There’s some hubbub on the ‘net at the moment about how it is easy to use iWeb, part of iLife ’06, to create web sites, blog entries and podcasts/photocasts/videologs. There’s a little bit of complaint that the use of HTML/CSS isn’t completely perfect. Scott Stevenson says “I’m pretty impressed.“. Scott is a very mellow guy, he’s also a very talented web designer. He has some valid complaints so it’s not all one-sided, but overall it’s a very slick piece of software. To be honest it’s the first “user friendly WYSIWYG web page creator” I’ve seen since we had Claris HomePage, Symantec Visual Page and Adobe PageMill. FreeWay comes close but it’s a LOT more expensive. Granted it’s not perfect, granted it doesn’t produce the best and cleanest code but it’s certainly better than anything that has been in the past (and about a bazillion times better than Adobe GoLive).
I’m waiting for my copy of iLife ’06 to arrive any time now.
I’ve also been a fan of iWork for a while. I don’t need to create too many Keynote presentations, but I absolutely love writing in Pages. The fact that it now does calculations means that I can effectively use it for everything I do and retire InDesign for writing quotes and my CalcWidget for adding up numbers and doing the VAT. I used to write a lot and my first two books were written (and I mean written) in FrameMaker. Pages isn’t the same but it really has the same look and feel. My last book was formatted in Create by Stone Design. I’m pretty excited about the improvements. Would the calculations mean I didn’t need to have Excel or Mesa? i wonder!
I’m also waiting for my copy of iWork ’06 to arrive.