Creating a website can often involve the use of several programs: an HTML editor for putting together the site itself, a word processor for producing error-free text and an image editor for ensuring photos and other imagery look as good as possible.

The spellcheckers found in most site-creation tools have all but eliminated the need for a word processor, but image editing is still generally catered for by dedicated software.

In this latest incarnation of WebPlus, Serif has included a fairly advanced photograph editor to erase this extra piece of software from the equation as well. Content may be king, but looks count for a great deal online.

Happily, the templates included with the package are generally well above average. The ability to quickly and easily create Flash-and JavaScript-driven navigation bars and simply integrate online content such as podcasts, YouTube videos and Google maps into your website means that it's not difficult to create something that stands out from the crowd.

All-round package

WebPlus seems to be targeted at everyone. Novices can jump straight in and make use of the impressive selection of templates and supplied content, taking advantage of the simple drag and drop site creation process via the QuickBuilder Bar.

More advanced web designers can code from scratch if they feel so inclined, but the automation of various design processes such as adding a forum or RSS feeds and working with a content management system are likely to be alluring.

Considering Serif's reputation for producing accessible software for the home market, the price tag attached to WebPlus X4 is initially a little surprising. The built-in photo-editing capabilities coupled with the program's impressive features do go some way to justifying the price, but it still seems a little steep.

However, anyone running a small business can take advantage of WebPlus' support for Google AdSense for revenue generation, so it's possible that the program will pay for itself – and if not, it's a nice bonus.

Espresso is for web designers who favour hand-coding. You define projects, set publish settings, and select files from the sidebar to open and edit in the work area. Items can then be dragged to any window's workspace.

Espresso's responsive text editor shines. It lacks the shortcuts flexibility of TextMate and BBEdit but nonetheless enables rapid coding: formatting and selection tag-wrapping options are solid; code folding and the navigator enable-code sections can be collapsed and selected; and page-specific and project-wide text-find tools work nicely.

Elsewhere, Espresso is less consistent. The interface is sleek, but sometimes feels a little confusing. Previewing is hit and miss: CSSEdit-style CSS overrides are included (to see how local CSS edits affect a live site) and, unlike Coda, previews can live in separate windows; but local servers aren't supported, restricting web page previews to flat HTML sites.

Publishing is better, and offers a Quick Publish switch, to save and upload changes simultaneously. Overall, Espresso is a good app, but its workflow and interface is inferior to Coda's, and TextMate and BBEdit are better text editors.

Consequently, Espresso currently feels a little overpriced and feature-light. With local server support and some interface refinement, it would appeal more to pros.

As it stands, we suggest sticking with MacRabbit's other app, CSSEdit, for CSS work, and TextMate, BBEdit or Coda for everything else.

The boast Bare Bones makes about its text editing software is that it doesn't suck. For the most part, we agree. BBEdit is like a friend that's seen us through thick and thin, assisting with various text-based activities over the years, including coding, web design, text editing and advanced find and replace.

Version 9 wasn't a radical departure, continuing the slow evolution that BBEdit's seen in recent years. Having worked with the updated features for a number of months, some have risen in our estimation.

Updated sidebar

Projects, which enables you to dump folders in BBEdit's sidebar and open items within via a single click, is handy; along with BBEdit's drawer, they speed up web design and programming tasks, and ensure dozens of windows don't litter the screen. However, the industry-leading (and now modal – treating dialogs as standard windows) find-and-replace remains the star of the show.

The latest update, 9.1, smoothes out some wrinkles, speeding up BBEdit's autocomplete (which, sadly, does suck for CSS), throws in the decent anti-aliased code-editing font Consolas Regular, and improves the application's FTP capabilities somewhat. FTP within BBEdit is now tolerable, if not entirely intuitive, but we feel a combination of Transmit and BBEdit works better.

However, the one thing BBEdit desperately needs hasn't yet appeared, and that's an interface overhaul. When an application needs a search within its preferences, something's wrong. And although we like BBEdit's Projects, the interface – especially when FTP browsers are added to the mix – pales in comparison with the likes of the super-efficient, streamlined Coda.

So, BBEdit doesn't suck (it's still great for programmers and HTML) but its interface often comes dangerously close to doing so.

At the top of the current heap of free web design software we find Aptana Studio 1.2.1.

Created by a company with commercial interests, it combines the slickness of an off-the-shelf tool with the benefits of open source.

The open-source community serves coders better than designers, with free tools that can handle HTML, CSS and JavaScript readily available.

Aimed at Web 2.0 coders, Aptana handles web scripting easily, with features for advanced application development such as Ruby on Rails, Adobe AIR and iPhone support through free plug-ins.

Based on the open-source Eclipse IDE, Aptana comes in both commercial and 'community' versions. It's the latter that we recommend.

Eclipse is well-known in the open source community as a tool to be trusted. Adobe uses it as the foundation of Flex Builder – the tool used to develop server side Flash applications.

With plug-in support for every scripting language you'll ever need, Aptana Studio is the clear choice for coders. If it had a visual HTML design window, we'd give it 6 out of 5.

Things sometimes come full circle. When we first started creating websites, the early WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tools were flickering into life – PageMill, FrontPage, and so on.

Unfortunately, they were rubbish, and so for years you either had to hand-code or plump for shockingly expensive software such as Dreamweaver. Now, a plethora of Mac-based WYSIWYG tools exists, from Apple's own iWeb and professionally oriented Softpress Freeway, to our favourite RapidWeaver.

Award recognition

Karelia Software's lesser-known Sandvox gained a runner-up position in 2007's Apple Design Awards ceremony, and the company boasts that it's a tool for "people who want to spend time developing their lives, not their websites". In practice, this means it's another drag-and-drop effort, based around a selection of built-in templates and widgets.

The templates run the usual gamut from idiosyncratic through to dull, with a reasonable selection being suitable for a wide range of websites.

Usefully, graphical banners for many of the designs can be switched using Sandvox's Inspector, although said banners cannot be repositioned, and the portion of your image that's used appears somewhat random.

Software restrictions

The layouts are heavily locked down – you can't drag-and-drop page components around the place. Instead, you get headings and spacing where Sandbox deems appropriate. (It is possible to create new themes from scratch, although if you're into designing sites from the ground up this probably isn't the tool for you.)

Although these limitations appear restrictive, Sandvox is fine for a quick personal homepage, and the application certainly excels when it comes to speed. Photo albums and blogs are simple to deal with, and we were happy to find that text files (such as RTF or DOC) could be dumped on to Sandvox to get a head-start in adding content.

Along with pre-configured pages, Sandvox offers another innovation: Pagelets. These are essentially widgets, designed to live in each page's sidebar. Most Pagelets are geared towards the social web (Digg links, RSS, and so on), although text, images and a contact form are also available. Again, using Pagelets is simple, and they're good for rapidly adding common page components.

Publishing pages

Publishing is also pretty straightforward. A well-designed sheet drops when Setup Host is clicked, and once you're done adding details, the Publish button uploads everything to your web space (via FTP or
WebDAV).

The sites themselves seem reasonably fast, and although the code isn't as tight as a professional designer might craft, it makes a decent stab at accessibility and web standards. That said, we did notice that with some of Sandvox's templates, odd gaps appear here and there on some pages and when using certain elements.

Overall, we were fairly impressed with Sandvox. It's a decent solution for home users (rather than professionals) and beats iWeb in several regards. However, while the standard version is nicely affordable, Sandvox Pro costs about the same as the superior RapidWeaver, and the only real extra is the ability to hack in custom code.

For users requiring an extra level of control, Realmac's application is a better bet. Note that our rating is for the standard version – we'd lop off a half-star for the more expensve Sandvox Pro.

A year back, we were critical of Coda, a single-window application for web developers.

We deemed it lacking for professionals, due to its mediocre editing toolset and sluggish performance. Clearly someone was listening, because the changes to Coda1.5 turn the application into an entirely different beast.

Long-time fans will be relieved to hear that the intuitive interface remains largely unchanged. Coda still integrates a site manager, an FTP client, a code editor, menu-based CSS tools, a website preview and Terminal, and the main pane can be split horizontally or vertically.

Speedier software

What has changed is that the app feels significantly faster than version 1.0, while using the Edit pane is a much improved experience.

It's still not perfect – key-bindings to HTML elements remain absent, as does code-folding – but the enhanced Clips window now enables clips to be grouped into categories, and tab triggers in tandem with Coda's already impressive auto-complete ensure that rapid hand-coding is straightforward. We're also happy to see mixed-syntax modes implemented, ensuring accurate code colouring when one language is nested in another.

Elsewhere, changes vary from the major (source control via Subversion, and multi-file Search and Replace) to the minor (tab status icons that detail whether a file is local or remote), and they all add up to make Coda the app it should have been when first released.

It won't quite replace all your existing tools, but Coda will provide a streamlined and efficient environment for the bulk of your work.

Although it long ago ditched its original aim of being a bare-bones text editor, BBEdit – which has been around in some form or other for 17 years – is still championed as an ideal product for Mac users seeking speed and efficiency when writing, programming or hacking together websites.

Version 9 enjoys a raft of refinements and a handful of new features. One of these is so major (and, frankly, so long overdue) that it immediately comes to the fore: non-modal windows for searching.

If you're scratching your head, you've clearly not used BBEdit, but believe us, this feature made us whoop with delight.

Essential upgrade

Essentially, it makes the search window dialogs independent, like standard floating windows, meaning you can work searches and edit your document at once, or perform multiple searches simultaneously without being locked out of your document. Coupled with BBEdit's already excellent search capabilities, this new feature alone makes the upgrade essential for existing users.

Elsewhere, workflow has also been smoothed and the ability to edit in browser and results windows is welcome. Sadly, we were less impressed with the text-completion, which seems awkward and less accurate than similar features in BBEdit's contemporaries. However, the fact that it offers words rather than just code might tempt writers, and BBEdit's new document stats, providing live word, character and line counts, certainly will.

Whether web designers will stick with BBEdit remains to be seen. For this task, we'd likely recommend TextMate or Coda, against either of which BBEdit feels like it's playing catch-up. But for programmers and longtime users, this upgrade amounts to a no-brainer, especially at the low price.

Web design is a bit of a black art.

Anyone armed with a 'Dummies' book can knock together a page of HTML that will display in everything from NCSA Mosaic to Safari 3.1, but creating something richer – with navigation, images, dynamically updating sidebars and more – that conforms to XHTML and CSS standards is a much bigger challenge.

Web design made easy

Sure, Apple has iWeb, but it lacks flexibility and doesn't encourage you to learn more about web design. And that's something that RapidWeaver has always done well.

It's easy to create a site, add a bunch of pages and write or import some content and publish it to .Mac (or MobileMe), a folder on your Mac, or to some FTP space; RapidWeaver will take care of creating the navigation, setting encoding so that exotic characters don't render as gobbledegook and more.

But better than that, it lets you grow. As you learn, RapidWeaver lets you use that knowledge to create more interesting and rich websites.

RapidWeaver's strengths

The first step in creating a site when you launch RapidWeaver is to add some pages.

There is a wide range of page types available – everything from word processor-like Style Text pages to photo galleries, movie showreels and regularly updated blog pages – and a thriving ecosystem of third-party developers is dedicated to creating plug-ins that allow you to add even more different page types; Blocks from www.yourhead.com gives you iWeb-like flexibility in placing content anywhere you like on a page, and Lockdown from www.loghound.com lets you create pages that are password-protected.

Once you've got your pages – you can nest them infinitely deep by dragging and dropping them on top of each other; RapidWeaver will create all the links and navigation for you automatically – you just need to enter some content.

In the edit mode you can just type some stuff into text pages, and there's tight integration with iLife and core Mac technologies so that you can pop up an 'iMedia Browser' to find and copy content from iMovie, Safari, iTunes and iPhoto; indeed, creating online galleries from iPhoto albums is as simple as selecting the album you want to share and entering some captions.

Vast array of styles

RapidWeaver comes with over 40 visual styles – called themes – that you can add to your site.

The list in effectively infinite; RapidWeaver gives you a clever system for altering all sorts of colours used in the theme, and many have other configurable options such as setting the theme width and sidebar position.

Best of all, though, is that all these themes are just defined by standard CSS files, so you can tinker with the supplied themes – gaining transferrable skills as you do – or even create your own completely from scratch using Realmac Software's Theme SDK.

When you're all done, just click Publish and it will send everything up to your iDisk or onto a proper, grown-up FTP server.

(For our money, uploading via FTP is simpler than Apple's approach with iWeb, as although Apple's way lets you point your own domain name at your iDisk Sites folder – saving the cost of a hosting provider – FTP is more widely used and gives you the option of choosing a provider that supports PHP.)

New additions

So what's new in version 4? The actual process of publishing, for one thing.

Rather than presenting you with a redundant screen confirming your FTP or .Mac publishing details, publishing is one-click; you're prompted to save changes then the new content is uploaded.

During publishing, you'll also see one of RapidWeaver 4's other new features: an updated interface. The new version requires Mac OS X 10.5, and the whole app has been given a facelift to fit in with Leopard's new skin.

It also takes advantage of 10.5's Core Animation technologies to animate the process of publishing and indeed of opening and saving a file.

Sluggish software

The process of opening and saving website projects has changed a little, too, now that RapidWeaver has adopted an XML-based file format.

Even quite complex sites saved in the old format converted without any glitches in our testing, and while projects open and close a little more sluggishly than we had been used to in version 3.6, the new format should open up some more opportunities for third-party developers to innovate.

New themes

Four new themes are bundled with the app, including a very smart and flexibile one called Caribou (see 'The top three' box, to the right), and since the included themes now add up to more than 40, the new theme-management system is very welcome.

This allows themes to be filed in sub-folders, and also supports keywords to help you track down the theme you want. More themes are available from third parties, too.

There's also support for Analytics, a rich, free service from Google that tracks information about visitors to your site; it was always possible to add Analytics manually or by jimmying the code into, say, your pages' sidebar, but having a dedicated place to put it in your site setup window is neater and future-proof.

The site setup also adds a WebClip icon dropzone alongside the site icon and favicon options, so iPhone and iPod touch owners who bookmark your site get a slick icon.

Clearer manual

One of the biggest changes is the overdue overhaul of the RapidWeaver manual.

It's well laid out, clear, approachable, and echoes the RapidWeaver credo of helping you understand the underlying web technologies.

It's PDF only, but you can buy a printed copy for £11 through the self-publishing site Lulu. There's an active support forum, too.

New innovations needed

RapidWeaver 4.0 is a free upgrade for 3.6 users, and while the new interface, format and themes are welcome, we're beginning to wonder when we'll see some radical changes.

It remains our pick for a great beginner-to-intermediate web design app, but version 4, as far as the end user is concerned, is very much an evolution of an app that hasn't changed much over the last couple of years.

We'd love to see some of the real innovation the developers showed when RapidWeaver first appeared; the features offered by some competitors – such as Karelia Sandvox's Pagelets – show what the app could do.

Let's hope that the new XML-based format has laid the groundwork for something special in 4.5.

One of the biggest traumas of producing any Web site is the constant back and forth to image editors, browsers and FTP sites every time you decide on an alteration.

What makes WebPlus a joy to use is its convenience: all that stuff can be done in one window.

Edit your website with ease

Got to resize a picture? Grab its corner handles and drag. Want to swap it out? Double-click the image. Fonts, colours, background properties, transparency... all are handled with ease.

Even if you do decide that you need to employ an external application you'll be going equipped with the knowledge needed to make it a quick visit. WebPlus X2 will make a lot of people very happy.

A major strength of WebPlus is that it's entirely possible to create a smart Web site including data-driven features, Flash animations, RSS feeds and all that good stuff without writing a single line of code.

Don't worry about code

Yet while it's code-free, WebPlus feels professional enough that you don't get the impression its developers think you're stupid. If you do want to write a bit of your own HTML it's easy to do and simple to integrate.

However, WebPlus's goal is to free you from caring too much about code. The developer has decided that if you want to hand-code your SQL queries and XML handlers, you're not in the market for a copy of WebPlus.

This has freed them up to produce a brilliant piece of software for everyone bar those with a genuine need to work from the ground up.

Superior usability

There are a number of WYSIWYG Web design packages available.

There are even a couple of free ones - including WebPlus SE - but what makes WebPlus X2 worthy of consideration is its usability.

Pulling together all that functionality, hiding the code generation and still making it a snappy experience is not an easy task. Sure, the code might win not an beauty contests, but it works fine.

Smart Objects tool

Meanwhile, the Smart Objects solution to more complicated features is clever, if not entirely satisfactory for those who like to keep everything "in house". Smart Objects, you say? For Web functionality like password protection, e-commerce and analytics, server-side scripting is required.

This kind of thing is pretty much impossible to provide via drag-and-drop unless you're actually running the services elsewhere and the drag-and-drop just links to them. This is the route that Serif has chosen for WebPlus.

This choice neatly avoids exposing the innards of the process to designers and enables Serif to update the modules without causing sites built with WebPlus to need any re-working. So you have the lion's share of smart functionality while maintaining a simple design paradigm.

Useful templates

While we're on the subject of paradigms, WebPlus X2 comes with a well-thought-out selection of site templates.

Everything from blogs to shops and galleries, all with variations and options to choose from. These, while not really usable as is, provide an excellent base from which to build.

There's also a resource CD that contains some useful items - a good library of stock images, some textures, image borders and so on. Not the kind of stuff that'll shake Web 2.0 to its foundations, but if nothing else will provide you with some food for thought as you customise templates or build your own sites.

TeamViewer is a tool for viewing and controlling remote desktops.

You need to install it on two different computers, either Mac or PC, then enter an ID and password to open two ends of a secure tunnel.

At the moment TeamViewer for Mac is still in beta but it worked well for us. The other operator can choose to give you just a view of their desktop, or full control over it.

If the other person is inside the same LAN as you but in a different part of the building, you can connect using their IP address as well as their TeamViewer ID.

Easy interaction

Control is enabled through a single window. It's a responsive interaction that works as advertised.

We connected to Macs inside our LAN and outside our LAN using TeamViewer's ID system and made it through firewalls without a hiccup. You get pull-down menus with options of what to do with the connection, including viewing the whole desktop or just the one window.

Our only problem was trying to share files through TeamViewer, which is an advertised feature for Macs that we couldn't locate in the menu system or user guide.

We put that down to the beta status of the release. In the meantime we just emailed our files across.

Free and easy

Other apps are out there that do the same task but with less features or different delivery methods.

LogMeIn is a free, web-based access service that recently won a MacFormat Choice award. iChat can control a remote Mac, as can Apple's paid-for Back to My Mac service for .Mac subscribers.

Against these, TeamViewer does very well for itself because it's free and cross-platform, and will probably be the leading tool for remote access when released.

We stress this in only in beta, but it worked fine for us and is easy to recommend.