Adobe GoLive 6 for Macintosh & Windows, Visual QuickStart Guide
Shelly Brisbin
Peachpit Press
ISBN 0-321-11222-9
US $21.99 CA $34.99 UK £16.99
476 pages not including index
It’s arguable whether or not a picture is, indeed, worth a thousand words. It’s not arguable that pictures AND a thousand words are the most effective means to communicate the features and methods of any particular software application, especially an application like Adobe’s GoLive 6 which excels at filling your screen real estate with windows and palettes.
The Visual QuickStart Guides from Peachpit Press are the perfect blend of text and illustrations, and Adobe GoLive 6 for Macintosh & Windows, Visual QuickStart Guide, is no exception. Shelly Brisbin, an accomplished writer, speaker, and consultant in the Mac and Internet working world for 15 years, does and outstanding job with this book, her ninth, creating a virtual reference work for any serious web designer using GoLive.
The book’s cover exclaims, “Teach yourself GoLive the quick and easy way! This Visual QuickStart Guide uses pictures rather than lengthy explanations. You’ll be up and running in no time!” Honestly, I cannot vouch for that claim, since I’ve been using GoLive since it was GoLive Pro in 1997, before it became GoLive Cyberstudio Pro and was then subsequently purchased from GoLive, Inc. by Adobe as it attained the venerable version 3 status. But I would hazard a guess that if you are familiar with basic web design and HTML editing, you could spend an hour going through the first few chapters with Adobe GoLive 6 running on your computer and you would have the basic feel of the program.
If you are fairly new to WYSIWYG web page editors, then you should proceed through chapters three through eight to gain the basic knowledge of all the key features and tools that comprise the GoLive arsenal. For the more advanced user, chapters nine through fourteen explain the advanced page building tools, including the handling of cascading style sheets, one of GoLive’s strengths, and multimedia, another strong point that makes Adobe GoLive one of the top choices among professionals. The remaining chapters cover what I consider to be the piece d’resistance of GoLive: it’s site management capabilities, including the new site server, and advanced QuickTime and animation support. The only thing I didn’t find in this book was an appendix with such useful information as a chart of short cut keys, but then Adobe sends this with the application. Still, it would be nice to have in the event a user has lost theirs.
This book is designed primarily for beginning to intermediate users of Adobe GoLive 6 and is not intended to provide an encyclopedic reference for every facet of the program. But if you, like me, tend to skim over the software manuals, lack the photographic memory requisite for remembering every menu command and configuration option, or just need to get up and running quickly with GoLive, you will benefit by this book. Glancing at my bookshelf with six different GoLive specific texts, this one seems to always end up on top, indicating it’s the one I most often refer to.
MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5
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