Re: [cobalt-users] What are you guys using

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 5/1/00 11:00 AM, alonsog@xxxxxxxxxxxxx at alonsog@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Does anybody have any comments on Adobe GoLive 4+?

We use it to do our layouts.  It doesn't write the cleanest code, that's for
sure, but none of the WYSIWYG do.  Its actually amazingly powerful all
things considered.

It just plain isn't practical to hand-code some things--it takes an
astronomically longer time to hand code complex table structures, for
example. So we use GoLive as a starting point.  All the layouts are done in
it, and it gets passed on to me, who then has to integrate it with the
back-end and database components.  I clear out all the unneeded crap as I'm
doinng this, and we end up with a quick-delivery product that is almost as
good as a completely hand-coded, optimized piece of work.  It saves us a
*lot* of time.  Its a worthy trade-off in my opinion.

Its Javascripting stuff leaves much to be desired, I wouldn't use it for
anything.  I find that I am able to write JS that is anywhere from 5 to 150
times as compact on average.  Seriously, it will build 150k HTML documents
that could be 30 k or less.  But you've got to realize that it is building
script in the 'general' sense... meaning it doesn't know what you are trying
to accomplish.  You may want to do a simple mouseover, but it has to
initialize scripts that do much more, for flexibility reasons--no way around
it really.  This is its single-largest lameness factor.

So overall, its a good product, but you have to realize its weaknesses.  Use
it as a tool to compliment your own skills and you will get the most milage
out of it.

Incidentally, 4.0 was Adobe taking of CyberStudio's GoLive and making it
sort of look like an Adobe product and then shipping it out the door.  That
was a little less than a year ago.  5.0 has been announced and will be
shipping shortly.  I imagine it will be much better than 4.0 and certainly
have much more of an Adobe look and feel (yay!), and be a lot tighter.  I'd
like to see an optimization program that cleans up all the unnecessary crap
before it goes 'production'.

-k