Adobe Systems Inc. Monday
announced Version 4.0 of Adobe GoLive, the first cross-platform version of
the professional visual Web design and publishing tool acquired with GoLive
Systems Inc. last month.
The tool, formerly known as GoLive CyberStudio, will
be released in March for the Macintosh and in the second quarter for the Windows platform. Adobe said it will release updates for both platforms simultaneously in the future.
The market for Abobe GoLive is more in focus with Adobe’s prime customer
base of professional graphics and Web professionals. They bill it simply as
a “visual layout tool with robust site management capabilities”, but in a
discussion with company spokespeople last week, they said they’ve added a
virtual feast of design wishlist features, such as:
- The ability to edit URL links in Flash animations, Quicktime movies, and Acrobat PDF files even if you don’t have the original creator applications
- HTML-based layout grid that uses optimized dynamic tables for direct
pixel-accurate layouts with third and fourth-generation browsers or generation of fixed manual tables if desired. - Can read existing pages with fixed tables and convert them to dynamic
tables if desired - Users can drop objects onto page with mouse or place them with X and Y
coordinates directly - Full support for frames and CSS, including showing real-time effects of
style sheet changes and saving of styles as external CSS files - GoLive keeps a database of your preferred indents, display preferences,
and line endings (i.e. Unix, Mac, or Windows style of CR/LF characters) and
has implemented it in XML - DHTML/layers support for actions and timeline animations
- Built-in HTML editor
- Built-in syntax-checking JavaScript editor
- Built-in basic QuickTime editor
The site management features include:
- The abililty to import existing sites
- Perform “smart syncing” between a site on a server and a local mirror
- Full parsing of HTML links for internal and external link checking
- Draws tree structure of site that can be zoomed in or out on the fly
- Displays all assets used on a given page
- A page rendering engine that shows what your page will look like on
different browsers on different platforms
On top of all this, they’re planning an aggressive pricing structure and
excellent upgrade policies for current GoLive and PageMill customers.
