- by Nick Smith

Web Idea Tree is a unique program that automatically generates HTML and CSS documents for you. However, it's not an HTML editor and not necessarily a tool for authoring Web sites. Basically, the program helps you transform and organize your ideas, which are then intuitively transferred to navigable documents. For example, Web Idea Tree is a nice tool for publishing research, personal notes, collection catalogs and even family trees. The program's multimedia features also make it handy for creating presentations.

By entering ideas and other information, the program helps you sort the data into a hierarchy. You can then use a text editor to expand on your ideas as well as add associated images, documents and external links. Web Idea Tree offers several page structures and styles for presenting the information. The program automatically handles elements such as title numbering and indices. It will also produce a table of contents. While you work, you can preview the documents in your default Web browser. With a few clicks, you can save these "idea documents" to disk and publish them straight to the Web via FTP.

This system of turning ideas into HTML can be overwhelming at first. Thanks to tutorials and a user manual, you should be able to get started right away. This shareware version is fully functional, but displays frequent registration reminders.