Installing HomeSite 4.5 is fairly quick and painless. The application is straightforward; however, if you have never used HomeSite before, you may want to poke around the help sections and tutorials just to familiarise yourself with the tools. Regardless, HomeSites intuitive, functional interface and array of code-editing options provide the user with total layout control and design flexibility.

New features to HomeSite 4.5--such as collapsible code in the main editing window, virtual folders and source control, custom and team deployment, cascading style sheets and an image map editor--make this upgrade relatively essential for serious Web developers and project managers. These new features also continue to set HomeSite apart from simple text editors, such as Notepad, or easy-to-use visual tools, such as Microsoft FrontPage. One minor drawback to this new version is that users can no longer hide the top resource panel to allow for complete wide-open viewing of a Web page. In addition, HomeSite is still not compatible with operating systems such as Mac, Unix or Linux. However, the increased ability to customise code, optimise your workspace and collaborate more efficiently with team members make this a worthwhile upgrade for Web developers.