Hot Dog Standard is a shareware package that runs on the MS windows platform. Hot Dog Standard v.1.3.1 is an extremely robust HTML editor. It supports every HTML command possible and allows for user-defined commands. Hot Dog enables the author to perfom many advanced HTML formatting tasks like inserting tables, forms, backgound images, and custom text colors. However, we didn't find the package exceedingly simlpe to learn and, at least in our tests, it seemed to be a little clumsy. While it wasn't one of our top picks, it is definitely worth checking out.
Some of the more powerful and interesting features of HotDog Standard include:
Character and tag scrolling list windows - The package includes scrolling lists which show the extended character sets and tags together with a desription. By double clicking on an entry, the user can place the text directly into the document. This is an extremely useful tool for authors who want to quickly add tags to their document.
Entensive dialogues for images and links - The dialogues for adding links and images are quite well-organized and fairly easy to master. A file manager is included in the package which allows the user to simply select a file and have a link to that file inserted directly into the document being created.
Table and form dialogues - Hot Dog Standard also simplifies the insertion of tables and forms into an HTML document. Clicking on the "Table" icon, the user can specify table preferences such as size, priorities, and can actually fill the table values into a "spreadsheet". The entire table can then be easily inserted into the document.
Simplifies page preparation for server - The process of uploading the final document to the server becomes a very simple task with Hot Dog. The package includes a customizable "publishing" function which automates most of the rote chores assocaiated with this process, such as renaming files (.htm to .html), text formatting (DOS to UNIX), and other tasks invloved in preparing the document for uploading.
Supports HTML 3.0 and Netscape - The common HTML 3.0 tagss are supported.
Hot Dog Standard is extremely reasonably priced, retailing for $29.95 US. It is also available for a free 30 day trial and can be downloaded from www.sausage.com.
No HTML Validity Checker - The package does not include a facility for checking whether or not the user has violated HTML syntax.
No Spell-Checker - The professional version of Hot Dog Standard, Hot Dog Pro, does include a spell-checker but the current standard version is not equipped with this feature.
No Real-time Viewer - Hot Dog Standard does not allow to the user to see their document in a WYSIWIG format.
One other minor bug we noticed was after inserting a set of tags it became inpossible to use the mouse to reposition the cursor.
We should point out that the professional version (HotDog Pro) does solve the above mentioned problems, however, the package itself seems targetted more for the serious webmaster as opposed to new or amateur web authors.
Hot Dog Standard includes many dialog boxes which step the new user through the task of creating links and lists. It also has very extensive built-in tutorials and a powerful help feature which we found quite easy to use.
All in all, we didn't find HotDog Standard particularly easy to learn, and a number of the functions actually turned out to be somewhat cumbersome to use.
Click here to see a HotDog screen snapshot
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