Apple's iWeb

[Walt Calahan]

Just got Apple Computer's new iLife '06 software bundle. In it is a wonderful program for designing web sites called iWeb.

The program is limited in scope compared to full featured web design programs, but working in its limits, it makes a nice web site. Once you've created a site in iWeb, the design can be imported into GoLive or other full featured programs. You don't have to have an iMac account to publish the site to the internet.

Here's my latest web site design to promote my photography so you can see how I got iWeb to work for me.

http://www.walterpcalahan.com

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Walt,

Looks great and thanks for the link. Your work is beautiful but I could not enlarge the iamges when I clicked on them. Congrats on the lovely work and site.

[Mark Woods]

Hey Walt,

I built my website with iWeb. I really like the program. Here's the link to my site: http://markwoods.com/

Enjoyed your site. Great work!

MW

[Marko]

Very nice looking site, Walt. And beautiful work indeed!

It's a little slowish, but otherwise worked fine for me in Safari. iWeb looks like a nice little web app for personal homepages and such, and it is even valid XHTML with tableless layout. The only gripe I might have with it - and that's speaking professionally, not as a user - is that it writes all styles inline instead of using a separate stylesheet. But make no mistake, it is only a little clumsy, but it is technically valid and it seems to be much better than anything else in its class.

And you really squeezed the most out of it.

[Walt Calahan]

Eric

Try again. I had to up load the slideshow html again, and you might have got stuck when the up load was happening. I forgot to change the default background color of the slideshow from Apple's white to a more pleasing, to my eye, gray.

Mark

Thanks for your URL. I remember looking at your site before to learn about your film career. You've master iWeb better than me by getting photos to work as buttons to lead the viewer to another page. Something I want to do later. Enjoyed your work very much.

Thanks to both of you for the kind works about my work.

[Ron Marshall]

Great site, but quite slow to load the thumbnails on my computer (DSL).

[Walt Calahan]

Ron

I'm using DSL also, and the new design loads about the same speed as my old site. I do appreciate the feedback 'cause a friend with a cable modem said the same thing.

Referring to Marko's posting about the way iWeb writes its code, that might be the problem. Since I'm not a coder, I have no idea. I'm forced to use the program the way Apple makes it.

Perhaps future updates to iWeb will speed things up. Also the first time I opened my site the browser took some time putting it into cache. After that it picked up speed on return visits.

Again, I'm just speculating on the "why's" 'cause I don't really know why you experienced a slow down.

At least people who can't hire a professional designer can use this inexpensive program for a simple site (iLife in which iWeb is bundled is only $79!).

[Frank Petronio]

The slideshow isn't valid code but the rest is - this might be the kind of app my daughter needs - thanks for the tip.

[Marko]

Walt,

Another thing to pay attention to is the image sizes, especially for thumbnails. There's a lot of them on a single page and every little bit counts. With the size you have, your thumbnails shouldn't be more than 4KB each, less if possible. Thumbnails are there for indication only, and they should be "squeezed" compression-wise as much as possible. Large images are another matter, but people should expect big files there.

[Walt Calahan]

Marko, thanks for that tip. I'll resize the thumbnails in PhotoShop and reload to the site. That should speed thing up.

Frank, isn't the slideshow opening for you? Or is the code not up to a true programmer's specs?

iWeb is definitely an amateur web design tool. Great for kids and people like me with limited brain power for computers.

[Mark Woods]

Hey Walt,

If you want the thumbnails to link to something, open the iWeb Inspector. Click on the arrow on the far right. Select whatever you want to use to represent a link, select it, then click on the box "Enable as a hyperlink," and set your link. It's a great program.

MW

[Frank Petronio]

The slideshow works fine, it just doesn't pass the validation, which in reality is not going to stop anyone from looking at your photos.

I am probably going to get ILife myself, it seems like a good solution for things like a website for my daughter's paintings, etc.

I am not a real web geek, I just like to direct. I can't handcode worth beans and I hire it out. The truth is I make a ton of mistakes with every website I touch...

[Walt Calahan]

Mark

That's the tip I was looking for. As I work on more personal projects, I wanted to present more than one linked to the on "Projects" page. Trying to keep the levels of pages to a minimum. I have a project of LF and medium format pinhole work shot in Washington DC that I hope to add in the future. Also shooting local rodeo using very long (for rodeo that is) exposures to capture the poetry of the motion. That's violent poetry. Grin.

You've solved my problem.

Best.

[JohnnyV]

Might want to check out the ebook "Take Control of iWeb, iLife '06 Edition" for $10.00

http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/iweb.html

I've had very good luck with the Take Control series.

I have iWeb and the above TC ebook but haven't had time to use it.

[sunposition]

I beleive iWeb has problems optimising image size, at least it did when I looked at version 1.

A great program I have used for years now is Freeway, it has just been updated to Version 4 which unfortunately has also given users a few bugs to contend with, but it is still a great program without the complex interface of other similer programs. Comes in two flavours, Express and Pro.

Check it out at:http://www.softpress.com

BTW, it is currently a Mac only program.

Hope this helps