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FEBRUARY 25, 2004 Adobe GoLive CS
But wait, there's more I'd be remiss if I didn't at least give token mention to GoLive's built-in QuickTime editor. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, as I've already done an entire feature on GoLive's QuickTime authoring environment a while back. Not a lot has changed between GoLive 6 and CS in this regard, but it's still a pretty useful tool to have if you need to wire up some interactive QuickTime. It's still no LiveStage Professional, but it'll do if your interactive QuickTime needs are, shall we say, more modest.[an error occurred while processing this directive]Disappointments Even with all the good stuff GoLive CS hands you on a silver tray with a lovely garnish of parsley, there are a few glaring disappointments. The first one is a biggee, and may be enough to send a few of you packing right now. Rarely have I seen a software product completely remove a pretty large feature from existence, but GoLive CS has managed that rather dubious feat. I'm talking about the complete and utter disappearance of all dynamic content features. No database connectivity, no nothing. It's just gone. Of course, the competition continues to offer this feature, so if your bag is dynamic site management, you'd best look elsewhere. Another thing that's off is just the overall unwieldiness of the Site feature. I appreciate the fact that GoLive is designed to handle potentially enormous sites, but with the rats nest of tabs and data folders and all the other ways that GoLive organizes things, for smaller sites it's just not worth it. For all the emphasis GoLive puts on keeping your code clean and organized, it all seems to get thrown out the window once you create a site structure. I'd like to see some measure of control given back to the developer for site organization, rather than GoLive taking over and organizing things the way it wants to. I'm also a little disappointed at how more complex CSS appears (or, more accurately, doesn't appear) in GoLive's layout window. You get nothing but a lot of muddled garbage once you start precise positioning in CSS, which kind of defeats the purpose of even having a layout window in those situations. Of course, all is right once you switch over to the preview tab, but that's not the issue, is it? And speaking of GoLive's previews, I have a couple of nits. One, is there any good reason that the integrated preview on the Mac is based on Opera? No offense to Opera, which is a fine standards-compliant browser, but isn't it ridiculously easy to access WebKit from Mac OS X and use the Safari engine? If text editors like SubEthaEdit can give you a live Safari-based preview window, GoLive should at least be as hip. In Windows, you get Internet Explorer, which is sucky just on moral grounds, but pretty decent considering that's what 95% or so of folks are running anyway. The bottom line As with all my reviews, I've left out a lot. That's not entirely due to me being a worthless sack of garbage; it's also because if I mentioned everything, I'd still be writing by the time GoLive CS 2006 (or whatever the next one will be called) is shipping. Such is life when you're dealing with a mature product. That's OK, because I'm also going to do something I do in all my reviews, which is direct you to Adobe's Web site and download the tryout version of GoLive CS. So what's the verdict here? I'm giving GoLive CS a Strong Buy rating. It's worth it all by itself, and especially so as part of the Creative Suite Premium product (which features Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat Pro). Considering that my view of GoLive went from adorable little Dreamweaver competitor desperately nipping at the big dog's heels to pretty much an equal over the course of a few weeks, that's a gigantic improvement. Plus, it didn't crash 937 times in a row or "forget" to actually write out all my finely-crafted CSS tags like a certain other MX 2004 version of a certain former favorite visual page editor of mine, as I consider actually getting something done a valid criteria. GoLive CS is available now for Mac OS X and Windows. It'll run you $399 by itself, $169 for an upgrade, $1,229 as part of the Creative Suite Premium, or $749 as a CS Premium upgrade. When not fleeing the paparazzi or spending his vast fortune associated with the fame and notoriety of being a DMN contributor, Kevin Schmitt can be found with his eyeballs glued to his computer screen, attempting to use some of the hardware and software he rants so incoherently about. An award-winning animator, artist and multimedia producer, he is currently a freelance designer located in the enormously bustling megalopolis of Waynesboro, VA. Whether you're looking to "give him the business" of either the figurative or literal type, feel free to drop him a line. He's ready to believe you! Prev 1 2 3 4 5 Related sites: • AV Video • Creative Mac • Digital Media Designer • Digital Producer • Digital Webcast • Presentation Master • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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