l-dopa

I got my copy of iLife ‘06 in the mail yesterday, and jumped right into iWeb. iPhoto is nice (and I have never even opened Garage Band), but iWeb is what I was really interested in. Any software to help my clients create web pages easily is great in my book. All in all, I am impressed with what Apple has done.

The much touted “Apple designed templates” are in fact fantastic. They do fun things with web layouts that were mostly out of reach to the average person before now. Try sitting an elementary school teacher down in front of Dreamweaver, and see what you get. The templates aren’t terribly limiting, as you can move or delete almost every element on the page. There are templates to fit different needs, from photo galleries to blog entries and podcasts, each of which come with rss feeds built into the code.

The organizational structure is a blend of your high-powered html grinders, and the Keynote style. You can arrange your site in the sidebar, and make sub-pages as though you were making a nested list. The linking format is pretty set in stone, but some changes can be made about what is linked where.

I have four complaints about iWeb. It is huge. I mean huge. Weighing it at a porky 630 megs, iWeb is easily the biggest single app on my machine. Its weight is because it contains all the templates and images (in various languages) inside itself, instead of relying on external support folders, a la Photoshop. Which brings me to complaint number two. Why hide the stock images away? There are some great pictures in the templates, but users don’t have easy access to them to mix and match. Complaint number three is with the photo gallery template. Whenever I click an image to enlarge it, it comes up in its own window (which is fine), complete with .Mac style brushed metal borders added in (which is not fine) no matter which template I have chosen. Why spend the time to make fantastic templates if the photo galleries are going to break the aesthetic? The final complaint is that I have no idea where it has saved my site. Every site I create is available in the iWeb interface, which is a mixed blessing. It makes it simple for people to keep track of what they have done, but I’d rather be able to move them around myself.

I have really enjoyed playing with this app, and I think it will be a huge success if they can get people to plunk down the $79 for it. Easy to use, great results, and I’m glad to see them putting more value-add back into the $99 monster that is .Mac via one click publishing to your .Mac homepage.

Update: Running a program like Youpi Optimizer or DeLocalizer to strip the various languages you don’t speak out of iWeb will slim it down to a fighting weight of 98 megs. Your milage may vary, use these apps at your own risk.