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Adobe may have come late to the web editor market dominated
by Dreamweaver and Frontpage, but Adobe GoLive is a product
worth consideration.. Because GoLive is built by Adobe, the
number one company where PC graphics software is concerned,
you can be sure that each new revision will be cutting edge
technology. Adobe has gone to great pains to integrate into
GoLive support for their premium priced, highly regarded vector
and rastor based products. Similar to Macromedia's integration
of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash, Adobe can now do on-the-fly
editing of original files created with Photoshop, Illustrator
and LiveMotion.
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Once these files have been edited in their native
program, GoLive automatically reflects these changes without
having to re-import the new version. The "Save for Web" option
in Photoshop has now been implemented in GoLive, allowing
designers to optimize image files without having to open Photoshop.
Be warned, however, you need the lastest revisions of these
products to take advantage of the linkage.
Built for the designers not fimiliar with hand
coded HTML, GoLive has a host of features in version 5.0.
These improvements include 360code, improved table editing,
accessing databases, an enhanced interactive editor and more
support for W3C standards and emerging technologies. But how
does it stack up against the competition?
Similar to other WYSIWYG design programs, GoLive provides
two windows for creating web sites. The first is the 'Site
Structure Window.' This window gives access to the most
used resources in the web site, including files, external
links, colors, fonts and more. The second is the 'Document
Window' Where you create individual web pages using a WYSIWYG
editor, access the source code, create framesets and preview
the page without bringing up a browser.
You create a web page by simply dragging elements
from the objects palette onto the page itself. These can be
images, text boxes, tables, form objects, and multimedia elements
like Shockwave and Quicktime. For those designers requiring
pixel-level accuracy a layout grid can be loaded on the page.
This is very similar to the feature offered by NetObjects
Fusion. After placing elements on the page you can edit them
individually through the context-sensitive 'Inspector Palette.'
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Objects Palette
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Inspector Palette
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GoLive, like Dreamweaver, empowers designers
to drag pre-scripted actions like rollover buttons, JavaScript
and DHTML behaviors from the palette onto the page. This
enables designers to speed up the creative process.
Once your web site has been built GoLive can
check it for link errors and missing files. After these
errors are resolved you can upload the site using the traditional,
integrated FTP program or the new Web Distributed Authoring
and Versioning extensions to the HTTP Protocol.
GoLive can now import and edit HTML, Cold Fusion,
ASP, JavaScript and even XML, without the worry of GoLive
mangling the code. However, it lacks Dreamweaver capability
of cleaning up MS Word HTML or even basic HTML. On the plus
side, GoLive can validate HTML according to browser compatibility
and W3C standards.
Adobe has added database publishing to its new
toolset. GoLive can now connect to OLE DB and ODBC-compliant
databases. It's still unrefined and limited to writing Active
Server Pages using VBScript. Building a database query is
as simple as creating a dialog box and linking content to
chosen database fields.
Other features include:
- Simultaneous
Layout/Source views
- HTML
element Search and Replace
- Optimized
Layout Grid
- Store
HTML snippets
- Markup
Tree view
- Adobe
Integration via Smart Objects and Smart Links
- Photoshop's
Save for Web Image Optimization Engine built in
- Import
Photoshop as HTML
- Tracing
Image
- Multiple
undo
- History
palette
- Table
palette
- Table
data sorting
- Table
styles
- Transform
palette
- Floating
Box to Layout Grid conversion
- Cascading
Style Sheet enhancements
- Align
palette
- Color
palette enhancements
- Contextual
menus
- Customizable
keyboard shortcuts
- Site
reporting
- Site
templates
- Workgroup
collaboration via WebDAV
- Cross-platform
site file
- Network
status window
Conclusion
Compared to other WYSIWYG web editors like Macromedia Dreamweaver,
Adobe GoLive can hold its own in most areas. You can design
just about anything you can dream up. But it does have limitations.
Compared to Dreamweaver, it has a weak implementation of
templates. Dreamweaver has a very robust template capability,
allowing designers to create templates with editable and
locked regions as well as the power to apply a template
to thousands of HTML files with the click of a button. GoLive
also lacks some of Dreamweaver's more powerful and extensive
database support via its UltraDev ($500.00+) software program.
Like Macromedia, Adobe offers a free, fully functional 30-day
trial version. So, what's the final verdict? That depends.
If you are using the latest Adobe products, GoLive make
sense. On the other hand, Microsofts FrontPage has advantages
when database integration is involved and Macromedia's Dreamweaver
is still the most robust regarding handling html code, and
third party technologies like Cold Fusion, PHP, etc.
GoLive 5.0 is available in both Mac and Windows
versions, and is offered at an estimated street price of
$299. GoLive is available individually, or as part of Adobe's
"Web Collection," which consists of GoLive, Illustrator,
LiveMotion, and Photoshop for $999. GoLive is also available
at a reduced rate for purchasers of Adobe Photoshop 6 (until
March of 2001).
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