program will display a menu of relevant attributes and parameters.

If you're new to application development, there's a new Database Panel feature that will take you through the process of creating a database-driven application.

A simple menu allows you to choose options such as JavaScript, ASP, NET or PHP and to set up a test server. There are also pre-defined Behaviours that let you quickly add interactive options such as data input.

Being a US company, Macromedia has paid a lot of attention to a law known in the US as Section 508. This specifies guidelines for creating 'accessible' websites that can be used by people who have visual impairments or other types of disability.

These guidelines cover details such as the use of fonts and keyboard shortcuts that will make sites easier for disabled people to use. Dreamweaver includes a set of reference materials so that developers and designers can familiarise themselves with the guidelines.

There's also an Accessibility option in the program's preferences that will automatically prompt you to enter special accessibility tags and attributes whenever you create page elements that need to follow the guidelines.

This is certainly a very powerful upgrade, but Macromedia risks losing some of its existing users by concentrating so much on the programming and application development aspects.

While Dreamweaver MX will certainly appeal to anyone interested in the creation of interactive applications, users who simply want to create conventional web pages containing text and graphics might find that Dreamweaver has moved on and left them behind.

Price: £299.99 (ex. VAT).

Minimum system requirements: Windows 98/ME/NT 4.0/2000/XP; Pentium 133MHz; 32MB Ram; 40MB free disk space.

Contact: Macromedia 0800 169 8216

www.macromedia.co.uk

Serif Web Page Maker e-Design Studio

Cliff Joseph — 2002-07-19T10:09:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, PC Magazine, Friday 19 July 2002 at 10:09:00

A good choice for those who want a simple way to start designing web pages.

The clumsily titled Web Page Maker e-Design Studio is actually WebPlus 7, an upgraded version of Serif's low-cost web design program, along with an extra CDRom with a large library of fonts, clipart and wizards to assist beginners.

The wizards consist of templates for business and personal use. However, they don't give a clear idea of the structure of a site or the links between pages, so you'll need to dip into the program's main tools to put finishing touches to your site.

A number of new design tools are included. The text and graphics engines have been enhanced so that they automatically provide smooth, anti-aliased text and graphics.

There's also a new text editing mode, WritePlus, that looks and works just like a word processor. It allows you to use powerful word processing tools, such as the new Auto-Correct and Auto-Spell options, and changes are instantly reflected on the web page in the main workspace, so you can see how your changes affect the layout.

You also have the ability to rotate text on the page while going back and editing it if necessary. There are also improved options for altering settings like line spacing and character formatting.

New graphics tools include options for drawing freehand lines and curves, as well as a range of pre-defined Quickshapes, such as spirals, stars and arrowheads.

A series of editing nodes let you modify these shapes quickly and easily, and the new transparency and fill tools can be used to add a variety of graphical effects. The gradient fill tool is particularly clever, providing dozens of pre-defined linear, radial and conical fill effects.

Rival web design programs such as Microsoft's FrontPage are better than e-Design Studio at creating large websites, but this package is a versatile and affordable option for beginners.

Price: £34.99 (ex. VAT).

Minimum requirements: Windows 9x/ME/2000/NT 4.0/XP; Pentium II 233MHz; 32Mb Ram; 65Mb hard disk space.

Contact: Serif 0115 914 2000

www.serif.com

Adobe GoLive 6.0

Cliff Joseph — 2002-04-17T12:00:51.000Z

Cliff Joseph, PC Magazine, Wednesday 17 April 2002 at 12:00:51

A powerful web design tool that can give Dreamweaver a run for its money.

Just as Livemotion has trailed along in the wake of Macromedia's Flash, so GoLive has spent the past couple of years playing second fiddle to Dreamweaver, Macromedia's popular web design program. Like LiveMotion, GoLive has just had a major upgrade that suggests that Adobe really does have a strong strategy up its sleeve after all.

The biggest new feature in this upgrade doesn't appear within GoLive at all. It's an entirely new program that comes bundled with GoLive and is called the Web Workgroup Server (WGS). Described by Adobe as an asset management tool, WGS provides a powerful range of site-management, versioning and archiving features.

You start by specifying the users in your workgroup who have access to the files in the WGS. As members of the workgroup add pages to the site, it automatically creates a revision list that's associated with each page.

The revision list keeps track of all the different versions of the page that are created by different users, allowing you to compare the source code of each version so that you can keep track of any changes. You can then specify that a particular version is labelled as the current version, so other members of the workgroup know which version to work with.

Individual users also have the ability to lock entire pages, or just specific parts of a page, so that they can't be changed by others. As a precaution, anyone with administrator privileges for the WGS can unlock these pages in case the original user is absent for some reason.

Another sensible function available to the workgroup administrator is the ability to take a snapshot that records the state of the entire website. This snapshot can then be stored and saved as an emergency backup.

At the moment, the WGS is designed specifically to work with GoLive websites, but Adobe is planning to update its other products, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, so that they support it as well. In time, this will let the WGS store all sorts of media assets that can be used for web, print and other forms of distribution.

For this strategy to work, Adobe needs to convince web designers that GoLive is a match for rivals such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage. With that in mind, Adobe has added a long list of new features to GoLive in addition to the features provided by the Workgroup Server.

The first thing you'll notice is the selection of new wizards that appear when you launch the program. The simplest wizard will merely create a new blank page for you to work on, but you also have two options for creating entire sites.

Selecting a single-user site will create a project folder and settings file that is stored locally on your PC. A workgroup site can be stored on a remote server and accessed by other users.

Both types of sites can be started quickly by using the provided templates, or you can start from scratch with a single blank page.

Once you enter the main program you'll notice a number of interface refinements. One nice touch is the ability to drag palettes to the side of the screen, where they shrink down into small tabs. Clicking on the tab causes the palette to expand when you need it, and then shrink away once more when you're finished. This will help to keep GoLive's profusion of floating palettes under control.

The program's main layout view has also been modified so that it can be split into two separate panes. One pane shows the graphical view of your page, while the other shows HTML source code, allowing designers to keep an eye on their code while they work.

To help you design the structure of your site, there's a new Diagram mode. This is a flowchart program that lets you create diagrams of the site structure.

For the really ambitious web developers, GoLive now includes support for Wireless Markup Language, i-Mode and Wap authoring. There's also a new technology called SmartObjects, which lets GoLive link to variable files created in other Adobe programs such as LiveMotion 2.0. A SmartObject file can be updated in LiveMotion and the file will automatically be updated within GoLive as well.

Other Adobe programs, such as Photoshop 7.0, have been updated to support this feature.

The combination of SmartObject technology and the WGS point the way forward to a complete production system that will let all Adobe products work together seamlessly in a workgroup environment. That's something for the future, though. In the meantime, GoLive 6.0 stands on its own as a powerful web design tool that can certainly give Dreamweaver a run for its money.

Contact

Adobe: 1 Roundwood Avenue, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB11 1AY.

Tel: 020 8606 4000, Fax 020-8606 4004

www.adobe.co.uk/products/golive/