DreamWeaver MX vs. GoLive 6.0

[Andrew LaGow]

A couple of years ago I bought Dreamweaver 3.0 and in spite of its infamous learning curve, very much liked it. At the time it seemd a better choice for me personally than GoLive. I was pretty upset that Adobe had purchased GoLive Cyberstudio from GoLive (I own a license to version 3.1.1--the last version before Adobe bought it), but have since come around since it seems like Adobe does indeed "get the Web."

I've been reading various reviews lately and I am nearly swayed that GoLive 6.0 is a superior product over DreamWeaver MX. Does anybody who has read the specs have an opinion, or is it too early to tell?

Andy

[perrykibler]

i moved from dw v.4 to golive 5 (the first decent version in my opinion) and have always enjoyed the ui from adobe more. I still find the ui much more intuitive from golive rather than dw. i haven't tried mx yet but am pretty happy with golive 6 - have been using full time since it was released. it seems to me that macromedia is catering more and more to windows environments - both in their ui and their manuals and which programs are or are not released for macs. which isn't a huge deal, but you have to take into consideration which user group gets priority. golive is still mainly a mac app ported for windows, and macromedia seems to me (granted i haven't used it in a year or so) to be the opposite.

so i guess what i'm saying is that golive 6 is (in my opinion) better than dw. 1. the (free) workgroup manager is a fairly robust workgroup server 2. shoot and click links (i think golive is still unique in this) are very nice 3. it writes pretty reliable code 4. smart objects with ai, psd, liv, files - and this is my main recommendation. it is really helpful to be able to live edit psd txt from golive or edit original and pop into ai and then have your golive file auto update when you go back.

if you got the new ps7 - watch the total training video you got on that cd. at the end they have a golive demo of sorts, i think that this will sway you. hope that helps

[Andrew LaGow]

One of the problems we had with CyberStudio 3.1 was its tendency to write (and re-write) proprietary code. It drove us nuts, to the point where we'd have to take it into BBEdit just to strip out the fool codes and write proper HTML.

Is that fixed in GoLive?

Andy

[perrykibler]

I know enough html to get into trouble, that's about it. the programmer who cleans up one of my sites says that all gui editors (dw and golive) screw up code to some degree, but from what i've read elsewhere if you set your preferences to strip the code when uploading, it should be relatively clean.

i do know that i design some fairly complex sites using slices and tables (i don't use the layout editor) and 90% of the time it is wysiwyg. the other 10% i have to manipulate the table cells to some degree. (but i only test ie and nav 4.0+ on pc and mac).

as far as proprietary...i know you're not the first to bring that up and you might find a more educated answer on the adobe forums for golive, but I couldn't really say. to me golive 6 code looks like the stuff i get back after my stuff has been hand coded. a little bit more jumbled, but more or less the same stuff.

i was playing with dweavermx today and have reaffirmed my suspicions that macromedia is gearing more and more towards a windows world. i understand that macs don't have quite the dominance in web as they do print, but i have to wonder if mm feels that perhaps adobe has tapped the mac niche pretty securely and is going after a different audience.

i'm pretty sure adobe is soon to be releasing a golive trial, you might give it a whirl and see what you think. if you just force yourself to learn it over a saturday or something on an extracuricular site, you might like it. surprisingly, they've actually worked on their customer service too and if you get a hold of the right person over there (try lynn grillo to start) you might be able to score a demo cd. just a thought.

[lerkfish]

Originally posted by baryonyx
One of the problems we had with CyberStudio 3.1 was its tendency to write (and re-write) proprietary code. It drove us nuts, to the point where we'd have to take it into BBEdit just to strip out the fool codes and write proper HTML.

Is that fixed in GoLive?

Andy

in the preferences, you can ask it to use only strict html coding instead of Golive coding. What you would want to avoid is using the Golive grid instead of tables, since those don't translate as well to basic html.
Use tables, and pay attention to golive warning flags when you check your page (it'll alert you if your code wont work with level three browsers, for example)

Golive 6 seems better to me than DW4, but since I've been using the golive since it was a cyberstudio, this might just be simply UI preference.

[JayBee]

Hmm. Downloaded the preview release of DWMX this morning, and can't say I'm impressed so far (though it IS a preview release, and I haven't properly run it in yet...)

First thing that hit me is that it is s l o o o w. Like a 486. I'm running a 733 G4 with 512meg of RAM. I shouldn't have DW4 running faster in Classic than DWMX in carbon... I'm assuming this is a "preview release" issue. If not, then I'm seriously worried.

Second thing - the UI is big and clumpy. I like Aqua, and I like DW's interface. But in the amalgamation, everything appears to have increased in size and clumsiness. I'm working at 1280 x 1024. My workspace should NOT feel cramped. It doesn't in Classic, why does it here?

Part of the reason, I suspect, are window drop shadows. They kind of force a gap round the window, so the window FEELS like it's taking up more room than it really is.

Anyway, these are just first impressions. I'm not a massive fan of the MX panels idea - why more apps don't work like mail and have slide-out "drawers" is beyond me. Having a drawer in the site nav window that you could "drop" panels into would be ideal. Hmm. Probably wouldn't be too carbon-friendly though.

Looks like I'm sticking with DW4 and BBEdit (!) till we see Dreamweaver Cocoa :)

mmmmm... cocoa... marshmallows...

(don't mind my ranting and raving - I've been wrestling with PHP and a web-based MySQL interface all day :P)

[Phil St. Romain]

Mr. OCD, here, wanting to be sure this gets included in the Software News and Reviews forum.

Carry on . . . :)

Phil

P.S. I've not used Dreamweaver with OS X, but have had a very good experience with Golive 6.0.

[Andrew LaGow]

I went ahead and upgraded to GoLive 6.0. What the heck--99 bucks.

The first and only problem was upgrading from CyberStudio. I got a dialog telling me only serial numbers from versions 4 and 5 would be accepted. This got me worried, but a quick call to Adobe solved the problem.

[I'd just like to take this opportunity to go on a little about Adobe. I've run into people who have sworn off Adobe because they claim Adobe's customer service is no good. I have always had the opposite experience. No complaints about these folks at all. The only "problem" now is the fact that since Adobe has been so good about moving their software to OS X they now own me. InDesign, Photoshop, GoLive, Illustrator--cripes! They've got me. But the quality of their software speaks for itself.]

Anyway, I fired up GoLive and it was like coming home again. One thing I always loved about CyberStudio was its excellent FTP browser. It's still there, with all the wonderful Finder integration it always had. I'm looking forward to roaming around a little more...

Andy

[meancode]

even though GoLive was carbon before DW was, i stuck with DW4. i think GoLive has the same problem that some other good apps have, they are very very click intensive. GoLive is one of those apps - you click a hell of a lot. also GoLive even to this day, is still a graphic designers tool, that was the original pledge when it was GLCS, and it still is.

i know a hell of a lot about web languages, and DW lets me use them. GoLive tryes very hard to hide that stuff away in a corner. now that DW MX is out, i am more than happy i waited. there are nested templates now, how cool is that. im not going to go into how i think the feature set of DW MX is soo much better than GoLive 6. im just going to say DW MX is more tuned for geeks who know code, and know design as well. one example, you can write these killer extentions from scratch for DW, to do anything you need automated. then put the UI you want on it, and vuola, you have a user friendly interface for something that is not very user friendly.

although i will say that GoLive is coming around in the extention dept. they now finally have a site dedicated to them, just like the DW Exchange.