GoLive CyberStudio 3.1
Professional Edition
Company: GoLive Systems, Inc.
Estimated Price: $549.99
http://www.golive.com
As the Internet grows and becomes more popular, websites are becoming increasingly complex and feature rich. Naturally, this is a good thing for all of us web surfers, as we’re now able to find more of the information we want. It’s also true that websites are easier to navigate than they were just a short time ago.
What has not become easier, however, is creating these feature-rich websites. With Dynamic HTML, mouse rollover action graphics, streaming audio, JAVA applets, and more, creating web pages has become a skill akin to programming. Not only do you take all the skills you learned yesterday into a new project, you have more skills to learn tomorrow. Fast paced, innovative, and complex websites take a lot of time to create. Thankfully, GoLive Systems, Inc. has provided webmasters with an application to help create complex websites quickly and cleverly.
GoLive CyberStudio 3.1 is a major step toward true WYSIWYG website authoring. More than any other product in its class, this third version of the popular software package adds many new features, a better overall handling of entire website management, and more of the latest technologies webmasters are clamoring for.
History
I first started using GoLive CyberStudio when it was released as version 1.0. I immediately fell in love with the program, though it did show signs of a first-run release with many bugs and shortcomings. Version 2 of the software improved site-management handling, and corrected many of the shortfalls and bugs that I found hindered version 1.0. Version 3.1 users will find those bugs largely eradicated, as well as many new and improved features added.
There still remain some quirks, though they are few. For some reason, FTP uploading has not been very reliable, and I find it easier to simply use the shareware program Fetch to handle my FTP work and let GoLive CyberStudio 3.1 handle the task of creating websites. I was pleased to learn that when you make changes to a entire website, CyberStudio 3.1 only uploads to the server supporting the files that have changed. This feature will save you time and brain cells trying to remember what files changed and which have stayed the same.
Finder Integration
A really nice feature is the Finder integration. When you move a file around in the Site Management window, the files are physically moved around on your hard disk. The reverse, however, is not true. I tested this by creating two documents, both in the same folder. I used a text link to point from each document to the other. The link would correct itself if I moved one of the documents to a different folder via the Site Management window, but if I quit the application and moved a linked document to another folder (within the site-management folder), the link was lost when CyberStudio re-opened.
Layout
One of the main features I use the most in CyberStudio is the Layout Grid.
The Layout Grid allows you to
precisely layout graphics, text, and
any other feature you want on your
website in the exact position of your
choice. No other program I have used comes close to this feature, though with CyberStudio, the placement is not always consistent. Layout always looks great in the “Preview” mode inside CyberStudio, but can look much different when you preview the page in a web browser. In essence, after you have laid out items where you want them, CyberStudio creates a HTML Table to accommodate your layout. If you open a CyberStudio created web page in another web page authoring program such as Claris Homepage, you will see the Table that CyberStudio created to match your design. In fact, web pages created in CyberStudio are pretty much unusable in other web page authoring programs. The other programs are simply not equipped to understand the design layout CyberStudio creates. A good illustration of that can be seen in the picture below…
Netscape / Explorer / CyberStudio
Besides looking different in Claris Homepage 2.0 (which didn’t even display the correct background color), layouts in CyberStudio don’t always appear quite as designed in the two major web browsers, Netscape’s Navigator/Communicator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (any version). To use CyberStudio 3.1, you must have both browsers installed on your computer so that you can check layouts in both programs. Of course, you also should have access to a PC, so that you can also preview your website and preview what PC users will see. I found many web pages created with CyberStudio look great in both Explorer and Navigator on my Mac, but not so good when viewed on a Wintel machine using the Windows versions of the same browsers. Of course, you also have to contend with America Online’s browser, which tends to produce the worst results. (Note: That seems to be addressed quite well with AOL’s 4.0 software.) This is not just a CyberStudio problem, however. Many good looking websites look a little less ‘nice’ on a Windows PC.
Mouse On Over
Creating “mouse over” animations with CyberStudio is very simple. For instance, you may have a button that looks normal until you place your mouse over it, at which time it may glow or change colors. To do this in a conventional web page authoring program can take hours. With CyberStudio, the task is easy to accomplish.
Dynamic HTML
Dynamic HTML (DHTML) is a new format that only 4.x browsers can take advantage of. What is it? Well, let’s say you wanted to create some animation on your website’s main page logo. Would you like to have it move around up there? With Dynamic HTML, you can accomplish that without using large graphic files (such as animated GIFs). Using floating boxes for easy drag and drop, and Netscape’s Javascript and Microsoft’s JScript languages, you can easily animate your website and have it work in both browsers.
Manual
Any application as complex as CyberStudio 3.1 needs a good manual. Mac users are notorious for never reading manuals, but when you invest this much money into a program, you would be foolish not to. GoLive Systems has included a well put together manual to help you get the most out of your purchase. Weighing in at over 700+ pages, the book is written with every type of user in mind, from the beginner to the seasoned professional. It not only includes a very nice Index and Visual Index, but also a great visual table of keyboard shortcuts.
Also included are: A 130+ page manual titled “Using WebObjects with GoLive CyberStudio”; A 45+ page tutorial book that covers basic information; and a hard paper reference guide listing shortcuts that folds into a pyramid. Very helpful, and very thoughtful on GoLive’s part. Bravo!
Ease of Use
While CyberStudio 3.1 may have many features, the layout is very simple to learn. Floating palettes show you the most common activities, and their icons are clearly representative of their functions. When you position your arrow over a object in a palette, the name of that object is displayed in the same box.
Drag and Drop is fully supported, though with all the palettes, screen clutter is a problem. Fortunately, you can close all the palettes to clear some working space.
System Requirements
GoLive has created a great program in CyberStudio. Version 3.1 adds several new features and has corrected nearly all the bugs of previous versions. The competition, in this case Macromedia’s Dreamweaver 1.2 and NetObjects Fusion 3.0, simply fall short of the goal that CyberStudio has reached. While both Macromedia’s Dreamweaver and NetObjects Fusion offer many of the same benefits as CyberStudio, they fall short in many of the areas that CyberStudio excels.
If you want a powerful, intuitive, and feature rich program to help you create the best website you can, the choice is simple: GoLive CyberStudio 3.1.
Tim Robertson
publisher@mymac.com
Websites mentioned:
http://www.golive.com
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