HyperMaker 3.3

HyperMaker 3.3 is an application that will allow you to compile an html publication for distribution on disk or CD. It allows you to password protect your publications and it is very powerful and easy to use. HTML compilation is not all it does though. Through a very small "scripting" language you can do some pretty cool stuff with this. I called it a scripting language which I guess it really isn't. I think a better description would be "modified html". Distribute portfolios, e-magazines, e-books, and more with Hypermaker 3.3. Below is the main user interface you are presented with when you first open HyperMaker 3.3.

The menus are pretty simple and you will probably not be doing much work from them as the software is set up so that everything you need to do is on a dialog that is easy to use and set up in such a way as you won't miss doing something critical when putting your publication together.

Before I get in to the specifics of how easy it is to compile an html project, I wanted you to see the first page of the help file. There are two ways to get help with HyperMaker 3.3. One is through the help menu in the actual program and the other is from a demo that is included with the download. Both are complete and very helpful.

Click on the tabs below (Publication Window down a bit farther on the page) to see a screenshot of each tab which will open in a new window.

The files tab lists all the files that will be included in your publication and sets the "home page", the page the HyperMaker viewer will open when it first starts up. You can highlight a file and use the viewer tab, the tab farthest to the right to see what each file looks like.

The Interface tab lets you set how the viewer will look to the end user. HyperMaker supports frames and you will specify the content frame on the Interface tab for printing purposes if you choose to allow your end users to print files from your publication. You can use your own static or animated logo on the end user interface. You can have a splash screen. You have a choice in the color of the toolbar background and in the toolbar icons for your end user interface. There is also an option for language. Languages that can be set up are English, Spanish, Dutch, French, Catalan, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Danish.

The Options tab lets you specify a message when the end user decides to close the publication.

The Protection tab lets you specify parameters for password protecting either the whole publication or just certain pages contained within the publication.

The search tab allows you to set it up so that your publication can be searched from a search dialog.

The External tab lets you specify messages that will be displayed prior to an email client or web browser being opened. And you can set a folder to be excluded from your publication. If you are using a lot of images in your publication you could put those in a separate folder from your html pages and exclude them from the compiler so that the run-time product will run much faster. There is also another option for creating a faster run-time but I'll get into that a little later.

The print tab lets you set up a print header and footer for pages that you allow to be printed by the end user and you can set up print margins on this tab.

The Setup tab is where you will specify the program group, the name of the shortcut, and path to install your publication to on the users hard drive, the title of the publication, and the icon you would like to use. You also have the option of not installing anything on the users hard drive and allowing the end user to view your publication directly from CD.

You decide the compilation method on the dialog below.

The screenshot below shows the Make a setup disk dialog box. Here is where you let HyperMaker know whether you will setup/copy your files to the users hard drive or run the publication directly from CD. If you want to run from a CD you would set the radio button to "Copy only HMViewer" and "Copy HMViewer uncompressed".

Below is a small representation of what the viewer might look like to the end user. What it really is, is the demo included with HyperMaker 3.3 and it is packed full of tips on how to do things with HyperMaker 3.3. The demo includes information on the "modified html tags" I mentioned earlier. For instance, HyperMaker allows you to set whether you would like end users to be able to copy images or text to the clipboard. But there is also another way you can accomplish that task. There is a tag that will allow you to run an .exe file. "So what you say." There is a lot of power in being able to do that. For example, let's say I wanted my end user to be able to alter an image. Getting the image to the end users system would mean the end user would have to copy it to the clipboard, then open their image editor, then alter the image. With the ability to open an application with just a hyperlink, wouldn't that be much simpler. How do I know what image editor an end user has on their system...well I really don't know the one they prefer. But, I do know that all windows systems come with the Paint program. So, I would simply create a normal hyperlink with this difference, I would not specify an html page but the path to the .exe that would open Paint and use the image name as the parameter which would look something like below:

Now, this will also work with NotePad too. HyperMaker 3.3 does not support javascript and vbscript, but suppose I wanted to share those with my end users. It's simple. I just create a hyperlink to open the script in NotePad. Wallah, the end user has the script. Another advantage of being able to use this object is that you can process forms with it locally. You would of course have to know how to create an .exe program that would process the input of the form, but it can be done. There is a working example of just exactly that in the demo.

Active images and text are another of the "modified html" tags in HyperMaker 3.3. To make mouseover text for a hyperlink you simple add the word active to your hyperlink code. To make a button mouseover, you create a two frame image, one frame would be the normal state, the second frame would be the active or over state. Again just add the word active to your hyperlink code.

I mentioned earlier that you can separate your images from your html so that when you compile your publication the run-time will be smaller. You will of course have to remember to include those in your distribution. But, there is also another way to do this. When you leave your images out of the compile they would be accessible to anyone who knows how to disable the autorun feature of CDs. If you are creating a publication that you would like password protected, that would leave the image files unprotected. The maker of HyperMaker has addressed that issue by allowing you to create many compiled publications and linking them together. This means if you divided your project up, you could compile each section and link to it from the main section and password protect it all.

There are also macros that use the hyperlink syntax. Some of those macros include commands for printing (and you can specify either just the current page or an array of pages), open another publication (which doesn't create another instance of the run-time browser), find (for searching for words throughout a publication), a couple of font macros for increasing and decreasing the size of the font (so that end users can increase or decrease at their will), exit, minimize, back, forward, register, and about. These macros are all invoked using the standard html anchor tag.

Some Features of HyperMaker 3.3

• Easy conversion of websites to compiled publications for off-line distribution.
• Generation of hypertext and multimedia publications Compressed & Encrypted 
• Multi-page publications in a unique file, without size limitation.
• Full Word Search in all publication pages (some pages can be excluded if necessary).
• Keyword Search (defined with META TAG).
• Access to the compiled publication can be restricted to certain pages. To obtain complete access to the whole publication a registration code should be entered.
• There are no de-compilers for Hyper Maker publications. This will also prevent modification or reuse of the publication's content by third parties. The print and copy functions can be disabled for additional protection.
• The publication language can be selected at compilation time, (English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Catalan, German, Italian, Portuguese and Danish are supported). The publications' Viewer automatically adjusts the interface language to the publication language.
• Frames support
• Animated GIFs.
• Pop-up messages (any link with .POP extension)
• The Viewer can play MIDI, WAV, MP3 and AVI files.
• On-line E-mail and browsing capabilities, through the installed Internet Browser.
• Intuitive powerful interface for immediate productivity
• Shareware version is full featured. The registration removes the nag screen and allows generation of registration keys for the publications
• Royalty free distribution for the Viewer and Setup programs

HyperMaker 3.3 is perfect for creating a portfolio and distributing it, for creating books, magazines, and things I probably haven't even thought about. It's quick, it's easy, it's compact.

If you want to set it so that end users can't copy or print your images and pages, that can all be set in the Publication Window shown at the beginning of this review.

What I've mentioned in this review are only some of the powerful capabilities of HyperMaker 3.3. In case you didn't notice, I love this product. I could go on for a long time about all the terrific things HyperMaker can do but I think what I should do is end here and send you over to the HyperMaker site to get the trial version. Download it and check it out. It is awesome and it's worth every penny of the price!

A new version 4.0 of HyperMaker is scheduled tentatively to be released in January or February 2000. New features will include:

Hyper Maker Viewer
* Print Preview
* Shockwave Flash (SWF), Acrobat (PDF) and Video for Windows (AVI) documents can be included into the page or in a frameset.
* Improved speed in large publications
* Works in Windows 9.x / NT 4 / Windows 2000. Windows 3.x it not supported anymore.
* VSpace attribute support for

and .
* Support Wide Characters in character entities.
* Add support for <NOBR> and <WBR> tags.
* New tag: <PAGE> The <PAGE> tag causes printing to end on the current page and a new page started. It has no effect on the displayed document.

Hyper Maker Compiler
* Editable language. New languages (for compiled publications) can be added easily.
* Can compile executables, including viewer and publication or viewer and publication and setup program.
* Includes a new Exclusions page to include or exclude specific files from being compiled.

Windows System Requirements
Windows 3.x, 95, 98
Estimated Street Price
$195.00 (US) Average Selling Price

Copyright Vikki Olds, All Rights Reserved