Adobe GoLive 6.0

Rating:
Summary: Speechless
Review: First of all, Let me just say that I've been developing web pages for a long time, however have not come across something as feature-filled as this. Over the years, I've tried many HTML editors, Including online ones such as Yahoo! Geocities, and looking at the code it generated, I must say I was disgusted. GoLive's code cleanliness is commendable, how many times have you designed a page in frontpage and found that Mozilla doesnt like it? Could GoLive be the next Dreamweaver?

People building Database-Driven websites should feel right at home too, with built in support for PHP, JSP and ASP you'll double your productivity rate.

However, I must stress that GoLive as with any program, doesn't come without some flaws, one of the things I noticed is that it may take a week or two to become familiar with GoLive's complex interface, also If you're just starting out Web Developing, I would suggest not to purchase this, you'll need reasonable experience in web design to feel comfortable with GoLive, frontpage would be more your thing.

All in all I'm very pleased with my purchase, once again Adobe continues to impress with it's outstanding programs for web / graphic developers alike.

Rating:
Summary: Nope - it's doesn't match Dreamweaver
Review: For the type of webpages I build, the ability to handle dynamic content is a *given*. A good web page creation tool isn't just a glorified text editor with shortcuts.

First, a few good points about GoLive. It's got great directory managing abilities. It comes with quite a bit of jscript and other scripting 'objects'. It's well integrated with photoshop, with the ability to make live previews, etc.

However, it's worst problem is that if you want to use newer web technologies, such as PHP, CSS, and other dynamic content, it isn't any better than a text editor like vi or notepad. As a comparison to Dreamweaver, it just doesn't cut the salt. It won't preview external stylesheets. It won't parse the php on your page to show you what your project would look like upon completion. It can't even handle server side includes.

Granted, Dreamweaver isn't perfect in it's parsing of such things, but GoLive is an order of magnitude worse.

Rating:
Summary: Adobe has its work cut out for it
Review: GoLive 6.0 was a marked improvement over the 5.0 release, which was little more FrontPage on steroids in terms of its capabilities. Unfortunately, much beyond that, GoLive still falls pretty far short of the mark for my needs.

I made a serious attempt to move from Dreamweaver to GoLive in an effort to standardize on Adobe tools for web development. I spent a good three months REALLY TRYING to make the switch. The promise of placing native Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop images in a page, and outputting finished GIF or JPG versions had great appeal, as did the promise of image automation (using one master image, and setting properties to change text in a headline graphic, for example). But the promise was a bit better than the reality.

Integration with the rest of the Adobe suite seems to be mostly marketing speak. The interface model may look in some respects like other Adobe products, but in practice, it's only skin deep. GoLive's interface is quirky (then again, so is Dreamweaver's in many respects). Perhaps people who start with GoLive may get used to it; for someone converting from Dreamweaver it was exceptionally difficult. Nothing seemed to be where it belonged, and time with the product did not make it easier.

One thing GoLive has going for it is that -- unlike Dreamweaver -- site definitions are file-based, not stored in the registry. Moving a site under-development from machine to machine is as easy as copying files, and all the necessary details come right across. Very smart indeed. However, the cost of this is a rather unusual way of structuring the hierarchy of folders containing your files.

For my own web implementations, what finally killed it for me was the lack of WYSIWYG support for server-side includes. This is such a fundamental piece of functionality in my view, and without it, most of the sites I'd designed were virtually uneditable in GoLive. While Dreamweaver too has proprietary ways for "including" boilerplate content (templates), at least it also supports industry-standard SSI for those of us who want to avoid proprietary solutions.

For my needs, GoLive needs a substantial amount of work just to regain ground lost to Dreamweaver, let alone actually surpass it. Unfortunately, it's looking more and more like Dreamweaver will have gone through two significant new releases before Adobe gets around to touching GoLive again, which is a real disappointment.

I still have hope for GoLive, and people new to web development with perhaps more confined needs will find it a worthy tool. To be sure, it's several steps above entry-level products like Microsoft FrontPage. But for professional developers, GoLive is #2 in this game, and destined to stay there unless Adobe makes a stronger commitment to the product.

Rating:
Summary: Adobe has its work cut out for it
Review: GoLive 6.0 was a marked improvement over the 5.0 release, which was little more FrontPage on steroids in terms of its capabilities. Unfortunately, much beyond that, GoLive still falls pretty far short of the mark for my needs.

I made a serious attempt to move from Dreamweaver to GoLive in an effort to standardize on Adobe tools for web development. I spent a good three months REALLY TRYING to make the switch. The promise of placing native Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop images in a page, and outputting finished GIF or JPG versions had great appeal, as did the promise of image automation (using one master image, and setting properties to change text in a headline graphic, for example). But the promise was a bit better than the reality.

Integration with the rest of the Adobe suite seems to be mostly marketing speak. The interface model may look in some respects like other Adobe products, but in practice, it's only skin deep. GoLive's interface is quirky (then again, so is Dreamweaver's in many respects). Perhaps people who start with GoLive may get used to it; for someone converting from Dreamweaver it was exceptionally difficult. Nothing seemed to be where it belonged, and time with the product did not make it easier.

One thing GoLive has going for it is that -- unlike Dreamweaver -- site definitions are file-based, not stored in the registry. Moving a site under-development from machine to machine is as easy as copying files, and all the necessary details come right across. Very smart indeed. However, the cost of this is a rather unusual way of structuring the hierarchy of folders containing your files.

For my own web implementations, what finally killed it for me was the lack of WYSIWYG support for server-side includes. This is such a fundamental piece of functionality in my view, and without it, most of the sites I'd designed were virtually uneditable in GoLive. While Dreamweaver too has proprietary ways for "including" boilerplate content (templates), at least it also supports industry-standard SSI for those of us who want to avoid proprietary solutions.

For my needs, GoLive needs a substantial amount of work just to regain ground lost to Dreamweaver, let alone actually surpass it. Unfortunately, it's looking more and more like Dreamweaver will have gone through two significant new releases before Adobe gets around to touching GoLive again, which is a real disappointment.

I still have hope for GoLive, and people new to web development with perhaps more confined needs will find it a worthy tool. To be sure, it's several steps above entry-level products like Microsoft FrontPage. But for professional developers, GoLive is #2 in this game, and destined to stay there unless Adobe makes a stronger commitment to the product.

Rating:
Summary: Great for you OSX users
Review: I have used Frontpage and Dreamweaver in producing web pages over the past few years. Most of my sites have moved to dynamic webpages using PHP/MySQL on Unix based systems. Adobe GoLive has great support for PHP and MySQL on an OSX based system allowing one to develop sites locally and test them before deployment. This is a cool feature mainly found on the Mac OSX version as I have not used this program on a windows Machine. The closest I come is running Windows 98SE via Virtual PC.

If you use a work group to create webpages, the Adobe WebDEV server is great for manageing changes amoung the different designers. WebDev took a couple installs to work correctly on our MAC workstation that doubles as our development/test server, but once it was set up, it has been easy to use and stable.

The one feature that Golive lacks compared to DW is no intergration of BBedit text editing software. There are still some mac coders that can't live without BBEdit and I am one of them. The lack of cross support with BBedit is why I gave this a 4 star rating instead of a 5.

Rating:
Summary: Great for you OSX users
Review: I have used Frontpage and Dreamweaver in producing web pages over the past few years. Most of my sites have moved to dynamic webpages using PHP/MySQL on Unix based systems. Adobe GoLive has great support for PHP and MySQL on an OSX based system allowing one to develop sites locally and test them before deployment. This is a cool feature mainly found on the Mac OSX version as I have not used this program on a windows Machine. The closest I come is running Windows 98SE via Virtual PC.

If you use a work group to create webpages, the Adobe WebDEV server is great for manageing changes amoung the different designers. WebDev took a couple installs to work correctly on our MAC workstation that doubles as our development/test server, but once it was set up, it has been easy to use and stable.

The one feature that Golive lacks compared to DW is no intergration of BBedit text editing software. There are still some mac coders that can't live without BBEdit and I am one of them. The lack of cross support with BBedit is why I gave this a 4 star rating instead of a 5.

Rating:
Summary: Golive, the painless way to web page design
Review: I have used several different programs for web page design including Dreamweaver, Page Mill, Netscape's Composer, Frontpage and others. Whereas Macromedia claims to have many features not found in GoLive, the reverse is actually true. You can view and edit Quicktime movies within GoLive. Changes to image files in photoshop or illustrator are sensed and updated automatically. The workgroup server is the only and best way for sites with many contributors. But mostly, the program is so easy to use and fast to learn, yet powerful. GoLIve has always been the leading edge program, and with workgroup it say in front of the pack. I recommend it without reservation.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Customer Service
Review: I recently purchased a copy of Adobe GoLive 6 (electronic license) from AngelExTech.com. They promptly delivered the serial number for registration and were very willing to assist me if I had any technical issues (which I didn't). I would recommend using this company to anyone looking for this software or any other package they offer.

B. Lowery
Webmaster, WebIce, Inc.

Rating:
Summary: Solid Adobe product - but not intuitive
Review: I recently tried out the free download version of two web editors. Adobe GoLive 6.0 and Namo Web Editor 5.5 (also on Amazon). Of the two, I chose Namo WE5.5, as superior. While GoLive seems to offer almost all the features I wanted, it certainly wasn't intuitive. The price was/is a bit high as well at $....

On the other hand, Namo WebEditor 5.5 had all the same features, plus more, and was more intuitive. Not to mention the $... price tag, which can't be beat. Templates, dynamic menus, site management, dynamic content, server side scripting with ASP, JSP and PHP, yea they both have it.

As time goes on, I may use GoLive more often, but for the moment I believe Namo is superior. The fact that both output clean HTML helps, and I am actually able to switch back and forth between both editors.

Rating:
Summary: Solid Adobe product - but not intuitive
Review: I recently tried out the free download version of two web editors. Adobe GoLive 6.0 and Namo Web Editor 5.5 (also on Amazon). Of the two, I chose Namo WE5.5, as superior. While GoLive seems to offer almost all the features I wanted, it certainly wasn't intuitive. The price was/is a bit high as well at $....

On the other hand, Namo WebEditor 5.5 had all the same features, plus more, and was more intuitive. Not to mention the $... price tag, which can't be beat. Templates, dynamic menus, site management, dynamic content, server side scripting with ASP, JSP and PHP, yea they both have it.

As time goes on, I may use GoLive more often, but for the moment I believe Namo is superior. The fact that both output clean HTML helps, and I am actually able to switch back and forth between both editors.