[loren s]

lets try and get this fixed first.

I am a simi pro at the field now *sigh* when it comes to hard coding a site from code.
Ever since pages came out I clamored to get pages to export html and start using that as a basis to design faster.. alas it would not be..

Sooo a year later we now have iweb. basicly pages in a new skin. It outputs code that actually displays a page correctly now. Buuut at what price?

here is a sample

Code:
<div style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; overflow: hidden; position: relative;  background: transparent url(Images/t_tile_v4a.jpg) repeat scroll top left; height: 1070px; width: 700px; " id="bodyContent">

As we can see here it ignores style sheets at all cost except that it still has style sheets as well! What the heck! ..
And what of images inplace of text ? It does not even try and do an image replacement hack. Is this a good thing ?

Sure it will lead to much better looking sites when in the hands of designers and such..
So is this ok? It sure defeats every thing I learned for proper html creation....

So fellow developers, what will you do? Rapid weaver and karelia crew have not seen this coming. sure haveing tools that make correct code and such are great but they missed the thing that makes design fun, freeform control, not themes.
Will you now try and add this in ??

Or can we all try and steal my old ideas that have been tortured to maddness on this forum in the past ?

Pro app that feels like gold and produces gold.. Or is less control better ??

**

Dont fight ya'll I am just a tried designer that still cant find a reason why two worlds cant combine into one.

[madmacgames]

These kind of applications are not meant for professional designers to use to do their job. I mean you could, but what kind of pro would you be? They're meant for people who don't know how to make websites, but that want to make their own personal site/blog.

Any respectable pro web designer is going to code by hand to get the maximum control over the page.

iWeb is probably better for the web than FrontPage is, but as far as developers and designers, I don't see the relevance because we don't use those type of applications in the first place.

IMO

[loren s]

Originally Posted by madmacgames

These kind of applications are not meant for professional designers to use to do their job. I mean you could, but what kind of pro would you be? They're meant for people who don't know how to make websites, but that want to make their own personal site/blog.

Any respectable pro web designer is going to code by hand to get the maximum control over the page.

iWeb is probably better for the web than FrontPage is, but as far as developers and designers, I don't see the relevance because we don't use those type of applications in the first place.

IMO

Why ?? What is this fascination with code ? I dont code images I compose them visually in photoshop and while taking them on site. I'm going to stop here, I dont want to fight about dreamweaver again. It was mostly directed at the coder developers like cssedit and such.

[:dragonflypro:]

Originally Posted by madmacgames

These kind of applications are not meant for professional designers to use to do their job. I mean you could, but what kind of pro would you be? They're meant for people who don't know how to make websites, but that want to make their own personal site/blog.

Any respectable pro web designer is going to code by hand to get the maximum control over the page.

iWeb is probably better for the web than FrontPage is, but as far as developers and designers, I don't see the relevance because we don't use those type of applications in the first place.

IMO

Agreed. I do web design for a living and have to say the output of iWeb is significantly better than any other tool like it to this point. It's flexibility for the end user is great.

iWeb at least makes a significant effort to use CSS and doesn't use a bunch of crazy tables. Inline tags may not be pretty either, but at least they are a step in the right direction.

No, it isn't elegant. But it isn't supposed to be from a coding standpoint. It is supposed to lend the elegance to the user.

Anyway, code theory is argued today to deaths end in the web dev industry.

Considering whether this small app is an issue compared to the monstrosities that people can wrench out of Dreamweavers visual design component and put up as professional pages. The business sites that are a mess are a significantly larger issue in both usability and sustainability. A hobbiest or personal page is sorta irrelevant.

And, hey, if iWeb pages are fun to create, are sexy and make the user happy… well, it has done what it was supposed to do.

It isn't a pro app, isn't supposed to be…

(though i would honestly be really curious to see an Apple developed app for pro web dev)

T

[loren s]

Originally Posted by :dragonflypro:

(though i would honestly be really curious to see an Apple developed app for pro web dev)

T

same here... YaY! time for more photoshop, i gotta build a new version of my css tweak tool idea now.

[Kr0nos]

Maybe a little bit OT, but has anybody tried to mess with iWeb produced html docs (I am assuming this is what it exports) in regular a "editor" and then tried to "open" them in iWeb again?

How much "external" input will iWeb accept? How much influence can one take on the CSS definitions?

[loren s]

Originally Posted by Kr0nos

Maybe a little bit OT, but has anybody tried to mess with iWeb produced html docs (I am assuming this is what it exports) in regular a "editor" and then tried to "open" them in iWeb again?

How much "external" input will iWeb accept? How much influence can one take on the CSS definitions?

Wha?? It's not a theme changer app, It's a closed format app that exports to html files. They missed the whole pro side altogether. No one at this moment has made a pro app that is freeflowing like this. freeway is very close.

[cla]

Originally Posted by madmacgames

Any respectable pro web designer is going to code by hand to get the maximum control over the page.

Correction: Any respectable pro web designer knows how to code by hand to get the maximum control over the page if needed.

A true wysiwyg web tool that produces optimized, platform independent, readable HTML would save me lots of time. There aren't any, and that's why I code by hand.

[- - e r i k - -]

As I said in the Web Developer thread, Dreamweaver 8 isn't actually that bad anymore

[mpancha]

I've seen a few of these arguments about iWeb being for newbies, not really for the Pros.

I would consider myself intermediate. I rely on Google to look up how to code specific things in HTML/PHP/CSS/etc. I can read code and figure out how items on websites are made to work the way they do.

I started off with my webdev experience through webmonkey.com, and learned the basics of HTML. From there, I fired up Frontpage and used the wysiwig part to draw out a page the way I wanted, and then clicked over to the Source code tab and looked at how that page was actually coded. The code (aside from the blob of Microsoft crap at the very top) was very clean.

I went from a know nothing web designer, to being able to open up a text editor and hand coding a basic layout for a webpage.

I'm sure there are others who will go from knowing nothing about coding, to wanting to learn... iWeb could be that stepping stone, but from everything else I have heard, it follows Apple's typical product cycle. Be it hardware or software, Apple's first attempt is always piss poor.

[TETENAL]

I really don't think iWeb is targeted at people who want to learn to code. It's targeted at people who want to create good looking personal sites who don't want to be bothered with coding at all. The code it creates is never going to be read by a human, and it is not going to be modified by a human or program. iWeb maintains the web-site in the its proprietary format and creates the code from scratch every time.

Therefore it doesn't matter whether iWeb separates style sheets from HTML and nicely formats the code. As long as the code it produces is standards compliant it is "good for the web".

[mpancha]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

I really don't think iWeb is targeted at people who want to learn to code. It's targeted at people who want to create good looking personal sites who don't want to be bothered with coding at all.

True, but when I started my first web site, I didn't want to know how to code either. I wanted to after doing my first one, and then seeing what others did and realizing I needed to get into the code to make my own better. I developed an interest, and many others might too.

As long as the code it produces is standards compliant it is "good for the web".

I'll give apple that much, they did follow standards on iWeb.

[Toyin]

Much like mpancha I learned how to hand code by looking at other sites and looking up code on the web. I haven't hand coded an entire site in about 5 years. I use Dreamweaver mostly and have dabbled with Freeway Pro. I do make manual edits as necessary but that's not what iWeb is about. iWeb will replace iPhoto to make quick and dirty photo albums to share with friends and family. Only now these albums,blogs,..etc won't look so bad.

[Eug Wanker]

Font sizing is a major issue with this app. If the font size differs in the defaults for the particular machine you're running on, the pages get screwed up very easily.

Anyways, create a few pages, and open up IE 5.2, Firefox 1.5, and Safari 2.0.3. All the pages will look a bit different. You have to be very careful when formatting text with this app, or else you run into trouble. ie. Text ends up being underneath pictures, etc.

Then again, you run into similar issues with the pro-coded Apple Support Page. Things get ugly fast as you increase the font size, even in Safari. This is the page with the font size increased just one notch:



The other issue I have is the size of the pictures. They are very big. Not sure why it defaults to such large pix.

But the biggest issue of all is the fact that iWeb cannot export projects in progress for editing on other machines. This seems intentional, but I just cannot understand why.

[cla]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

It's targeted at people who want to create good looking personal sites who don't want to be bothered with coding at all.

Hey! That's me!

[Millennium]

One of the great things about the Mac -at least in the past, if not necessarily the present- is that it takes good technology and makes it accessible. There is no reason that a WYSIWYG app shouldn't be able to produce good, clean code, particularly if Apple is the one writing it. They took a very brave first step toward that with Pages, and if they've stepped back from that, then this truly is a great shame. If people aren't willing to learn to code, then their tools should be producing good code for them. iWeb, while an improvement over its competition, may still fail that test.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Millennium

There is no reason that a WYSIWYG app shouldn't be able to produce good, clean code, particularly if Apple is the one writing it. They took a very brave first step toward that with Pages, and if they've stepped back from that, then this truly is a great shame.

Sorry, but why is iWeb's code not "good code". The only reason I heard so far is that the code is not formatted for human readability, but the code is not intended to be read by humans. So? It is standard compliant code that is produced by iWeb.

[loren s]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Sorry, but why is iWeb's code not "good code". The only reason I heard so far is that the code is not formatted for human readability, but the code is not intended to be read by humans. So? It is standard compliant code that is produced by iWeb.

Well for one wont print text that has been turned into an image. cant view most of thje site on cell phones pda psp and what not.. Heavy pngs images. No way to use it to edit template style sheets for something more robust like a php blog..

[mpancha]

I had a thought last night regarding the "sloppy" code produced by iWeb.

I have this Widget I use called HTML Tidy, you can paste in any HTML code, and it will produce formatted, valid HTML/XHTML/XML code. I don't have iWeb myself, but has anyone tried pasting their iWeb code into HTML Tidy to see if it could be formatted for human readability?

here's a sample of what HTML Tidy can do:

[loren s]

Originally Posted by mpancha

I had a thought last night regarding the "sloppy" code produced by iWeb.

I have this Widget I use called HTML Tidy, you can paste in any HTML code, and it will produce formatted, valid HTML/XHTML/XML code. I don't have iWeb myself, but has anyone tried pasting their iWeb code into HTML Tidy to see if it could be formatted for human readability?

here's a sample of what HTML Tidy can do:

[FONT="Arial Black"]WOW ! [/FONT] I mea W O W ! That did a number to it ! It did a number to it it moved all of the style tags to style data area in the header, t6he code is still messy with to many style tags , but it does separate the style from nontent nicely
check for your self
http://web.mac.com/reflectionoftruth...n/Welcome.html

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Sorry, but why is iWeb's code not "good code". The only reason I heard so far is that the code is not formatted for human readability, but the code is not intended to be read by humans. So? It is standard compliant code that is produced by iWeb.

It is indeed standards-compliant code. So is properly-nested HTML 4 Transitional code which uses no CSS at all and relies heavily on FONT and TABLE tags for layout. Simply validating to a DTD isn't enough to make code "good", as anyone who's ever worked with Perl can tell you.

Good code attempts to reflect the semantics of the page: its structure, not just its presentation. Much of the point of CSS is to aid in this task; it takes the presentation out of HTML, freeing it up to work like it was supposed to. This isn't an issue of human-readability, but machine-readability.

I already said that iWeb's code was an improvement over the kind of stuff produced by DreamWeaver and its ilk, and I meant that. By using more CSS, it takes some important steps toward producing truly elegant code in its Web pages. But it doesn't seem to make much of an effort to go the rest of the way: it's a mess of meaningless DIVs and SPANs, without much apparent thought put in to using meaningful tags when the meanings apply. DIV, SPAN, and TABLE tags all have their place in elegant code, but iWeb is abusing them as catch-all containers.

[Hi I'm Ben]

I'm pretty sure no pro would use iWeb anyway....
Why would you ever make a site based off a template 1000's of other people use? Might as well throw some clip art on your site if you were planning on doing that.

[mpancha]

I'm sure no Pro would use iWeb....

but its one of the things keeping me from purchasing iLife at all.

[Macanoid]

Originally Posted by loren s

Why ?? What is this fascination with code ? I dont code images I compose them visually in photoshop and while taking them on site.

I agree, to some extend at least! I'd say, if you want some kind of Pages/InDesign-like program for the web, have a look at Freeway 4, either the Pro or the Express version. It's really powerful and, as an added bonus, it can do cool Photoshop-like stuff too, right within the program, all without modifying the source material! Creates W3C compliant code too!

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by loren s

Why ?? What is this fascination with code ?

It stems mostly from what the Web is capable of doing. When people stopped using semantic HTML, the Web lost quite a bit of its potential, because computers were no longer able to derive nearly as much meaning from pages in any reliable way. Only now are we starting to recover from that damage, and the current crop of WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is) editors are not helping matters. There is no reason that a WYSIWYG editor must inherently be WYSIATI, but the current ones are, almost without exception. Apple had a chance to change that: Pages actually puts a surprising amount of thought into making sure that semantics and meaning are preserved in its documents. But Apple failed to do this with iWeb, and this is the problem.

I dont code images I compose them visually in photoshop and while taking them on site.

No, you don't code images. But Web pages are not images: they're written works, not visual ones. They're different media, and to make them truly meaningful you need to think about them in different ways. Coding a photograph would be absurd; the meaning of a photograph is only in its visual appearance. But why, then, would you want to code a Web page in a WYSIATI fashion, when so little of its meaning comes from the visual appearance? When you use those WYSIATI editors to make Web pages, you're doing something exactly as absurd as coding an image would be.

[threestain]

Seems I can't help pressing the button too many times...

[threestain]

is iWeb limited to the included themes, or can you download new ones? Seems very limited if its just the ones in the program

[Millennium]

Just to give a quick bit here: look at this iWeb review, written in iWeb. View the source.

What is this:

Code:
<div class="paragraph Body" style="line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none;">

I could have done this with a plain <p> tag. No classes, no style attributes, nothing. Can you honestly call iWeb's code good when it produces such unnecessary bloat?

[Catfish_Man]

I have to wonder how iWeb pages will fair with search engines. Many of them rely on semantically meaningful code to figure out what to index (or so I've heard).