Software Review: Web Catalog Authoring Software

By Alyson Behr

Billions From Bytes

"Get rich...Quick! Get on the Net!" The world is full of scams and spam, assaulting you from the back of magazines, or dished out to those poor souls who still own an AOL account. When it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

There is, however, legitimate opportunity for corporations selling goods and products to positively impact bottom line profits through thoughtfully planned online marketing. Analysts project that the online shopping market will experience explosive growth, and many expect revenues will hit $7.2 billion by the 21st century. With figures like these, it made sense to look at online catalog authoring suites to see exactly what you can take work with today.

WHAT’S IN A PACKAGE?

There are several critical factors that Web developers and network managers will need to take into consideration before making their final decision on a catalog authoring tool.

Is it hard to learn? Will its expansion capabilities, or scalability, keep pace with the catalog as it grows? Does it interface with existing databases, or must a new database be generated? What about security for online transactions? Does it allow layout flexibility to create a friendlier atmosphere for the user? Can it support Java and streaming video? What server-side considerations are there? Is it reasonably priced, giving you enough byte for the buck?

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

When we initially began our search for new products in this category, Press Kits were sent by five manufacturers. Each lauded their wares as the most advanced, cutting edge catalog product available. The operative word here was "available." When push overcame bandwidth, three fell by the wayside for various and sundry reasons, either declining to be tested altogether or offering only half of the solution after previous assurances that FedEx would deliver a complete package. This is worthy of mention because purchasing any of these products is a substantial investment of human resources, in addition to the obvious financial considerations. Nobody likes to discover they’ve come home with only half the pie, especially when it cost them $10,000.

THE PLAYERS

Of the five original contestants, the two that showed up to the race were Cat@log Direct-To-Web from the Vision Factory and iCat 3.0 by Icat Corporation. We looked at the issues mentioned before, and used existing image, HTML files and a database from the Vincent Hill Mining Company jewelry store to experiment with.

Our testbed included a Micron Millenia MXE Mini-Tower workstation, complete with a U.S. Robotics Sportster 33.6 Kbps internal modem, CD-ROM and Iomega Zip Drive, running Windows 95 with a 200 Mhz Intel Pentium processor, assisted by a Micron 17FGx digital color monitor. Additionally, we used a server running Windows NT 4.0 as a publishing platform.

Cat@log Direct-To-Web 1.0 (more of review)

iCat 3.0 (more of review)

And the Winner Is…,Resources and Author Bio (more of review)

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