Adobe Updates GoLive

Adobe Systems Inc. Monday shipped the latest version of its Web authoring software, GoLive 5.0.

GoLive, available for Macintosh and Windows with complete feature parity, has a host of new features and enhancements, including “360Code,” which enables complete control over any Web source code. 360Code enables users to move HTML pages and JavaScript, including any custom markup language, between the visual environment of GoLive and any text-based HTML editor with no impact on the content and structure of the document’s HTML source code.

Some of the other new features include:

• Tracing Image — allows tracing images to be imported for use in pre-layout of Web pages
• History Palette — keeps a dynamic running list of functions invoked allowing changes to be reversed by stepping backward in the editing history
• On-board Interactive Editor — an enhanced editor for working with audio and video files that enables designers to drag-and-drop any QuickTime object or Flash file and place it visually in a QuickTime timeline without having to calculate and derive complicated coordinate settings
• Dynamic Link for ASP — an extension that provides the ability to seamlessly connect to ODBC-compliant databases without prior programming knowledge and simplifies the incorporation of e-commerce capabilities and dynamic publishing
• Multiple Panes — for viewing individual sections of a site as well as live and conceptualized pages in a site design
• Site Reporting Controller — allows webmasters to run reports like “find all pages within two clicks of my Home Page,” and run a query and see the results in a variety of formats (details list, navigational view, files or hierarchy)
• Workgroup Support for Check-in and Check-out — utilizes the WebDAV standard protocol to allow designers who work in teams to enhance their productivity and streamline collaboration.

Adobe’s GoLive is tightly-integrated with its other Web design tools, including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe LiveMotion, Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects.

GoLive 5.0 goes for about $299. It is also available as part of The Adobe Web Collection, which also includes Illustrator 9.0, LiveMotion 1.0 and Photoshop 5.5. The Web Collection is priced at about $999.

“With the new 360Code capability in GoLive 5.0, we can focus on the information architecture and front-end HTML templates, and leave programmers to write the appropriate code,” said David Lai, partner and chief executive officer of Hello Design, a Web design firm that has endorsed the product. “Collaboration between designers and coders is smoother because GoLive 5.0 doesn’t alter the code, whether it’s ColdFusion, ASP, XHTML or any other language.”