Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iLife, Surveys and Polls
My other issues with iWeb
Adding to the
small pile of gripes with the new technology Apple is using with iLife 06, such as complaints about iWeb's bloated CSS or RSS standards and photocasting, I just developed a
beef that I haven't really seen mentioned yet: the crummy new URL scheme for iWeb sites, both on and offline.First of all, in the olden day the .Mac "homepage" did't seem to be case sensitive, as in: homepage.mac.com/user will get you to the same place as /User. iWeb is a bit pickier, as a wedding site I'm working on lives at web.mac.com/myuser/iWeb/Wedding/, but /wedding/ will result in a 404 error. Yes, a friend already reminded me that "Unix = case sensitive," but I don't care. While this could be labeled a minor complaint, my fiance and I have plenty of family members who aren't too hip on these computer thingies. They're going to get confused by something silly and minor like this, and I'm sure our relatives aren't the only ones.
Next on my list is the URL scheme itself. web.mac.com/user/iWeb/sitename? Could that get any less friendly? Granted "homepage.mac.com" might seems a little unprofessional to some, but this new scheme feels pretty cumbersome and just plain ugly. Why couldn't we simply have web.mac.com/user and web.mac.com/user/othersites, Apple?
Last but not least is how the new sites are organized in a user's iDisk. Old homepage sites still live in iDisk/Sites/, while shiny new iWeb sites live in iDisk/Web/Sites/iWeb/sitename. Nevermind a discussion about how needlessly buried that file structure is - I'm sure this dichotomy of old/new sites and content is going to confuse plenty of .Mac customers if they ever want to get at any of those files, or make a backup of their sites or entire iDisk.
But enough about my gripes, what do you guys think: do iWeb and its underpinning .Mac support have more issues besides CSS and standards? Let's hear your thoughts.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Josh said 5:44PM on 2-06-2006
I'm actually pretty pleased with iWeb.
Most of the complaints I've read reflect people trying to use iWeb for jobs better suited to Dreamweaver et al.
I just finished working with a friend to launch a simple business site: http://www.experiencerhythm.com.
iWeb was excellent for the job.
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Ian Charles said 6:12PM on 2-06-2006
More bitching
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moth said 6:15PM on 2-06-2006
I really hate the lack of comments. There are ways to get around this, like iComment, but they don't always work.
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Jim MacCormaic said 6:20PM on 2-06-2006
1.
This whole thing about iWeb URLs being case-sensitive is a great big red herring as far as I'm concerned. Are you seriously telling me that people still type an address into their browser, or that people pass on their site URLs by word of mouth? Surely most notification of how to reach a web site is given in an email message, with clickable or copy/paste URLs, which can then be bookmarked for later use.
2.
You've made an unfair comparison with regard to the depth of the iWeb site structure within the user's iDisk. If HomePage sites are at iDisk/Sites, the iWeb ones are at iDisk/Web/Sites/iWeb, one level higher than you misleadingly suggest. Your talk about backups is off the mark also. Firstly, if you're performing a backup of your entire iDisk, what difference does it make where folders and files are located? Second, it isn't appropriate anyway to backup your iWeb sites from the iDisk at all. What needs to be backed up is the Domain package which is stored on the home machine at ~/Library/Application Support/iWeb/Domain.sites, since iWeb editing is done locally rather than via a web interface, and this is the package which iWeb uses to access the required information.
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Jonathan Baldwin said 6:23PM on 2-06-2006
Quick workaround is to use tinyURL but that's just fudging the issue.
Apple should:
1. Set up their server so that unresolvable URLs are tested against available pages and if it looks like the request can be resolved with a simple case change, offer that up instead.
2. Change their 404 page to have a useful tip like 'The page you requested does not exist. It's possible you typed the address wrong. Did you mean: ' and then list a few likely candidates from the site's structure.
3. Work out that web site creation is not just about making it easy for the people who make the sites, but for the people who visit them too.
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David Anderson said 6:42PM on 2-06-2006
.Mac would greatly increase in value if Apple support custom domain names. Apple designs their consumer software for the lowest common denominator user (of the software, not the browser). But for the slightly more advanced user (even just slightly), I see no reason they couldn't make it simple for my .Mac webspace to BE http://www.skipandmadge.com and for me to be able to configure where within my webspace is my iMac blog (for example).
And for even more advanced users, mysql+php support would be sweet.
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Chase said 6:46PM on 2-06-2006
I haven't had a chance to use it because my MacBook Pro has yet to ship. But when it does, oooh buddy, I'm gonna be case-sensitivizing so fast. Seriously though, it is a first version, I imagine around v3.0 it'll be usable.
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Dan said 6:49PM on 2-06-2006
1. .Mac should simply use CNAME records for users, and let them choose their own. For instance, dan.mac.com, joe.mac.com, etc. Newsvine does this very nicely for thousands of beta users, I am sure .Mac can figure it out!
2. It is not that hard to set whatever webserver .Mac is using to be case insensitve at a certain level, maybe there are issues with this. In that case, they should allow users to have customizable 404 pages, and therefore you can do simple 301 redirects for any case-related mis-directions your visitors might have.
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jh said 6:50PM on 2-06-2006
One solution to make it slightly less lame is to put an index.html w/ meta refresh tag that forwards the visitor to http://web.mac.com/[user]/iWeb/. This file just needs to be placed in your iDisk's /Web/Sites/ directory. This allows for linkage to simply web.mac.com/username to function.
Code example to save you some time (placed within the head tags): ()
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jh said 6:55PM on 2-06-2006
One solution to make it slightly less lame is to put an index.html w/ meta refresh tag that forwards the visitor to http://web.mac.com/[user]/iWeb/. This file just needs to be placed in your iDisk's /Web/Sites/ directory. This allows for linkage to simply web.mac.com/username to function.
Code example to save you some time (placed within the head tags and formatted appropriately with 's): meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://web.mac.com/[username]/iWeb/"
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lakiolen said 7:03PM on 2-06-2006
iWeb had issues with quotes and accented characters when I published to a folder and then scp'd it to a unix server.
Not sure if that's the Mac's fault or the Unix's fault, though.
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John Henry Brown said 7:13PM on 2-06-2006
I agree the URL problem is annoying. I solve that and the backup problem by publishing to a file and uploading the file to .mac manually. That way if I make a small mistake I can edit one page on my hard disk by hand and upload it. While I'm at it I swap out the slideshow for this one, which is better than Apple's as far as I'm concerned.
www.codemanic.com/blog-archives/000084.html
I have been dropping iWeb folders in the iDisk/Sites/ folder and that works as expected. I just tried dropping a folder in iDisk/Web/Sites/ and that works, giving a nice, clean web.mac.com/username/ address. So manual publishing solves some URL problems.
Just don't get me started about iWeb's use of Colorsync profiles...
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Austin Vance said 7:32PM on 2-06-2006
My largest gripe is you there is no easy way to work on the same site on more than one computer. Ohter than that iWeb is really easy.
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Loki Capret said 7:38PM on 2-06-2006
I would like for your iWeb site to be able to support the new photocasting RSS. Instead of having to lay out a page of photos, why can't I just point it to one of my photo albums and have it populate automatically?! RSS capable browsers should also be allowed access to photocast. My parents haven't made the switch yet and one of the main reasons I got iLife '06 and a .Mac account was to be able to publish photo albums that they could quickly subscribe to in FireFox on their PC so I wouldn't have to continuously email them new photos!
I also uploaded my iWeb site to a non .Mac server and had serious font issues where simple apostrophes were displaying as odd question mark boxes ???.
I love the fact that so many iLife apps are well integrated, but it's the inseparability that bothers me.
Maybe the next iWeb will also support webcam pages, too!
I suppose it's a pretty decent version 1.0 product with potential but it has a long way to go to reach the level that I think many of us expect out of an iLife application.
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Robert Knight said 7:46PM on 2-06-2006
What about the meta refresh tags all over the file structure?
I published to a folder and the index had a meta refresh to a page inside the folder, which had a meta refresh to another file inside of a folder inside the main folder.
The way iWeb operates is quite a departure from "it just works"
I hope v.2 simplifies things a bit so the app is more usable. I basically use it to generate the RSS feed for podcasts and then can the rest.
On the .mac filing system, needs simplification is an understatement.
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Omar said 8:11PM on 2-06-2006
The most annoying thing for me is how it names its pages. website.com/173ADF8F-664E-42CE-9A19-6C0294912AFA.html is not an easy page name to remember.
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Rich said 10:01PM on 2-06-2006
besides the URL issue...
you cant work on one site and update another...
I swear that some apple software is developed by the best teams in the world. but some is created by 2 guys in a weekend with a "do it or get fired" deadline...
it is NOT upto apple standards... i made 2 sites with it... i cant start a new site and leave it unfinished without publishing it ... very frustating...
and the WORST of all... a theme CANNOT be changed once it is set for a page... that is the most frustating non-feature... i worked for an hour on a site and then tried to change the theme... THERE IS NO WAY...
This product is NOT worthy of the APPLE name...
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david Alford said 10:46PM on 2-06-2006
What about the ability to make your own style sheets or templates. I have not
seen that yet, and if you wanted to support an existing website, by importing a
stylesheet or template you are S.O.L.
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david Alford said 10:47PM on 2-06-2006
What about the ability to make your own style sheets or templates. I have not
seen that yet, and if you wanted to support an existing website, by importing a
stylesheet or template you are S.O.L.
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sauro said 3:16AM on 2-07-2006
I remember that .mac was case sensitive also before the iLife 06 launch, I'm pretty shure
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