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Apple Working on iWeb Pro?
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I think a Pro version iWeb would be great, personally, though I honestly could see a few different ways they could take said software.
How about not making iWeb so ****ing proprietary so it can be easily edited!!!! ****ing stupid Apple!
Exactly. I wanted to edit one line of code and it wouldn't let me. That was when I decided I could never use iWeb. If I want to edit a single line of code it should let me.
Unfortunately....
If this comes true, I see it as more likely being similar to RapidWeaver or that SandVox software by Karelia.
Basically, something like iWeb except without the close ties to a .Mac account, so it handles regular ftp uploading to anyone's web server (or webdav support to sync changes with a standard web server).
I don't think you'd even want to build off of the iWeb design if you were catering this app to higher-end web developers who hand-code CSS and so forth. (Therefore, you'd think a Dreamweaver competitor made by Apple would have a completely new name... not "iWeb Pro".)
If this comes true, I see it as more likely being similar to RapidWeaver or that SandVox software by Karelia.
Basically, something like iWeb except without the close ties to a .Mac account, so it handles regular ftp uploading to anyone's web server (or webdav support to sync changes with a standard web server).
I don't think you'd even want to build off of the iWeb design if you were catering this app to higher-end web developers who hand-code CSS and so forth. (Therefore, you'd think a Dreamweaver competitor made by Apple would have a completely new name... not "iWeb Pro".)
You do realize that Adobe has screwed Apple a few times don't you?
1. Apple wanted to push Quicktime as a the format for video editing. Adobe wasn't all that interested so Apple bought "Key Grip" from Macromedia and that became Final Cut Pro. Adobe left the Mac video editing arena and just now came back.
2. Adobe tried to jack up Postscript licensing fees for everyone in the late 90s. Apple was so pissed they quickly developed Quickdraw GX as a potential replacement using Truetype fonts. Cooler heads prevailed and QGX was killed.
3. Steve Jobs asked Adobe to do a small video app..Adobe said no thus Apple created iMovie and thus sprang forth iLife.
I've been a Mac user for a long time and trust me. Apple and Adobe's relationship has always been co-opitition. Adobe's a graphics monopoly now. Nothing Apple can do will change that but they can deliver applications that utilize OS X foundations moreso than Adobe who has to keep their apps as cross platform as possible.
Not only do I want to see a
iWeb Pro- CSS editing, WYSIWYG editing, AJAX, Flash,Python and Ruby and the whole nine added in. I want to see Apple do even more.
I want to see them deliver a photo editing application and Illustration hybid app. The photo app should be like Aperture in that it applies non-destructive edits wherever possible. The illustration app should be solid and leverage the excellent graphics capabilities of OS X and OpenGL.
Why? Because Apple needs to further Apple tools and nothing they do is really going to damage Adobe. Apple could craft out a %10 marketshare for a iWeb or iEdit app and Adobe wouldn't blink financially.
If you notice Apple is going heavy on Ajax tools at WWDC 2007 for sessions. That doesn't mean they have their own app coming but I wouldn't be surprised. They just joined W3C The HTML Working Group so they clearly are interested in being at the front lines of HTML evolution
http://webkit.org/blog/98/apple-joins-html-working-group-you-can-too/
There are 6 listed Web technology session listed on the Content and Media tracks. That's actually a lot for Apple. I sense a renewed sense of vigor in this area. I think Apple realizes how important the web is truly becoming with AJAX and other tech.
What better way to show developers how to use the tech than creating a cool Apple app. I think they should price it at $299. That puts it squarely in the competition of Dreamweaver, Softpress Freeway and other bigger apps that need rapid innovation.
The lower end is covered adequately with
Very Basic
Sandvox
Rapid Weaver
iWeb
Mid level
Freeway Express
"roll your own" Textmate/BBEdit, CSSEdit, Safari, Terminal, FTP
Coda
High Level
Dreamweaver with other Adobe add ons.
You see were pretty much stuck with the "Adobe" way at the high level. I'd love to see what Apple can do. Competition is what makes applications better. Most people don't know that Adobe languished on Lightroom until they heard Apple had greenlit Aperture.
http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/tracks/contentmedia.html
1. Adobe served itself all those years by continuing to develop apps for the Mac. It was hardly charity, and Apple's actions are hardly a "slap in the face."
2. If anyone is a goliath, it's Apple. They are 3 1/2 times larger than Adobe, based on today's valuations.
Missed this comment before...
Apple is very involved with video and audio content creation, which Quicktime is a component of, and the web is evolving now towards very rich multimedia content. Adobe has just released it's latest technology for creating interactive video (as has Microsoft), about 7 years behind Apple's Quicktime collaborative efforts (which were too early, were for interactive playback not interactive content creation, and are in need of upgrading!).
So Apple is not starting to compete against adobe in this area. The web is evolving... and options include
1) Adobe: Web standards + 3D PDFs + Flash Video & audio
2) Microsoft: Web standards + Silverlight (wmv integration)
3) Apple: Web standards + Quicktime
It's not a new step - it's a natural next step for all 3 companies.
Adobe is very well positioned - it helps people create printed info and films, and it bought flash, so a hybrid product is great for them. Apple is also well positioned as it has movie & audio and already has interactive Quicktime, but not so much on the web creation side. Microsoft has the lion's share of the browser market & sophisticated web servers and will play that to its advantage, though it changes its media plans fortnightly
iWeb needs to evolve in internet content creation just as FCP does tv content creation.
iWeb is a great start. and has a lot of potential. i'd love to see an advanced WYSIWYG editor by Apple. i think they could pull it off with polish
I agree. They should keep the current service and make it free. Then add a more pro like service for $99 a year. And they should also redo everything while they are at it.
I don't think it's so ridiculous. Apple has the managerial and engineering savvy to do almost anything they set their mind to.
Adobe's trying to steer web development into an integrated all-Adobe set of technologies with Apollo and Flex. Microsoft is trying the same thing with Expression and Sparkle/Silverlight. Adobe's implementation will probably ignore a lot of the technologies web designers want to use (Ruby, Prototype, etc.), and Microsoft's will be half-assed as always. Many web designers still refuse to touch Dreamweaver and wouldn't consider relying on MS.
If the battle is integration, no one does it like Apple; iWeb Pro would integrate with the desktop in particular better than anything Adobe could produce. Adobe has demonstrated again and again how they don't get what makes a really good Mac app.
Plus, the folks at Apple like Ruby on Rails and clean logical mark-up; just look at the source on their own website. They like all the nifty, low-overhead animation Javascript libraries like Scriptaculous that are taking off among the web's trend-setting designers.
Want a concrete example? Compare Apple's brand-new Final Cut Studio page to Adobe's brand-new Creative Suite 3 page.
Apple's page is lean html and CSS with a very attractive implementation of Prototype and Scriptaculous effects and some custom scripts. It's the nicest software product page I've ever seen, tied with the page for Panic's Coda.
Adobe's page is a clunky, slow-loading Flash website. They're eating their own dog food, but it doesn't taste so great.
In other words, Apple gets the Web. They get how to build a website. Adobe doesn't; they got lucky buying Macromedia's Flash technology, and they simply want to push it on everyone by shoving in some Flash anywhere it will fit. Their Apollo stands a good chance of being the Java of ten years ago: full of cross-platform promise, but in reality a dud that requires special OS installation and integration.
One other thing to note: Flash is of no particular advantage for Adobe. Apple has their own implementation, both stand-alone (see Keynote export options) and as a Quicktime layer.
As an aside, I wonder what Apple is using to design their new product web pages these days. They might even have some kind of internal tool already, who knows. The Final Cut Studio page was almost certainly not done in Dreamweaver; it's too nice for that.
Clearly, you don't have a clue what WebObjects is and what it does.
WebObjects was the defacto 3-tier to n-tier Enterprise development/deployment dynamic web publishing development environment for ObjC and later Java EE developers.
It's not a Lasso, NetObjects, etc., solution.
WOF isn't being replaced.
I was wondering when somebody was going to mention Rapidweaver. It's what iWeb aspires to be. Highly recommended.
I have used Rapidweaver, very nice tool for making a template based website rapidly
Still there is more to offer that I'm sure Apple is capable of bringing to life if they decide to.
All excellent points, especially the comparison with Adobe's page vs Apple's. I was impressed with the FCS pages from the minute I hit them but Adobe's pages have always been boring. The company is technically creative but they have little pizzaz and often come off boring.
Dreamweaver CS3 doesn't seem to be a huge update. I'd love to see another look at a high end web auth app. Apple should jump into the fray and I think it's very plausible they will. The good thing is that Apple is promoting tools like Prototype at WWDC so they're giving support down at the grassroots level.
iWeb Pro is something I'd like to see happen.
To me it seems the other way around. In spite of the way Adobe gives short shrift to the Mac the Mac users keep buying Adobe software. Adobe makes little use of the cool things in OS X. On top of that they seem to go out of their way to irk Mac users. Command H should hide a program but with InDesign it has some special meaning. In the new CS3 the close boxes are in the upper right a la windows even though the software is sold on the Mac. I'm not a big user of Adobe software but the feeling I get is that at the executive level Adobe would rather be all windows and grudgingly supports the Mac.
Which cool things are you referring to?
They offer you the option to configure keyboard shortcuts. If not having Command H hide the application bothers you that much, just change the keyboard shortcut to the one you want.
The close boxes on the windows are in the same place as in the finder windows. What you are referring to here is to the panels., and this is only in individual panels. Given the fact that panels are now docked into the right side of the screen, there is hardly a need to have individual panels sitting around and of using the close box.
The panels no longer have the empty title bar they used to have, so design wise, placing the close box on the right, where there is an empty space, is the right choice in this case.
Must be why they are making their Production Studio Suite, which was available only for Windows (AE being an exception), for the Mac. Must also be why in the Adobe Labs, they are releasing all beta versions for both Windows and Mac.
If I am not mistaken, around 40% of Adobe user base is on the Mac, so at the "executive level", there is good reason for them to support the Mac.
Evo
iWeb Pro = Keynote for web development
iWeb is extremely limiting, RapidWeaver has some good points to it, but ultimately I want something that has the flexibility and power of Keynote without the limitations that iWeb currently has. Granted, I could stand to learn more about what iWeb offers, but at the same rate, it still seems rather cumbersome. I was running Keynote extremely effectively inside of 20 minutes of opening the appd for the first time. If Apple creates a product that allows those of us with graphics backgrounds, but not web backgrounds, to learn quickly and create effective sites, I'll be the first in line to buy it. And don't tell me to learn Dreamweaver. For me, it's far from intuitive.
iWeb is extremely limiting, RapidWeaver has some good points to it, but ultimately I want something that has the flexibility and power of Keynote without the limitations that iWeb currently has. Granted, I could stand to learn more about what iWeb offers, but at the same rate, it still seems rather cumbersome. I was running Keynote extremely effectively inside of 20 minutes of opening the appd for the first time. If Apple creates a product that allows those of us with graphics backgrounds, but not web backgrounds, to learn quickly and create effective sites, I'll be the first in line to buy it. And don't tell me to learn Dreamweaver. For me, it's far from intuitive.
Pro Web
I would be all for a more professional templating application. I find the iWeb web pages to be almost too simple and amaturish. The lack of customization makes them very limited but useful for their target audiance I guess.
Some things I would like to see in a Pro version would be corporate templates for intranets, thematic templates for small businesses, and more customizable options. They should also work well with existing dynamic technologies like PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, ect.
I would also like to see an Ajax framework that would give web applications similar affects provided by Core Animation. If RubyCocoa can let Ruby access the Cocoa framework to create desktop applicaitons, how about the reverse? Let us bring innovations on the Mac desktop to the web.
I would be all for a more professional templating application. I find the iWeb web pages to be almost too simple and amaturish. The lack of customization makes them very limited but useful for their target audiance I guess.
Some things I would like to see in a Pro version would be corporate templates for intranets, thematic templates for small businesses, and more customizable options. They should also work well with existing dynamic technologies like PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, ect.
I would also like to see an Ajax framework that would give web applications similar affects provided by Core Animation. If RubyCocoa can let Ruby access the Cocoa framework to create desktop applicaitons, how about the reverse? Let us bring innovations on the Mac desktop to the web.