How do people rate Actinic?

[ogun]

On the plus side, I can see advantages, such as the link into Sage and a quick and easy setup for basic e-commerce sites but as a developer I have some massive gripes:

The one big negative is when you want to customize outside of just basic template themes.

1) Double sting - client bought Actinic/Line 50 link off a cold call. As developers are we now supposed to buy the developer edition in additon to what the client has bought so we can develop the site for them? The template themes provided with the tool look terrible.

2) If you want to heavily customize individual pages then it's awful. i.e. I want to position defined text fragments where I want them to appear on a page. erm.. sorry, you can't reference them individually.

3) Variable definition, use and naming are inconsistent across all of the design templates.

Generally, finding the whole environment very very restricting. Client asks for something to appear somewhere - sorry boss, can't be done.

[garyhay]

1) Double sting - client bought Actinic/Line 50 link off a cold call. As developers are we now supposed to buy the developer edition in additon to what the client has bought so we can develop the site for them?

No you can use the version the client has bought and develop a site for them in the same way you would using Developer software. If the client is already using the software then that may have license issues.

The template themes provided with the tool look terrible

You get a lot in the box for your money, would you expect to buy a full blown e-commerce application and a have a stunning website design for less than £800

2) If you want to heavily customize individual pages then it's awful. i.e. I want to position defined text fragments where I want them to appear on a page. erm.. sorry, you can't reference them individually.

You need to use CUSTOMVARS for this sort of thing and you also need to know what Actinic's strenghs and weaknesses are and which bits to customise and how.

3) Variable definition, use and naming are inconsistent across all of the design templates.

This is more than likely to support previous versions and because of how Actinic works building the pages you can use different variables in different places.

Client asks for something to appear somewhere - sorry boss, can't be done.

Maybe that should be "I am not very experienced with Actinic and I am not sure how to do that" knowing your own strenghs and weaknesses can help.

[Hobbins Models]

my halfpenny's worth

I bought ACTINIC Catalogue v7 after months of searching and asking questions.
From my research I thought it was aimed at people with little or NO experience of building e-commerce sites. (how wrong can you be)

My site is now up and running, although in a very basic format, and NOT how i would have liked it to be.

I was and still am on a reasonably small Budget having only recently purchased an existing High Street Business, Actinic Fills a gap in a daunting market if you want a quick and simple e-commerce solution.

Purchase price of actinic catalogue is relatively cheap compared to custom built sites. Although becomes expensive when advised to buy Catalogue and later down the line realise you need Business!.

Against - Actinic is not easy for the general shopkeeper.
Layouts are difficult to alter unless you have programing
knowledge.
Upgrades more expensive than buying full version of program!
i.e - buying Catalogue then upgrading to Business at a later date
stock control difficult if you have a high street shop and web
shop, live linking from till to actinic database would be nice

For - This Forum - do as I did (Curse a lot), Find a solution or
just ask a question on here.
Easy to set up a basic web site for e-commerce
Brings in an income you wouldnt normally have, although
slowly at first.


So overall i find Actinic a good program to use, Every program has Pros and cons.
A few improvements could be made to make it easier for us novices, and thus taking away some of the power of the Developer (although they do have there place)