About Adobe Muse
Adobe Muse is a preview release of a product to make it easy to design and deploy websites without any HTML. It generates HTML5 and CSS3 compatible websites that you design using tools similar to other Adobe products you are already familiar with. It includes a lot of pre-built features that you can simply install right in your pages and then modify to act as you like. For example, you use the sitemap tool to plan your website, and then by dragging a navigation menu onto your page, the pages in your sitemap will be automatically added to your menu. I created a dynamic HTML drop-down menu in Muse in about 3 minutes. And most of that time was spent trying to figure out what colors I wanted to use. Muse also has features that are useful for freelance web designers. You can build a site for a client in Muse, and then upload it to Adobe's web hosting service and tell Adobe to bill your clients directly for the hosting. You can also publish your pages to Adobe in test mode, and send your clients a URL to view it live (but not public). But it doesn't meet all my criteria for a perfect web editor. You can't edit the code (although you can include blocks of HTML) and without FTP (except to Adobe hosting) it is more difficult to use if you're going to host your pages on another hosting provider. Plus, it requires a monthly subscription of $20 (or $15 if you pay annually).
Note that Adobe Muse is only free until version 1 comes out in 2012.
Other Web Editors Like Muse
These web editors, like Muse, offer hosting along with the web editor. Most of these products are online editors, Muse is a downloadable product. And they all require a subscription fee. But all editors like this can be useful, especially if you don't want to learn HTML and CSS to build web pages.
Target Market(s): Small Business Owners
Review last updated: October 3, 2011.
Adobe Muse Latest Review
Adobe Muse Version: Preview
Score: 79
Percent: 24%
This score was generated using the methodology listed in the article: Finding the Perfect Web Editor.
See all Web Editor Reviews or write a review of your editor.
Adobe Muse Technical Details
Operating System(s): Windows Macintosh
Adobe Muse Features
- WYSIWYG editor
- Page preview
- Save pages as HTML with DTD
- Write HTML 5 documents
- FTP or Site manager
- Edit multiple files/tabbed file editing
- Edit images
- Connects to graphics software
- Save Adobe AIR files
- Free scripts
- No limits on free or trial version
- Includes FTP to the Adobe hosting service only—if you want to post it elsewhere, you must export as HTML and upload the files yourself
What's Missing from Adobe Muse
- Text editor
- HTML validator
- Accessibility validator
- CSS validator
- XML validator
- Alternate browser or OS preview
- Wireless device preview
- Wireless scripts, functions, or links
- Wireless scripts, functions, or links
- Create mobile web applications
- Package mobile apps for delivery on app stores
- Write XHTML documents
- Color coding
- Tag completion
- FTPs or Secure FTP
- Search and replace
- Extended search and replace (across multiple documents)
- Multimedia functions
- Assistance with adding videos to websites
- Ability to add video and audio using HTML5 with fallback options
- Save files as PDF
- Link checker
- Special character tools
- Can edit JavaScript
- Helps with Ajax JSON, or jQuery pages
- Can edit CSS
- Additional CSS assistance
- CSS 3 properties and selectors
- CSS3 media queries tools built-in
- Can edit PHP, ASP, or JSP
- Dynamic page rendering and editing with server-side programming languages (PHP, JSP, ASP, CFM, etc.)
- Database connectivity
- Edit XML and/or RSS
- Google sitemaps
- Spell checking
- Save snippets of code
- Writes to blogs
- Free templates
- Form wizard
- Photo gallery builder
- Ecommerce tools
- SEO assistance built-in
- Captcha support or other methods of protecting forms
- Version control
- Support for teams editing the site (beyond version control)
- Customizable or extendable
Get Adobe Muse
Full price: Free Upgrade price: no
