RouseWorld | Main -- Is it 2006 already?

Is it 2006 already?

Yes, I haven't posted in a while, I guess I just have been busy (and by busy I mean "lazy"). But a lack of posts doesn't mean I've been staring blankly at the wall, I have been dinkin' around with the guitars and work and stuff.

I've also recently been messing around with Apple's iLife 06, which includes the iWeb application for creating web pages. It's a pretty neat package, you can easily grab things from the new and improved GarageBand, iMovie and iPhoto applications to put on your website.

Check out what I've done so far.

The only thing I don't like so far is the so-so integration with Apple's .Mac service.

Yes, with iWeb you've got one-click publishing to your .Mac account. But there isn't an easy way to integrate any existing pages from .Mac's built-in website building tools. The .Mac stuff uses "homepage.mac.com" addresses and iWeb uses "web.mac.com" addresses, and even though both sets of pages exist on your iDisk, they are in separate folders and I can't even see a way to redirect from .Mac to the iWeb pages. It would neat if iMac and iWEeb were more aware of each other, or iWeb could import and start handling your existing .Mac pages.

I also don't see any way to get a .Mac counter on a iWeb page, but that is a minor point. But it would be nice for Apple to have a few drop in scripts for counters and things that would work on both iWeb and .Mac pages.

Another quibble with iWeb itself is that it tends to not encode special characters, like bullets into HTML entities. I haven't looked at the site using a MS Windows computer, so I don't know if that is a problem.

But overall I'm happy with the new iLife, the other applications in the package have more features and seem more polished than last year's versions and iWeb is a good addition to the package.