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1 Smiley Poor, 5 Smileys Excellent
Platforms: Mac OS, Windows 98/NT/2000 *Adobe is including the trial versions of Adobe GoLive and Adobe LiveMotion
as a bonus CD in 750,000 special packages of Photoshop 6.0 and upgrades
to customers in the United States and Europe. Adobe Photoshop 6.0 buyers
can take advantage of a limited time offer to purchase GoLive 5.0 for
$99 until March 1, 2001. Customers can also purchase a perpetual license
for Adobe GoLive by downloading a special key from Adobe.
Forward In all fairness to Adobe GoLive, I have to qualify my review as being done by someone who has tried virtually all the HTML editors on the market, so I have a lot applications to compare it to. However, if I was a newbie or creative type, I think that this software would have knocked my socks off! Now before anybody accuses me of being an old dog that doesn't want to learn any new tricks, let me assure you that I learn new tricks on a daily basis to keep up with ever changing technology. This has been a difficult review -- in more ways than one. The software was tough enough, but to sit down and write a review such as this presented a challenge to find a "nice" way to give my honest opinion. I do not wish to knock Adobe -- they are an awesome software developer... after all, there's nothing better than Photoshop and Illustrator -- programs that I use and love! So forgive me if I seem a little harsh here, but it is my honest opinion. Enough said... on with the review.
I'm not gonna try it... Let's Get Nancy to try it... She hates all WYSIWYG Editors! Here are my initial thoughts and impressions as I worked with GoLive for the first time. When I received GoLive 5, I was rather impressed by the PR briefings and the manual as I read through everything during the pre-installation ritual. Unfortunately for me, this is when I learned that Mac OS 8.6 was necessary to run GoLive. 1 1/2 hours on a 56k modem later, I finally had the 8.6 update downloaded and began the actual install for GoLive. The first thing I noticed during the installation process, was that while the Easy install reports that 70 MB of disk space are necessary, it actually took over 160 MB (help files seem to be taking up the majority at around 65 MB, modules at 34 MB, and Site Templates at 15 MB) on my system, because the drive is still formatted in HFS format. Keep this in mind if you have an older PowerMac that is still formatted in HFS. I would appear that the installer just assumes that you have an HFS plus drive and give you a size estimate based on that. Of course, the customized installation process also allows you to forego parts of the installation if drive space is a problem. Shortly after playing with GoLive, I was easily convinced to upgrade again to Mac OS 9.0.4 for obvious stability improvements from the fine folks in Cupertino. Too bad that no system update could help with the product launching speed, which took over a minute on my test system, a PowerMac 8500 (120 MHz 604) with 140 MB RAM. While the 8500 is no spring chicken, this is a launching speed more reminiscent of a Microsoft bloatware, not an Adobe product (unless, of course, you are using a ton of plugins). Let this be a warning to any early PowerPC owners. OK, so time to finally test drive the software. First I had a go at trying to use GoLive without referring back to the manual or following a tutorial (that's how I've learned every program that I work with... including QuarkXPress). This approach actually worked for several days, but eventually I gave up on it. I got so frustrated that I finally decided it was time to try out the tutorial. I grabbed the manual (462 pages!) and looked up "tutorial" in the index... but didn't find one. Next I went to the "Table of Contents"... no luck there either. Next I popped in the GoLive CD -- still no luck. What I did find though were several references to "online help" (help files within the application itself), browser based tutorials (one of which was narrated by a male voice with an accent), and lots of PDF files! Well, I had a go at all of them -- even checked out some online help groups - but I must confess I find it terribly awkward having so many GoLive windows open and adding "help" file windows on top of that. At times I felt I was looking for a needle in a haystack. GoLive requires a very large learning curve. Oh well, undaunted I push on... What I would have liked is a tutorial on a CD -- one of those interactive types -- like the one they had on the 4.0 version. If the manual and included documents aren't enough, Adobe has continued their Classroom in a Book series, although this is another investment for material that should be handled with the included material.
Well, As Long As We're Talking About the Manual... I've now succumbed to having the manual occupy my lap. To be honest with you I find that this manual (like so many others) is only good for looking up specific things rather than guiding you through the steps of building a web site. And I couldn't figure out the logic behind the order of topics in the book -- many times I felt that the cart was in front of the horse. Something I came across in the manual was very disturbing to me. Under the heading of "Adding Spacers" they warn you that this is a Netscape only feature and that Internet Explorer will ignore them. They then proceed to tell you how to use them! Now, I ask you, why would anybody do something that will not render properly in one of the most popular browsers available? Adobe has added this feature to allow web designers to "correct" their code if it doesn't render correctly in Netscape (due to its habit of rounding off pixels). Unfortunately, a newbie may take this as a license to form the layout of the whole page, a page that won't render correctly in IE. There are dozens of browser incompatible techniques illustrated throughout! (this software is going to get a few designers in trouble, me thinks...)
Interface
In short, the interface is both great and confusing. It's all there... but it may be too much for the novice to handle at first. Of course, if the novice is familiar with other Adobe products, but not HTML (no doubt a large part of GoLive's intended market), the interface may be just what is necessary to help them get started. On the flip side, this opens you up to the "lots of power and no control" problem. It's like giving a kid a red wagon with a 440 hemi in it! In my case, I am very familiar with HTML and once I began to figure everything out, it even convinced me to go wild. Imagine it's influence on the uninitiated.
GoLive Features First, lets get the list out of the way. Click here to see a list of GoLive 5.0 Features. Yes, there are many good things about GoLive (for those of you who like these kind of applications). Among the most important in my mind are:
Some not-so-good things about GoLive
Miscellaneous Atomz now offers an extension that will allow you to easily add Atomz.com
Search to your websites from within Adobe GoLive 5.0. Once the extension
is installed, Atomz.com Search can be easily added to any Web site from
within GoLive 5.0 by selecting "Insert Atomz.com Search" from the Special
menu, or by dragging the Atomz.com Search icon from the Object Window
into the open document. You can pick up the extension Atomz.com where you'll find versions for both Windows and Macintosh platforms. Click here for the Dreamweaver extension. Other GoLive extensions can be downloaded from here. Here are a few helpful links that I came upon while working with GoLive. If you are seriously interested in using GoLive 5 or already have them, they are very important:
How Well Does It Work? If you prefer a WYSIWYG environment that helps with the fancy stuff without having to know HTML -- then GoLive may be for you. As many of you know, I mentioned in my column last issue that I would use GoLive to build one of my new sites. I did... and I must confess it was like driving a Formula 1 race car to the store... when a bicycle would have done the job. The site was large and bloated -- and it tempted me (successfully, I might add) to put in a lot more bells and whistles than I normally would. If I can be tempted, just think what the possibilities are for someone who does not understand the FORM, FIT and FUNCTION philosophy. I can't help but think that this program will create a lot of "monster" sites that focus more on special effects that content... and that's what we already have too much of on the Internet... bells and whistles covering up the actual substance.
In closing... This program (IMHO) does not keep with the spirit of the Macintosh "plug and play" philosophy. Frankly it reminds me of RageMaker -- ooops... PageMaker (really, I don't have it in for Adobe... honest). It is not intuitive and frankly I think this program is "overkill". Perhaps when Adobe reads this (and they will...) they might be inspired to develop a mini GoLive application, or fix some of the above mentioned bugs. Every cloud has a silver lining. I hope you'll make your way over to Applelust.com and read Dan Knight's (of lowendmac.com fame) review of GoLive... It's comforting to know that I'm not alone in my humble opinion! And as you saw above, I broke from the standard rating system to give two ratings: 3.5 smileys for newbies and creative types and 1 Smiley for web professionals.
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For
instance, look at the object palette screenshot to the right. There are
over a dozen icons, and only a few are immediately identifiable. Luckily,
Adobe has included a description area along the bottom, where a text name
displays as the cursor flies over the object. In this instance, we are
hovering over the button for inserting a Quicktime file. There are several
floating palettes specializing in various areas of web design: objects
and color, inspector (for inserting links and graphics) and view controller
(for adjusting what you see and don't see within GoLive), the transform
and align areas (familiar to those who have worked in other Adobe products)
amongst others. Of course, there is such a thing as overload. It's possible
to have six different pallets open, along with the toolbar and the main
file window (which has it's own tabs too -- see graphic below).
