AOLpress is a discontinued

HTML editor An HTML editor is a program for editing HTML, the markup of a web page. Although the HTML markup in a web page can be controlled with any text editor, specialized HTML editors can offer convenience and added functionality. For example, many HT ...

that was available from America Online (

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017� ...

). It was originally developed as NaviPress by the company

NaviSoft NaviSoft was a web server, web publishing and web hosting company based in the United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in Nor ...

before being bought by AOL. It was discontinued in 2000. However, the last version (2.0) may still be found on some Web sites for downloading. AOLpress was rather strict about enforcing legal HTML: when saving edited pages that were created outside AOLpress, code that did not conform to the HTML 3.2 standard and specifications may have been changed to do so. Today, the HTML code used is very outdated and may not work correctly in modern browsers. It does not support PNG images, and this limits its support on many sites where the newer PNG format has been adopted.

History

In February 1994, NaviSoft Inc. released NaviPress, which was a

Web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

with an integrated

. NaviPress was very similar to the first Web browser,

WorldWideWeb WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion between the software and the World Wide Web) is the first web browser and web page editor. It was discontinued in 1994. It was the first WYSIWYG HTML editor. The source code was released in ...

, created by

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...

, for the

classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. According to Berners-Lee, "NaviPress was a true browser and editor, which produced clean HTML." In late 1995, AOL acquired NaviSoft, and the package was renamed "GNNPress", then later "AOLpress", and made available for downloading on AOL's

Global Network Navigator The Global Network Navigator (GNN) was the first commercial web publication and the first web site to offer clickable advertisements. GNN was launched in May 1993, as a project of the technical publishing company O'Reilly Media, then known as O'Re ...

site. AOL then allowed each username to publish up to 2 megs on the web. In ''Weaving the Web'', Berners-Lee attributes the death of AOLpress to the release of Netscape Navigator 2.0 in 1996. AOL's Steve Case reached an agreement with Bill Gates so that AOL users could use a version of the Explorer browser, which did not have HTML editing functionality. This agreement led to the decline of AOLpress. According to Berners-Lee, AOLpress was, at the time, "one of the few commercial browsers that provided simple online editing." In 1998, AOLpress made ''PC Magazine''s "Best Products of the Year" issue. The editors describe it as "the only program that combines WYSIWYG Web page editing, HTML source code editing, Web site management, and Web browsing in a single interface." The article goes on to say that AOLpress "isn't simply an editor that looks like a browser. It ''is'' a browser."

System requirements

AOLpress 2.0 requires 8 megabytes of RAM, with more recommended, a display capable of at least 256 colors, an Intel 80386 CPU, 8 megabytes of free disk space, and either Windows NT or Windows 95 operating system. While the installer is 16-bit and will not work under 64-bit Windows to install the software, AOLpress is capable of launching even under Windows 8, though it generally crashes within a short time after starting. Although the program is not accepted by Windows 7, it will run in compatibility mode in Windows 10.

References

External links

AOLpress website (redirects to the AOL website)
*
AOLPress on the Evolt Browsers Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aolpress 1994 software AOL Discontinued software Discontinued web browsers HTML editors