# my new iWeb (site)



## emalen (Oct 10, 2004)

as anticipated, iweb is so easy to use,
clearly i've been working 'really hard' this afternoon.

here is my quick little web site that 'my dog mac' created! if anyone wants to see iweb in action:

http://web.mac.com/myeventworks/iWeb/Site/welcome.html


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## thejst (Feb 1, 2005)

Nice to know that iWeb works so well. 


James


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

Cool!

...

What did you use to make tshirtpulse.com ?


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## ender78 (Jan 23, 2005)

Have you tried to see if it can publish to a non .mac site? I understand there is a feature wrt publishing to a folder which could then be uploaded somewhere.


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## ArtistSeries (Nov 8, 2004)

I'm impressed that the code validates so well. 
I was expecting a lot worse. The code itself is heavy but validated with BBedit only had one error. 

Yay!


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## emalen (Oct 10, 2004)

i haven't tried to publish to a non .mac site, but there is indeed an option to publish to a 'folder' and the site acts for a web domain (where you're uploading to) so the RSS works. So I definitely assume it works. I'll try it later, as I want to start my blog up. www.thetvaddict.com! (coming soon!)


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## emalen (Oct 10, 2004)

i use adobe golive to design all my sites, including tshirtpulse.com


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## adam1185 (Feb 16, 2005)

I think the only thing that won't work if you don't upload to .Mac is the fancy new AJAX slideshows.


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## ender78 (Jan 23, 2005)

adam1185 said:


> I think the only thing that won't work if you don't upload to .Mac is the fancy new AJAX slideshows.


Why would it not worka as long as the underlying stuff is there. I would hope that Apple is not using proprietary server side modules or plugins.


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

Very cool... thanks for sharing! I can't wait to play with the new Apple software toys.


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## macguy.nielsen (Sep 18, 2004)

Hey, this looks very impressive. I love the look and the function of it all.


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## speckledmind (Jan 12, 2005)

Nice.
Scrips images, and they load fast, the movie is great also, I wish it could be scalable ( enlarged ) for viewing.
They annonced iWeb Tuesday, where did you get it so fast ???


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

I want it I want it I want it!


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## comprehab (May 28, 2005)

UCGrafix said:


> Nice.
> Scrips images, and they load fast, the movie is great also, I wish it could be scalable ( enlarged ) for viewing.
> They annonced iWeb Tuesday, where did you get it so fast ???


Apple yorkdale got iLife in already


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## NewGuy (Jun 23, 2005)

Agreed. Great looking site, and good to know everything works as they said it would. Can't wait to try it myself.

p.s. Great looking dog. How big do they get when full grown?


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

UCGrafix said:


> They annonced iWeb Tuesday, where did you get it so fast ???


Apple Store in Yorkdale has it already.


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## emalen (Oct 10, 2004)

not sure how big she'll get, at 8 months she's almost 50 lbs. She is on the small size, I've seen some giant doodles.. 80-90.. i hope she settles at 60, an excellent size for my life!


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Excellent! looking forward to using it!


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## DBerG (May 24, 2005)

Aww your dog is soooo cute!! Great job!


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## mikef (Jun 24, 2003)

Looks great! Can't wait to give iLife '06 a spin...


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## Canuckmakem (Jan 12, 2006)

See... this is why I switched. Looks great and I can't wait to play with it.


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## mikehole (Oct 29, 2005)

awesome, im playing with my iweb now too, im wondering, in your photos section, when you click the the pics and the other window opens, is there a way to customize that? because when my pics open, theres a cheezy mac frame, which i want to get rid of.


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## green_ears (Feb 26, 2005)

Question: can you modify existing templates or design your own? I think if it does allow that, I'm sold. Even if I have to do in text outside iWeb, I just want the added flexibility to create my own unique template.

Thanks!
P.S. Cute puppy.


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## mikehole (Oct 29, 2005)

mikehole said:


> awesome, im playing with my iweb now too, im wondering, in your photos section, when you click the the pics and the other window opens, is there a way to customize that? because when my pics open, theres a cheezy mac frame, which i want to get rid of.




found the answer

one thing i am very dissapointed with is that .mac users get better features for iweb, like slideshow. etc.

so if you upload the site that you created with iweb on to your own server/domain, then the AJAX feature will not be present, and when you click on a picture, instead of the clean javascript window that pops up on the "macthedog" site, if you click a pic on your own domain site, a tacky mac frame will be embedded in the window. 

so basically you have to subscribe to .mac, to take full advantage of this awesome program, even though i spent nearly $100 to purchase iLife.

unless im missing something.


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## redstone (Jan 19, 2003)

I love the music you chose for the movie. You have inspired me to get the new ilife and create a web site for my 9 month old standard schnauzer Jessie. She is almost as cute as your dog!


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## trump (Dec 7, 2004)

nice, looks good

but they were right about the code being horribly messy


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## Vandave (Feb 26, 2005)

Feel free to check my iWeb site that I made this weekend.

www.davelana.com


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## mac_geek (May 14, 2005)

Vandave said:


> Feel free to check my iWeb site that I made this weekend.
> 
> www.davelana.com


Cool. Thanks for the peek, Dave.


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

I love the iWeb + .mac thing so far but I have one quibble... no option for readers to write a response to a blog article? 

Hey VanDave, that parking lot is on the southern end of BCIT toward Deer Lake Parkway between the gravel lots (you're probably NOT on the gravel lot pulling a wheelie ) and the ICBC Claims Centre? I'm having a hard time locating that parking lot in my head. Cool stuff though


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## Vandave (Feb 26, 2005)

dona83 said:


> I love the iWeb + .mac thing so far but I have one quibble... no option for readers to write a response to a blog article?
> 
> Hey VanDave, that parking lot is on the southern end of BCIT toward Deer Lake Parkway between the gravel lots (you're probably NOT on the gravel lot pulling a wheelie ) and the ICBC Claims Centre? I'm having a hard time locating that parking lot in my head. Cool stuff though


I agree, if they had commenting, the Blog part would be a lot better. I wonder if they could offer that as an internet update. I think it would be foolish to wait until iLife 07 as the other Blog sites will win people over.

The parking lot is on the south-west edge of BCIT, running parallel to Willingdon. It is further west of the ICBC building.


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

iWeb is just so convenient though, I think it would be easy to add an "E-Mail comments (please list private or public)" and I could posts on as it's own blog entry as a quote and reply to it. A bit of inconvenience but the only blog sites I've found worth my time are LiveJournal and MSN Spaces. .Mac's 1 GB of online space and ability to store images with a nifty cross-platform compatible slideshow is reason enough for me to switch, even if I have to deal with the reader interaction quibble.


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## Vandave (Feb 26, 2005)

dona83 said:


> iWeb is just so convenient though, I think it would be easy to add an "E-Mail comments (please list private or public)" and I could posts on as it's own blog entry as a quote and reply to it. A bit of inconvenience but the only blog sites I've found worth my time are LiveJournal and MSN Spaces. .Mac's 1 GB of online space and ability to store images with a nifty cross-platform compatible slideshow is reason enough for me to switch, even if I have to deal with the reader interaction quibble.


Yes, it is very easy to use.

I imagine people with lots of web experience are going to dislike iWeb due to its limitations. But, I think this is what most people really want with the exception of a few minor oversights like commenting.

I used to make webpages, but I rarely posted new content because of all the steps involved. iLife makes it so easy and you can produce a clean looking webpage easily.

That would be one way to get around the commenting, but I don't see myself doing it. I'm sure somebody will find a workaround soon enough.


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## ArtistSeries (Nov 8, 2004)

Vandave said:


> I imagine people with lots of web experience are going to dislike iWeb due to its limitations. But, I think this is what most people really want with the exception of a few minor oversights like commenting.
> 
> I used to make webpages, but I rarely posted new content because of all the steps involved. iLife makes it so easy and you can produce a clean looking webpage easily.


What strikes me is the overly heavy code but if it's easy and encourages more to "design" their own sites, I think it will be a good tool.


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## Zeus (May 1, 2005)

Is it me or are the templates overly limiting. Its seems (from the first few iWeb sites I've seen) that there isn't much variety. Can anyone comment?


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

Anything "Easy to use" tends to be overlimitting. If you can code HTML, PHP, etc. by yourself then sure go for it, iWeb is for the rest of us who can't.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Zeus said:


> Is it me or are the templates overly limiting. Its seems (from the first few iWeb sites I've seen) that there isn't much variety. Can anyone comment?


Tough to say, as I personally have only seen theser two sites in this thread. For starters, I wonder is you can have navigation bar on the left, rather than on top.


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## Roni78 (Jan 7, 2006)

That is an awesome demonstration of what imac can do. Plus your dog is the cutest  well done


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## TrevX (May 10, 2005)

Zeus said:


> Is it me or are the templates overly limiting. Its seems (from the first few iWeb sites I've seen) that there isn't much variety. Can anyone comment?


I've got iWeb and have used it for a few hours. There are about a dozen different templates to choose from, and you can modify the look of them somewhat (like the background colors and text size and so forth). The ones demonstrated in this thread used the very basic white template (same template also comes in black, which I prefer), but there are quite a few more that are really nice and look amazing. I am enjoying iWeb immensely, and it really does output beautiful looking pages.

Trev


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## Zeus (May 1, 2005)

Any examples of sites using the nicer templates?


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

Zeus said:


> Any examples of sites using the nicer templates?


Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But all-in-all pretty exciting, I'm ready to plop down $119 for my copy of iLife 06 family pack so me and my better half can start using the new features.


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## rogueToe (Dec 13, 2002)

My impression of websites I've seen so far built with iWeb is that they're slow to load. Anyone else notice that?


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## emalen (Oct 10, 2004)

thanks to everyone for the kind words about my Dog! I really am loving the new iLife and think it's well worth 89 bucks. While I am quite profecient in web design, I tend to get lazy when doing things for myself (as my energy goes into clients who are paying me!) Thus, I'm really enjoying the idiot proofness of iWeb!


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## Wheezy (Mar 3, 2005)

That is such a cute dog! (Nice website too )


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## Makr (Jul 21, 2005)

the sites look professional, which is a rarity in web these days. The lines are clean and are easy to browse and get back to the beginning. It's a good alternative to Golive or the like. even in school i could never create a site with it. it drove me nuts.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

I decided to make the occasion of the arrival of iLife '06 a reason to re-do the family website. The new iWeb version (still in progress) is here: http://web.mac.com/mrushton/iWeb/ while the original version (made with Photoshop, ImageReady and BBEdit) is here: http://homepage.mac.com/mrushton/Sumara/index.html

Questions: (1) When you add to an iWeb site, does it just upload the additional pages, or does it republish everything? (2) If I drop a 4-megabyte image into one of the image placeholders and mask it, does iWeb convert the image to a PNG or something (perhaps not, and perhaps that's the reason for slow loading?)

As noted above, iWeb sites are pretty slow to load (and I'm using a WiFi connection at the local café!). I'll try using my old 56k dialup later this evening, but I suspect it will take awhile...

Getting used to the iWeb process has taken some getting used to - there are some sniggling little things that bug me, others that are just so cool (I *love* the masking feature). Some things many users won't discover unless they are agressively inquisitive (double-click a photo to open the "adjust" palette), and the "hot tips" link under the "iWeb" menu brings you to a webpage at Apple that says: <b>iWeb Hot Tips are coming soon!</b> -  you'd think they'd have prepared that prior to launch, eh?

And the biggest beef I have with iWeb - the stock themes. Either Apple's gonna have to drop a whole lot more into the iDisk "software" folder for members, or somebody better come up with a theme editor soon...

More to come!

M.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Neat!

Regarding themes, I suspect that a cottage industry of third party iWeb AND iMovie theme makers will pop up as they have for Rapidweaver, iDVD and iMovie titles and transitions.


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## SoyMac (Apr 16, 2005)

CubaMark said:


> I decided to make the occasion of the arrival of iLife '06 a reason to re-do the family website. The new iWeb version (still in progress) is here: http://web.mac.com/mrushton/iWeb/The Sumara Family/Photos.html while the original version (made with Photoshop, ImageReady and BBEdit) is here: http://homepage.mac.com/mrushton/Sumara/index.html....


CubaMark - Beautiful web site! Beautiful, excellent, historic, family photos!
You've inspired me to get the family pictures on-line.
The old site looked pretty good, but the new site is definitely superior. 
Good work! :clap:


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## CN (Sep 3, 2004)

I have also just received my copy of iLife '06, and iWeb looks to be very promising for my uses. It will create fairly impressive websites (with a nice unified theme) which are easy to update: just what I was looking for! I am sure we will see many new websites cropping up with <i>very</i> familiar styles (due to the limited number of templates) but you can't expect to get a unique website from a template. I think its awesome!


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## green_ears (Feb 26, 2005)

Zeus said:


> Is it me or are the templates overly limiting. Its seems (from the first few iWeb sites I've seen) that there isn't much variety. Can anyone comment?


The sites I've seen so far have been put together fast with limited modification of the Apple defaults. I've been using iWeb for a few hours and it's pretty flexible: if you take the time to dig a bit. When you display the inspector, fonts, colors, media windows, your options open up before you. Granted, there are limitations: the main one so far is that I can't change the background image and hover/font colors of the entries of the navigation bar on a site. Aside from that, you can change all the colors and fonts, move everything around, insert new shapes, images, text, etc, change the color and background images, change the title bar image, color and height, change the site page width, etc. Now, for a simple site, I think that's ample flexibility to distance yourself from the Apple defaults. Of course, it takes more work and more time. One BIG work/time increase factor is the fact that:

a) You can't copy and paste entirely customized pages (you have to start all your customizations for every single page),
b) You can't design, save and reuse your own templates or modified template.

These lacking features are so blatant and contradictory to the whole concept behind iWeb that I'm sure Apple is probably already working on adding such features to iWeb 2.0 or may have already done so, but not in time for the release.

If you ignore those lacking features, I find iWeb unsanely easy to use and slick. Again, iWeb can produce original pages, but the work involved is a big demotivator to do it.


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## TrevX (May 10, 2005)

CubaMark said:


> Questions: (1) When you add to an iWeb site, does it just upload the additional pages, or does it republish everything? (2) If I drop a 4-megabyte image into one of the image placeholders and mask it, does iWeb convert the image to a PNG or something (perhaps not, and perhaps that's the reason for slow loading?)


Yes, when you Publish after making a change it publishes the whole site again. Really annoying if all you did was make a small change, but it is only 1.0 afterall. I'm sure they'll allow incremental changes in a later version.

As for question 2, yes iWeb will convert most of your images to PNG, especially if you use reflection in the images...and they will be big, nearly tripling in size from what I have observed. I had a welcome back with one JPG on there that was about 128K, but when I added reflection and published it turned out to be a 378K PNG file. Hopefully Apple will include some options for compression in a later release. This is most likely the main reason for the slow loading site. It does use copious amounts of CSS and javascript, but that wont slow down a good browser too much.

Trev


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## jdurston (Jan 28, 2005)

emalen said:


> as anticipated, iweb is so easy to use,
> clearly i've been working 'really hard' this afternoon.
> 
> here is my quick little web site that 'my dog mac' created! if anyone wants to see iweb in action:
> ...


Is the above site down for anyone else?


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

TrevX said:


> Yes, when you Publish after making a change it publishes the whole site again. Really annoying if all you did was make a small change, but it is only 1.0 afterall. I'm sure they'll allow incremental changes in a later version.


Rapidweaver will upload only changed site elements. With the frustratingly sluggish speed of iDisk and .Mac, that's a blessing


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

Got mine going on my shaw webspace.

http://members.shaw.ca/donaldnguyen/

I'll get a .mac membership prolly in March. February's reserved for buying iWork '06.


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## SoyMac (Apr 16, 2005)

*RapidWeaver*

I was impressed by the reviews and enjoyed the screencast, so I put out the bucks for RapidWeaver.
The first thing I did was open it and try to edit the default text on the first page (like replacing the latin placeholder text in any other template).
I could not edit the default text.
Very disappointing and not a good start for a supposedly simple and intuitive web creation software. 

So, I'm waiting to get iWeb...


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Rapidweaver can be clunky at times. There are two modes for using it: edit and p[review modes. Maybe you were in preview mode?

I look forward to giving iWeb a shot, but already having seen a few iWeb produced sites, they're starting to look the same.


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

I guess the question of the day is, is there a market for third party iWeb templates? Let's hope so.


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## SoyMac (Apr 16, 2005)

Macaholic said:


> Rapidweaver can be clunky at times. There are two modes for using it: edit and p[review modes. Maybe you were in preview mode?
> ...


I tried both modes.
RapidWeaver - "Clunky"? You are kind, Macaholic. I am using a different word.
And then I just tried dragging a picture from iPhoto onto the RapidWeaver web page. 
For such a highly regarded application, this is getting ridiculous.
The picture was wildly oversized. No problem, I'll adjust it. So I double-clicked on it and right clicked on it and said magic words and nothing brought up resize controls. 
Okay, so I found a "Media Inspector". Great! But it is locked and I am not allowed to input a size change.
And now I can't even delete the over-sized image from the RapidWeaver web page.

I am _*really*_ looking forward to iWeb.


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## green_ears (Feb 26, 2005)

For those interested, this is a site I made yesterday (I am remaking my original site - http://www.cyberus.ca/~ishmael/ - with iWeb):

http://www.cyberus.ca/~ishmael/Fly%20High/

(FYI, Cyberus isn't the fastest web provider on Earth, but it's free so...)

Essentially, I took one of the "themes" and tweaked it up a bit. The general look and feel is still there because I had to keep some things to maintain consistency throughout the site: Apple won't allow you to remove the frames/shadow effects of a Photo page's picture icons for example. However, I did change the top banner, wallpaper, background color, text color, some fonts and I made a "Gallery" page that links to each of my individual "Photo" pages. I find that some of the things I did could have been automated or facilitated: like putting a bunch of "Photo" pages below one common "Gallery" page because you wouldn't want 100 links in your nav bar if you have 100 "Photo" pages for example. Concerning total site size, I found the source of that problem and it's linked to the lack of a site-wide template issue I discussed in my previous post here: iWeb is a page-centric application. What I mean is that, once you export or upload your site, you quickly see that a seperate folder has been created for every single page of your site. Each folder contains a seperate copy of the template's CSS and pictures, icons, etc. If, like me, you have the same page header image, then that image is copied X times, once in each page's folder. There's A LOT of duplication going on... That includes all the images for the nav bar too btw... This may explain why certain sites are slow to load since the browser can't find common images in the cache as you navigate the site: the web site keeps sending seperate copies of the same images in different folders!

Anyway, this is another obvious weakness.

All that said, this is still WAAAAAAAY better, maintenance-wise, than having to code everything by hand, specially if you don't have access to a PHP/JSP/ASP/SSI server that can handle templating (page includes) to manage common content accross a site.

Lemme know what you think of my site and your own iWeb experiences!

P.S. Please tell me if you know what all those weird symbols are in my text, they don't appear in iWeb or when viewing my site in Safari from my hard drive... Maybe Cyberus doesn't support UTF-8 file encoding?


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Can't delete the image?? Weird.

The aspect of iWeb that I do indeed look forward to checking out is this flexibility of layout I've heard about.


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## green_ears (Feb 26, 2005)

FYI, I found the source of the weird symbols... There seemed to be some weird language setting in the default text iWeb had on the template pages. I made my own text boxes and they are fine. ;oP


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## briMac (Sep 18, 2004)

*May have to try this iWeb thing*

I have been happy using RapidWeaver. I think it may be more robust and customizeable, but I bet the templates in iWeb are better - and I have no technical skills to create my own CSS. I use Rapidweaver for my site http://www.putadapraia.com

Brian


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## AppleAuthority (May 21, 2005)

I've been reading this thread on iWeb, and I like so far what I see (unfortunately I don't have iLife '06 yet). I was wondering if those with iWeb could answer a few questions:

1) When you add a blog entry, does iWeb republish the entire site?
2) Can you add a "styled text" page like in RapidWeaver?
3) How does iWeb sites render on Internet Explorer for PC?


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