The Active Network
ActiveWin: Reviews Active Network | New Reviews | Old Reviews | Interviews |Mailing List | Forums 
 

Amazon.com

  *  

Product: Visio 2000 Professional
Company: Microsoft
Website: http://www.microsoft.com
Estimated Street Price: $399.00
Buy Visio 2000 Professional Now!
Review By: Julien JAY

Web Diagramming

Table Of Contents
1: Introduction
2: Features
3: Diagrams
4: Misc features
5: Conclusion

Microsoft has thought about WebMasters as Visio 2000 offers the possibility to index and cartography existing websites in a very detailed way. It can also integers Java, ASP (Active Server Pages) and HTML tags. That’s not all! The professional release can identify broken links in order to help webmasters to identify and solve these nasty problems. When drawing a Website map users can take advantage of the telescopic connectors that ease the customization of websites maps as well as the websites principle schemas. We tested the website map feature of Microsoft Visio 2000 and in 45 minutes a complete and accurate, very long (when I say very long I mean it! You can’t print the map on A4 papers you should at least use A3 to see something!) map of ActiveWin.com appeared on the screen! This feature is really easy and appreciable to use (as it works for you) and brings a real plus to WebMasters that need to have a map of their site. Notice that it also works for Intranet site.

Web Site Map Diagram Sample (click to enlarge)

Conceptual Site Design Diagram (click to enlarge)

Diagrams Exchanging 

New to Microsoft Visio 2000 is the VML (Vector Markup Language) support: this new technology allows users to share diagrams through the Internet easily. Drawing can be exported in an enhanced VML format that allows to zoom in/out, create panoramics, and dynamically navigate through multipage drawings in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later like IE 5.5. It’s an appreciable feature as this technology avoid using JPEG or GIF pictures as it hard codes the data of the diagram picture directly into the HTML source code: so the download time is really more faster! We tested this feature with several different diagrams and we encountered no problem at all except under Netscape Navigator. Time to retrieve VML graphic was 10% more faster than if it was GIF or JPEG ones. Obviously you can also export diagrams to a dozens of file formats like PowerPoint slideshows, HTML (where diagram is saved as a PNG file by example), Adobe Illustrator, CGM, GIF files and more.

 

<-- Diagrams Conclusion -->

 

  *  
  *   *