Web Dwarf is an object oriented website authoring tool. It can do some things wonderfully, other things not so well. Whether or not it works depends on what kind of site you need. It does work, and can do some awesome things.

I find that this software is harder to design with, and more difficult for me to produce an orderly layout in. For some people though, it has a more familiar feel and is simpler to use. It does have some limitations, and some of the documentation is incorrect, but you'll be able to make a useful site if you work around the problems.

Web Dwarf will NOT open HTML documents or templates. It will not save HTML documents either, it saves everything in its own format. But when you choose the Publish command, it will output to an HTML file if you choose (or publish it to the web).

This page has a lot of images, so be patient while they load. They should help you understand how to use the software better.

This is the interface for WebDward. The toolbar across the top has common commands, and if you hold the mouse over them, most will tell you what they do. The same is true of the toolbar down the left side. There is a grid on the page, with heavy dotted lines around the edge, and a horizontal and vertical centerline. This is to help you keep things lined up, and to get your page size right - you can turn that off if you want. It defaults to an 800X600 grid size. You can change that if you want to design your page for a larger or smaller size, but we recommend that you leave it alone if you want greatest compatibility on your viewer's monitors.

You can begin building your page by setting the attributes in the Page Editor. Choose Object -> Page Editor.

Put in your page title - I left it as Index because I was building a home page. Click the Background tab, and set the Background color, shading, or pattern, depending on what you want.

From here on out, what you do is up to you as far as the creative process goes. I chose to build a logo at the top of the page. I did this by choosing the Rectangle Tool - the teal colored square box on the left side - and I drew a large rectangle where I wanted the logo to be. Then I put the cursor in the middle of it and doubleclicked - that will bring up the Properties box. You can do several things in that.

Click the Outline box, and you can give it an outline, or eliminate it. Use the sliders to choose a color, and the Thick slider to choose how many pixels wide you want the outline (set to 0 if you don't want an outline).

Click the Shading tab to choose a color. I chose to give it a linear shading. Use the Flip button to change the direction the shading runs. Use the 1 and 2 buttons to choose the colors that it will fade to, and from. For no shading, just a single color, choose Flat. Use the Transparency slider to adjust how much of the background you want to have show through.

If you want the object to have a link, use the Link tab. You can use this with ANY object, whether it is a shape, text, header, etc.

Next I wanted to make a title for the logo. I clicked the Title button, and that popped up the Title Editor. I typed in my title, adjusted the color and alignment, choose a font, and clicked OK.

It didn't show up too well, as you can see, so I changed it to the gradient in the picture after this one. Notice the handles on the text, where you can shrink it or expand it, and the rotate arrows on the corner that allow you to angle or rotate the text.

I also made the text smaller and slid it over so I'd have room for an image. I found an image I liked, adjusted the color a bit and scaled it in my art editing program, and then used the Insert Image command (the Mona Lisa button on the left side) to insert it into the document. Then I moved it where I wanted it.

You can use the arrow keys to move a selected item one pixel at a time to adjust it more carefully than you can do with the mouse.

Again, you can see the rotate handles on the corners. The flexibility to rotate items means you can be quite creative in your layout.

On the top bar, there is a Grid tool, which allows you to turn a fine grid on and off. The button to the left of it turns off the larger grid that you started out with. I did not use a grid, but they can help you in getting things positioned more accurately.

Next I wanted to put in some text links. To do this, I had to first create the text. I clicked the Text tool on the left side, and the Text Editor popped up. Then I typed in what I wanted, selected it, and chose a color as show.

After that, I selected one of the words to make a link.Then I selected the Link Editor from the menu.

In the link editor box, I selected the link type (http for a page), and typed the address in where the word Advertise is highlighted.

It ended up looking like this. When you finish with this box, you have to click the Save and Close button at the bottom.

Well, the problem is that when I made the text into links, the link color changed. And I did not want them that color. And one of Web Dwarf's limitations became apparent. There is no way to set the link color! And because WD does not work with HTML like other editors do, you cannot even edit the code while in the design process to fix the problem. The instructions DO say that you can do this in the Page Editor box, but the tab they refer to does not exist, so it is not possible to do it! I did find a workaround though.

I removed the links, and decided to approach the navigation in a different way. I made a rectangle, and shaded it as shown in the example below. Then I copied it and pasted the copy back into the document.

I made that rectangle shorter, and then copied and pasted the shorter one a bunch of times down the side to create a navigation bar.

I then created a single text item that said Home. Then I linked it OUTSIDE the text editor box. In other words, I closed the text editor box, and used the Object Link command to put the link in instead. This time my colors were retained. This meant that instead of creating a single text box with all of my links in it, I had to create individual text boxes. I did this by copying and pasting the Home box over and over. Then I changed the word in each one, and then changed the link - because I did the Home link first, all I had to do in each link was add the specific page name to the URL.

Now I had a full navigation layout that was easily modifiable. I also created another text box in the center, and put my page description in it. I adjusted the size to make it the right size for where I wanted it.

I created a box on the side also, to represent the Google Ads that I'll put on the page. To actually put those on, I'll use the Code button, which creates another text type box, and paste the code into that. I'll make the size of the code box about the same size as the Googles will be when they are inserted into the page.

I also added my standard designed by, copyright and Webmaster Contact info at the bottom of the page. Except for maybe a graphic or two, or additional explanations, this page is done, and ready to publish.

Once published, the page looks like this:

Notice that the text is smoother on the links, and that link underlines have been added. There will always be a bit of difference between the Editor appearance and the Browser appearance in any page, no matter what program you use.

I found this program to be more cumbersome to use than my ordinary software - I spend more time telling the program how to do it, and less time actually DOING the task. But I liked the way that I could use objects in layers, rotated, and with certain effects.

I feel this software is functional in producing a workable page, and perhaps a usable site.