Web development is a changing industry. Technologies are born, thrive, and then die, while web developers experience a great stress helping their clients get an Internet presence. Nowadays, the buzz word in web development is "dynamic." Not "dynamic" as in DHTML, but as in "using a database."

MX Kollection is designed for HTML designers that want to take a plunge into database-driven development and here four of the product's beta testers report briefly on how they feel about the product.

CSS Skins
California developer and Team Macromedia member Nancy Gill reports that it's not the many functions of MX Kollection that are her favorite as much as the simple addition of skinning the interface by site.

"I can choose Aqua for the tool's look in Site A and go on to define Site B to show the Arktic skin," she writes. "The advantage in that is that I have so many similar folders from site to site that I won't get confused about where I'm working today. It helps me sort my work flow like never before."

"The ability to fine-tune my settings on a site to site basis," Gill continues, "gives me the kind of control that I have never seen before. I can change the date format, the language for the labels and warnings and other parameters, such as mail server and such with extreme ease."

Barbara O'Neal singles out the Query Builder for praise: "I can build complex queries I would have to use Enterprise Manager to build otherwise. And this means I don't have to leave Dreamweaver MX 2004 to do it ... It's all right here." A bonus is the ability to create a query and click on the Create CFC button to store the query in an independent document, making reuse of the same functionality instantaneous, something ColdFusion gurus have come to love in their chosen server model.

Moving along to the many wizards that power the MX Kollection 3, Nancy Gill reckons that while some may have issues with feeling a wizard "dumbs them down", she thinks this approach is great for getting up to speed with the tool. "Click, click in answer to the questions and it's all created for you," Gill says. Making it easy to work with and easier to get the job done faster, she adds.

Building CMS Web sites
Steve Redden, Technical Director of 3-wise Internet Solutions (www.3-wise.com/), reported on MX Kollektion as follows.

"Time and time again, we demo Content Management Systems and web-based applications to potential clients only to see looks of wonder on their faces when MX Kollection 3 allows me conjure up lists that can filter, sort and re-order at the click of a mouse. NeXTensio has been our bread and butter application for the past three years in the construction of lists and create, modify and delete transactions in my developments." Redden's clients are delighted to find positive answers to most of their questions and requirements, he says.

Editing Multiple Records at Once
There are wizards in MX Kollection for everything from insert, update and delete forms, to the neat displaying of data. The wizards allow users to build pages for inserting and editing multiple records at the same time.

Barbara O'Neal says her favorite is the "Insert into Two Tables" wizard since this was an operation in ColdFusion or any other server model that required the functionality to be hand coded in the past. Specify your tables, bind the appropriate fields and it's all created for you like magic," she notes.

Form Validation
As for form validation, "This is the best I've seen… it's so complete," says O'Neal. "There is point and click validation for everything I can imagine." Barbara adds that her business partner is a stickler for details and in looking over her site created with MX Kollection validation, he couldn't find anything wrong with it. "That's nothing short of a miracle" she gushed. "Nothing gets by him, believe me."

Documentation and Support
"I'm not only a Web Designer but I teach new designers and developers so I always look for tools to make their jobs easier," said noted Dreamweaver and Fireworks author and instructor Joyce Evans, adding that what she likes about the MX Kollection 3 is how the wizards "really help the beginner developer get up to speed quickly and produce complex applications in no time at all."

"With the Kollection 3, you can easily use ASP, PHP or ColdFusion, even if you're not a programmer at all," Evans notes. "My clients think I'm a genius, of course it's InterAKT that are the geniuses, but we won't tell!" she jokes. Evans welcomed the tutorials that ship with the MX Kollection 3, calling them an "invaluable addition to any developer's toolbox."

To read more on MX Kollection, CFDJ readers can go to: www.interaktonline.com/

• Figure 1
• Figure 2
• Figure 3