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• 170+ professional templates for flyers, brochures, newsletters, adverts, reports, calendars, posters, booklets, and more. • Hundreds of delicate clipart. You can also search the web for images inside the app. And if you need a Publisher for Mac solution, Lucidpress works on both Mac and PC. And since everyone can sign up for free, they can all get in on the collaboration process at no financial cost. And since everyone can sign up for free, they can all get in on the collaboration process at no financial cost. For me, the best fit was a Mac rather than a Windows machine. The Mac would run Windows, and since I need to run applications on both, I couldn't just run out and buy or build any old Windows machine. 30 free macOS apps every Mac user should have. And its free Mac app is the best way to keep in touch with your team. Bringing everything you love about the web interface to your Dock, the Slack.
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Softpress Systems Freeway Express 6
Read Macworld's reviewRiver SRL Sparkle
Read Macworld's reviewKarelia Software Sandvox 2
Read Macworld's reviewRealmac Software RapidWeaver 6
Read Macworld's reviewMacaw 1.5
Read Macworld's reviewRage Software EverWeb 1.8.2
Read Macworld's reviewCazoobi Blocs 1.3
Read Macworld's review
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A crowded slate of Mac apps aim to make building a full-featured, modern website drag-and-drop simple. Many even support one of the most crucial new web trends: responsive design, which can automatically switch up your layout to look good on a widescreen monitor, a tiny smartphone, or anything in between.
While no single program currently offers all the power, flexibility, and simplicity I’d hoped for, I did find two particularly strong contenders that at least came within shouting distance of that ideal.
Top choice for complete beginners: Blocs
If you have no idea how to start building a site, start with Blocs (). At $70, it’s $10 cheaper than most of the other programs in this roundup. And thanks to its extensive library of well-crafted chunks of code, it makes assembling an impressively slick site almost as simple as snapping together a pile of Lego blocks.
Even before you begin, Blocs has done the hard work for you, building snippets of sample code that you can mix, match, customize, and stack. Just pick a clearly color-coded section of your design—header, body, or footer—and choose a chunk of layout to add, whether it’s a fancy screen-filling photo, a few columns of text, or a swath of smaller icons or images. Once it’s in place, you can tweak the template to suit your needs. At every turn, Blocs tries to sweat the small stuff so you don’t have to, including a navigation menu that’ll automatically update as you add new pages to your site.
Spartan but clear thumbnails help you choose which chunk to add next, and accurately represent what you’re getting. While you’re limited largely to that ready-made collection, Blocs offers a wide enough selection of appealing elements to build an appealing site. And since all the code’s prebuilt, every site you make in Blocs has responsive design support baked in, without any extra effort on your part. The sample site I built looked great on big and small computer screens, good on my iPad, and decent enough on my iPhone 5S.
Blocs’ balance between a sparse selection and effective results also applies to its feature set, including a limited but appealing roster of fonts, and its extremely basic control over text styling and padding. That deliberate simplicity helps keep new users from getting overwhelmed, and further flattens out the already gentle learning curve.
Blocs’ stark, dark design departs from Mac conventions, and some aspects take a little time to learn. Instead of bringing up contextual menus, right-clicking brings up a palette of individual page elements you can add to the existing code. Placing objects on the page can occasionally feel a tad squirrely, though it’s easy to undo mistakes or move a misplaced item.
Blocs is a work in progress, and its creator’s laid out an ambitious, intriguing slate of potential upgrades. For now, Blocs sets modest goals, but carries them out impressively well.
Top choice for everyone else: EverWeb
Best free pdf program for mac. If you know just enough HTML and CSS to get yourself in trouble, trust EverWeb () to keep you out of it. It’s more flexible and freeform than Blocs’ do-it-for-me simplicity, and it’s full of thoughtful tricks to help users get around the program’s own limitations.
When creating a site, you can choose from an extensive slate of great-looking, up-to-date templates, or start from scratch. Like Pages, EverWeb lets you draw text and image boxes or other shapes directly onto your page, then position and style them as you wish. I liked the program’s clean design and well-crafted interface. It lacks a grid or guides to keep your page tidy, but EverWeb will automatically or manually align elements by their edges or centers. The layout engine sometimes had trouble accurately aligning full-width elements, but otherwise proved fun and responsive.
EverWeb offers more options for CSS styling than Blocs; it won’t give you precise control of every element, but it provides enough choices to make a nice-looking site. Top-notch prebuilt widgets, including image sliders, image galleries, navigation menus, and more, are easy to edit and customize, and they yield great results. I was particularly impressed with the PayPal widget, which lets you build a full-featured online store with minimal time and effort—an ability most rivals either don’t offer or charge extra for.
Rather than supporting responsive design, EverWeb provides mobile versions of many templates, and builds in an easy way to redirect mobile users to those pages from their desktop counterparts. That solution gobbles extra server space and bandwidth, but can also be less hassle than trying to reconfigure the same design to fit different-sized screens. Other clever workarounds let you expand EverWeb’s font roster with your own picks, a feature found in too few of its competitors.
The code EverWeb produced was somewhat messy in the version I tested, though by the time you read this, an update promising sleeker results may be available. Still, I enjoyed EverWeb’s terrific balance between friendly design and a robust feature set.
Top contenders
Macaw
Macaw () talks a big game but doesn’t entirely deliver. Aimed at high-end pros, it offers more power and flexibility than any other program here. However, it’s also the most intimidating and frustrating app of the bunch, in part because it feels only half-finished.
Macaw excels at its finer points. You can tweak nearly every CSS style attribute via well-designed palettes, and build custom style classes to apply to any element on your page. Smart scripting support lets you drag in existing variables and color swatches as you write your code. And only Macaw offers pixel-precise control over responsive design, letting you set breakpoints at multiple screen widths, then rearrange your design to best fit each one.
But while it gets the little things right, Macaw seems to struggle with the big ones. I found layout exasperating, as if the program were always fighting me. The help files are sometimes confusing and often incomplete—bad news for a program as dense as this one. You can only add to its limited list of fonts by paying for a subscription to Adobe Typekit. And rather than focusing on fixing these gaps in the existing version, Macaw’s creators seem instead to be working on its new sibling, Macaw Scarlet, which promises even more sophisticated features. Program like xaraweb editor for mac.
RapidWeaver
If you just want to pour your content into a limited set of sharp-looking templates, with responsive design already built in, RapidWeaver () will work great. This powerfully extensible program can do far more than that, too‑but you’ll have to pay a good deal extra to unlock its full potential.
RapidWeaver’s by far the best choice here for building a blog or a podcast, with excellent, easy support for adding new entries and episodes. But I didn’t like how it forced me to flip back and forth between the raw content on my pages and a full preview of how they’d look online.
If you want to branch out beyond its small slate of templates, keep your wallet handy. The app’s online market of powerful plugins offers tons of new capabilities and professionally designed themes. But their considerable cost could quickly add up to more than you paid for RapidWeaver itself.
The rest of the pack
Sandvox
Sandvox () loses points for its limited customization and big but outdated selection of designs. However, it’s delightfully easy to use, including a super-simple integrated hosting service that seems fairly priced for what it offers. And changing the whole look of your site is as easy as choosing a new template. I think Sandvox would make a great choice for teachers and students, or for parents who want to help their kids build a fun, basic site.
Sparkle
Sparkle () is a perfectly respectable app that unfortunately gets outshined by EverWeb, which feels like Sparkle’s very similar-looking but ultimately superior cousin. I give Sparkle kudos for at least trying to make it easy to add third-party web fonts, even if the execution’s a little clunky. Its preset page sizes for responsive design also work better in concept than reality. Sparkle could become a real gem, but it needs more polish first.
Freeway Express
Living up to its name, Freeway Express () is free. And if you endure its labyrinthine help files, you can build some nifty things relatively quickly. But its cluttered interface can prove frustrating, and it renders pages with such sorely outdated techniques—years behind every other app here–that you’re probably better off avoiding it. A paid pro version offers a much more power and sophistication, but also costs a whopping $150.
Bottom line
Text editors are cheap or free, as are resources to teach yourself HTML, CSS, and jQuery—all more intuitive than they sound, even for non-geniuses. But that education demands dedication, time, and persistence, especially since today’s cutting-edge code quickly becomes tomorrow’s cobweb-covered embarrassment.
If you’d rather opt out of that Red Queen’s race, you’ll at least have a few good choices, whether you pick Blocs’ sleek simplicity or EverWeb’s user-friendly flexibility. I suspect Mac users will have even better, more complete options for building websites in a year or two. But for now, those two are the best of the bunch.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
Softpress Systems Freeway Express 6
Read Macworld's reviewRiver SRL Sparkle
Read Macworld's reviewKarelia Software Sandvox 2
Read Macworld's reviewRealmac Software RapidWeaver 6
Read Macworld's reviewMacaw 1.5
Read Macworld's reviewRage Software EverWeb 1.8.2
Read Macworld's reviewCazoobi Blocs 1.3
Read Macworld's review
When it comes to word processing, Microsoft Word remains the leader, especially in business environments. But it’s not the only game in townThe 7 Best Free Microsoft Office Alternatives for MacThe 7 Best Free Microsoft Office Alternatives for MacLooking for a free Microsoft Office alternative for Mac? Check out these great substitutes you can use at no cost.Read More. Many Mac owners turn to Apple’s Pages.
Why should you use Pages? One good reason is that it’s free. Macs now ship with Apple’s suite of productivity applications5 Reasons You Should Use iWork Instead of Microsoft Office5 Reasons You Should Use iWork Instead of Microsoft OfficeMany long-time Office users will be unwilling to transition away from the apps they're so used to working with, but it's time to give iWork another chance.Read More, formerly known as iWork. Besides Pages, this suite includes spreadsheet app Numbers and the Keynote presentation software.
The price isn’t the only reason to give Pages a spinHow the New iWork for iCloud Works With Your Apple DevicesHow the New iWork for iCloud Works With Your Apple DevicesiWork for iCloud is a suite of online office applications (consisting of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers) that sync with the Mac and iOS versions of the programs. The online versions of iWork mirror most of..Read More. The software’s packed with ready-to-use templates that will make your work look fantastic.
Pages Basics
At its most basic level, Pages is a word processorWrite!: A Minimal Word Processor with Cloud Sync, Markdown & MoreWrite!: A Minimal Word Processor with Cloud Sync, Markdown & MoreWhether you’re a blogger, note-taker, or quality-conscious social media addict, an app like Write could go a long way.Read More. As such, you can use the software for everyday word processing activities, such as creating a document, writing and editing text, importing elements like charts and pictures, and so on.
Pages also does an excellent job of opening non-Apple document formats, including Microsoft Word documents. Conversely, you can save documents from Pages into different formats, including Microsoft Word, PDF, and Plain Text.
Thanks to iCloud, you can open and edit Pages documents on other devices, including iPhone and iPad. When accessing your documents from iCloud.comHow the New iWork for iCloud Works With Your Apple DevicesHow the New iWork for iCloud Works With Your Apple DevicesiWork for iCloud is a suite of online office applications (consisting of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers) that sync with the Mac and iOS versions of the programs. The online versions of iWork mirror most of..Read More, you can do the same on Windows-based machines too.
Pages automatically saves documents as you work. For new files, Pages calls the file something like Untitled 1. When you’re ready to name the file, go File > Save from the menu bar and give the file a name.
To duplicate the file, go File > Duplicate and then give it a new name. Any change made after that will be on the new file, not the original. To save a copy of a document in another format, you must export it using the File > Export To command.
The Power of Templates
One of the most important features of Pages is its collection of ready-to-use templates. You can use these templates to create professional-looking documents without starting from scratch.
These templates fall under many categories, including Reports, Stationery, Resumes, Flyers & Posters, Cards, Certificates, Newsletters, and more. You can also access three additional templates under the Basic category, including Blank, Blank Landscape, and Note Taking. You can also create your own templates, which appear under My Templates.
For everyday work, I use a blank Pages template or another word processing toolIs It Time to Ditch Pages and Word for Ulysses?Is It Time to Ditch Pages and Word for Ulysses?In 2016, not everyone needs a full-service word processing program, which is why software like Ulysses exists.Read More. When I have something more creative in mind, I often turn to the Flyers & Posters or Certificates categories.
When you open Pages, click New Document at the bottom left on the main Pages windows to begin this process. You can also go File > New to create a new document when you’re already in the app. This takes you to the main Pages template screen.
On the left, you’ll see each template category. When you click on a category name, you’ll see thumbnails for each template available for that category. Once you find a template to use, highlight it and select Choose.
The first time I experienced Pages templates was when a friend asked me to help him create a newsletter for a local club. I couldn’t believe how great the document looked after little work. Here are some simple steps for creating good looking documents using Pages’ templates:
Creating Great Documents Using a Template
Art program for mac os 9. 1. Open Pages, create a new document, and choose a template.
2. Edit the text and replace the photos.
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3. Use the toolbar to add more pages as needed.
4. Be sure to save your work, and export to a format of your choice.
More Templates
Apple provides lots of Pages templates already. If you’re looking for more, consider the iWorkCommunity. It’s here where you can find hundreds of free Pages templates from other users. Templates for Numbers and Keynote are also available.
Create Your Own Templates
Why stop there? If you have an artistic side, consider designing templates, either for personal use or to share with others. You can start building your template from scratch by opening a blank page or by modifying an existing template.
If you are starting from scratch, be sure to add elements to your documents such as text boxes and shapes. Do this by going to the Insert menu or by clicking the icon in the toolbar.
To fill in the text boxes, you could generate some “Lorem Ipsum”s from the Lipsum Generator.
To add photos, music, and movies to your template, click on the Media icon on the toolbar.
Insert pictures by dragging and dropping them into your document.
You can edit every element of a page using the Inspector under View > Show Inspector. It’s the same process you use for standard Pages documents. You can add as many pages as you need, according to your needs.
Once you complete setting up your template, you need to enable every element on each page as placeholders. This way, you can customize those sections later when it comes to turning the template into a document.
To do this, go to Format > Advanced > Define As Text Placeholder or Format > Advanced > Define As Media Placeholder, depending on the element type.
What Program Works Best On A Mac For Making Newsletters With Adobe
The final step is to save your document as a template, under File > Save as Template. You can save the template to your computer only as a file or to the Template Chooser. If you select the latter, you’ll need to name the template.
Your templates will show up under My Templates on the opening Pages screen. You can delete templates by right-clicking on the template thumbnail.
Sharing Templates
What Program Works Best On A Mac For Making Newsletters In Microsoft
If you want to share your creations, they are available where you save other Pages files. Typically, this is under your iCloud Drive > Pages.
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Create a Masterpiece in Minutes
There are plenty of benefits to using Pages and the rest of the iWork suite. The ability to use and create templates is just one of them. You can use them to add some creativity to your work, or even organize your life with NumbersOrganize Your Life With Numbers for MacOrganize Your Life With Numbers for MacNew Macs come with Numbers, a spreadsheet program that's perfect for helping you get organized.Read More.
Do you use iWork templates and have any tips? Let us know using the comments below.
Explore more about: Digital Document, iCloud, iWork, Office Templates, Pages, Text Editor.
- This indeed looks pretty cool (like all other Apple software). But the price will keep me away from this. I did not even purchase Microsoft Office - my Open Office is keeping me pretty happy.
- Previous version of Pages as iLife had a lot more templates. Great in school but since upgrade we are so limited. Esp. brochures.
Why has Apple removed them?