Educator's Review: Adobe GoLive 6: Web Power Tool
Ramapo College of New Jersey participates in a federal grant— PT3, Teaching
Teachers to Teach with Technology—under which the faculty is learning
to create their own Web sites. As a result, they needed a Web-design package
that would allow them to integrate all types of Web sites built and designed
in every way imaginable. The school also wanted to integrate the latest
technologies into these projects using cross-media workflows and to be
able to teach essential skills in one uniform environment to empower the
rapidly growing community of Web authors.
The staff and students feel comfortable with the GoLive program from
Adobe because it allows the visual design and page layout techniques used
in other programs to be easily transferred to the users' Web projects.
Entire sites can be conceptualized and diagrammed visually. These diagrams
are then made live as part of the Web-site design.
Pages made up of templates and components—objects composed of HTML snippets—make
revision and site-wide changes simple. If a change is made in a component,
all the pages containing it are immediately updated. GoLive ships with
a set of complete site templates, which is great for allowing users to
explore page mechanics as they build their own projects.
To help build enhanced Web pages containing floating boxes and Dynamic
HTML, GoLive uses a timeline editor which is similar to that found in
other Adobe applications. In addition, a full QuickTime interactive authoring
environment is included.
For incorporating JavaScript, GoLive ships with over 75 different JavaScript
"Actions" that are built right into the interface. Assigning and configuring
these is done through GoLive's site inspector, the heart of the application.
For purists who like to hand-code their JavaScript, GoLive allows its
Actions code to be stripped clean of proprietary tags so that custom code
can be edited efficiently through the built-in JavaScript editor.
New in GoLive 6 is the addition of variable support to Smart Objects,
Adobe's technology for allowing native graphics files to be re-sampled
and adjusted to fit the Web designer's needs. With variable support, the
author can open an Adobe graphics image in GoLive, access the text layer
as a variable, and generate a new graphic containing the modified text.
For those needing quick text banners layered into SWF files, these variables
can be controlled through Adobe's LiveMotion 2.
Version 6 now includes greater built-in support for workgroups and ships
with a new Web Workgroup Server CD. If you combine GoLive's features with
its tight integration and open support for industry-standard technologies,
availability for both Mac and Window's newest operating systems, and generous
CD resources, you have the basis for a Web curriculum that not only helps
to teach effective Web design but also provides the latest tools for teaching
Web development in a variety of environments.
Steve Adler works with Ramapo College of New Jersey Consortium for
Improving Teacher Training in Technology. He also teaches Web design with
Adobe GoLive at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is Web
coordinator and Staff Developer for the Northern Valley Regional High
School district in Bergen County, N.J.
About the Author
Steve Adler works with Ramapo College of New Jersey Consortium for
Improving Teacher Training in Technology. He also teaches Web design with
Adobe GoLive at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is Web
coordinator and Staff Developer for the Northern Valley Regional High
School district in Bergen County, N.J.