Software
Review
GoLive
by
Kathleen McGuinness
GoLive
6 is like Photoshop in that there are levels within levels of
complexity. Here are some of the new changes in GL 6 that I noticed:
• More control over tables. Selecting and editing are easier.
• You can now “flush” images or grids to the top and to
the left side
of the browser window.
This may seem like a minor innovation, but for anyone who doesn’t
want to use a background image to get art to butt up to the edge of
the browser window this is major.
• It’s easier to layout a navigational scheme with page icons
and
flow lines. And now you can actually print your site scheme out, so
you can show your client.
• Creating a color palette was complicated in GL5. Its gotten easier
and even automatically gives you a window with all the colors that
you’ve used throughout your site.
• Components seem to me to retain correct links, even when placed
on
a different level of your site.
• The actions palette now contains more javascript actions.
Being an Adobe product GL has great integration with other Adobe
software and manages well with Flash, too. Smart PhotoShop and Smart
Illustrator icons allow you to import layered files into GL6 and edit
and optimize on the fly.
GL allows you to split your screen to layout view on top and html
code view on bottom. When you select an item in the layout view the
code below is automatically selected. Plus, you can color various
code elements which makes it easier to see links, images, etc. While
this is a terrific feature for troubleshooting GL could have done
more.
For instance when selecting type I would like to also see head code
attached to the item, i.e.: css style sheets – possibly in a pop-up
window. And I’d like to be able to chose how code elements are color
coded. Green and some of the other code colors are hard to read.
And speaking of CSS style sheets. This is the thing I find most
disappointing about GL 6. What I wanted was a simpler way of
accessing and applying both internal and external style sheets, a
single palette. Instead GL has several CSS palettes and applying is
done sometimes within the Inspector palette, sometimes not. It is
simply too complicated.
But all and all I love GoLive. It gives me incredible control over my
web site.