HotDog, available from Sausage Software (http://www.sausage.com), is a good start-out HTML authoring programme, for the following reasons:

• Some of the features of HotDog Standard make life genuinely easier. It auto-inserts the standard HTML formatting - Title, Body, etc., without you having to insert it or even chose an option as is the case with other software. Why else would most people be using HTML authoring software but to author HTML documents? We can't afford Teachtext or Write for Windows? I don't think so.

• For those starting HTML authoring, don't waste your time with software that converts from a word processed document to HTML. At some point you will need to understand what you are doing if you want to have the finished pages look like you want them to and look good. There aren't that many codes to learn and this software has made it easy, so get a good reference book from a computer shop and you'll enjoy tinkering and flipping from weird text codes to an instant browser rendition of your work.

• There is a version called HotDog Pro which adds many features, including:

1. Unlimited file size - HotDog Standard can't handle files larger than 32k
2. Customizable toolbars - assign your own icons and functions
3. Customizable shortcut keys - assign any command to any key combination
4. Customizable tags - create your own beginning and end tags, or modify the existing ones
5. Spelling checker - with several different language modules available
6. Templates - create new documents from an unlimited number of custom templates
7. Embedded Fields - set fields that are updated when you create, save, or publish documents. These fields can prompt the user for information, read it from a file, or automatically calculate internal functions like date and time, the HotDog version, the user name, and so on.
8. Multi-level Undo
9. Note that HotDog Pro was just coming out of the development stage when I wrote this. There will be many more features supported, probably including WYSIWYG editing, image manipulation, and HTML extensions like VRML and Hot Java. For an up-to-date summary of what HotDog Pro can do, please see their web site.

• Most importantly, for around US$30 or maybe less, HotDog Standard is very inexpensive. Good work Sausage people!