Software Review:
NetObjects BeanBuilder 1.0

Most of us know NetObjects as the folks that created Fusion, the visual Web site development tool. They're still putting out new versions of NetObjects Fusion, but now they've released a tool which enables developers to create a Web application in a very short period of time. This tool is called BeanBuilder, and we're going to take a close look at it right now.

NetObjects
Price: $295
Requirements: 100-MHz or faster Pentium-based PC (150 MHz or faster recommended), Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0 or later, 24 MB of RAM (48 MB recommended), 24 MB of hard disk space
Demo Version

NetObjects BeanBuilder is billed by NetObjects as the "the easiest and fastest way for you to enrich your web site with Java(tm) applets featuring multimedia, special effects and live data." Included as part of the tool are various pre-built Java "Beans" which enable the designer to put together applets without having to write a single line of code. We're going to take you on a tour of the product, and let you know if the product lives up to their claims.

If BeanBuilder can do what NetObjects claims, I should be able to create an applet that scrolls some text like a typewriter; the text should come from a text file. While that doesn't sound like a big deal, I must admit that it took me a couple hours to get it to work using the product. Here's what I had to do.

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This article first appeared in October, 1998