Apr 11, 2001 10:37 AM
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It was a dark and stormy night. I was up late, working on my website, programming by the light of the monitor. In those days, I used notepad and wrote my websites by hand. It was a long and painstaking process. But no more. Now I have the power of Adobe GoLive at my fingertips. With it, I can rule the world - or if not the world, maybe the world wide web!
Whether you build websites for business, or for personal reasons, Adobe GoLive 5 is the most important tool you can use to get the job done!
I started using Adobe GoLive 5 about two months ago. I got the trial version packaged with Adobe Photoshop 6, but you can download the trial version at https://adobe.com. It works for thirty days from the time you first start the application – which is plenty long enough to learn how to use it, and to use it to author your first or thirty-first website.
Initial Impressions
Adobe GoLive 5 is set up much like other Adobe applications, particularly Photoshop 6 - with the familiar tabbed and sub-tabbed windowpane interface including the ‘dockable’ toolbar at the top of the screen. It is a slow loading program, particularly if you have a slow machine. I use a dual 733Mhz Dell Precision 420, and it takes about sixty seconds from double-click to use. On my old trusty P166 at home, it can take up to five minutes to get to the initial screen.
The interface seems pretty clean, and a blank document opens automatically each time you load. With a new, clean site, the only buttons that are enabled are the basic tools – grids, tables, images, plugins, line breaks, tags, comments, etc,…
Learning Curve? What Learning Curve?
The learning curve on any piece of software is a very difficult thing to judge. It’s dependent upon so many different factors, including your own background and the programmers understanding of the users needs. I am a fairly technical person, and the three other websites I built, I used notepad for – nothing but straight HTML coding for me! On the other hand, I am also an artist, and make my living using Adobe products such as Photoshop, After Effects and Illustrator. For me, that initial “What in the heck am I supposed to do now, and how do I do it,” period lasted about one hour. The trial version of the software does not come with a manual, all help is obtained using the online HTML help files. I was able to find answers to many of my questions in the help files, though I found that a better resource was the old tried and true – “download a webpage you like and analyze the code” method.
How it Works
Basically, the functions within Adobe GoLive 5 are pretty straightforward. The main window contains your basic webpage layout. It’s a tabbed window with five different tabs – Layout, Frames, Source, Outline Editor and Preview. Most editing sessions, I find myself constantly cycling between the different views, particularly the Layout and Preview modes. Adobe GoLive 5 is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, or at least that’s what Adobe would like you to believe! Due to the intricacies of HTML, no editor can truly show you exactly what you are going to see online, but Adobe GoLive does a reasonable job at it.
If you are a professional website builder, than you will already have a good idea on what your website is going to look like, and if so, then it should be fairly easy to drag and drop the appropriate icons into place on the main layout screen. If you are a home user, and don’t spend the time to pre-design your website, then you’ll be spending a lot of time using the “trial and error” method of site building. Either way, it’s pretty simple to drag and drop icons based upon what you need on your webpage.
Professional Features
Adobe GoLive 5 has the usual complement of professional features that one comes to expect from a three-hundred dollar* program. These features include Java scripts, Cascading Style Sheets, rollovers, website management tools, smartlinks, FTP, WebDAV, and dynamically linked components to name just a few.
Problems? We Don’t Want No Stinking Problems!
Perhaps my biggest disappointment with Adobe GoLive 5 is its lack of stability. It has a tendency to crash after between two and four hours of use. I’m not sure where the problem lies, and can find no consistent steps to re-create the problem. The second major problem I’ve had is with the FTP functions. Again, it’s hard to pin down exactly where the problem lies, but I get disconnected from all three of my FTP connections constantly. Sometimes while uploading one file, sometimes while uploading one-hundred files. There is no rhyme or reason to it.
Final Analysis
Notwithstanding its stability problems Adobe GoLive 5 can still be the most important tool in your website authoring arsenal. It’s powerful, easy to use once you get over the initial learning ‘hump’, and a very flexible tool.
Notes
Adobe had a special offer available through March 31, 2001 – you can upgrade the trial version of GoLive 5 for only ninety-nine dollars. The process was very simple. I filled out an order form. Entered my credit card details, and downloaded a “key” file that unlocked my version on my computer.
To see Adobe GoLive 5 in action, please feel free to check out the website I built using it. It took me about one week of work to get the base site uploaded and running perfectly. The website is https://lw3dmodels.com/
