Hot Dog Pro 2.54 is a useful and low cost tool for anyone working with Web Pages. It provides an enhanced editor, complete with project management along with graphical FTP software for uploading.

The program is much more powerful than using Notepad or other such editor, since it "knows" all the HTML elements. Also, being an older version written in the HTML 2-3 era, you are assured that the page or section you build will be quite readable by virtually all of the browsers, but you can't be taking advantage of any new features unless you manually add them yourself.

Although it can be used to build a Web page and even an entire Web site , I currently use it to quickly prototype a section of a Web page or a small table. It allows me to concentrate on the content I want to display, instead of creating the proper HTML syntax.

Although most word processors today can directly output HTML, this product will help teach you and help you get a better sense of the HTML tags that are used in creating a Web page. By understanding the basic elements of HTML, you can begin to understand the raw output produced by the "view document source" of your browser. It also produces "pure" HTML without any extra "WebBot" or marketing metatags.

Although it doesn't offer the power of more advanced automatic Web site styling tools, it provides a great choice for personal Web sites and small business sites. Hot Dog Pro integrates my Netscape Navigator Gold 3.03 very nicely as an HTML WYSIWYG viewer. The program includes its own Uninstaller, but I don't know why you would ever want to use it, since the program works so well.

The product was available through the close-out channels and was priced under twenty dollars. At this price, it was the PERFECT tool for anyone creating a personal or other small Web site. Although the program is supposed to work with Windows 3.1, I have used it only under Windows 95. It works well and has never crashed. It supports only 8.3 filenames, so it can make choosing amongst several files with similar long filenames a bit difficult, but manageable. If you are using a 640x480 display and running Windows 95, you should either autohide your toolbar or move it off to the left or right side, as several dialog boxes are full height.

In fact the only problem I had with the program was getting it installed on my IBM Thinkpad 755CE .

The bright red CD-ROM that came in the package was only readable when my laptop was running DOS and was completely unreadable under Windows 95. I'm not exactly sure what the problem was, but I ended up having to transfer the program to my Windows 95 hard drive using a PCMCIA hard drive. It was the first time I used a PCMCIA drive to install software on a laptop. In fact, the PCMCIA drive "autostarted" the easy installation process. Maybe you will have better luck with your CD-ROM.

I feel that Hot Dog Pro 2.54 is a very handy utility which is useful for both the novice and web professional alike and I highly recommend it.

Pros
Helpful HTML learning tool, includes a brief tutorial to help create a personal Web page
Quick way to create Web pages or sub-portions of Web Pages
Easy Web Management
Graphical FTP included
Low cost
Nice Netscape integration

Cons
No master stylesheets
Only HTML version 2+ features are directly supported, but any HTML can easily be added
I had installation problems with my CD-ROM
Only 8.3 filename support

Copyright © 1998 Rick Smith All rights reserved.