Eleven months ago, I reviewed iWeb v. 1.0 (See "iWeb: So Much Ingenuity, So Many Missing Features"). There was a lot I liked about iWeb--especially it's object-oriented drag and drop approach to building a website. iWeb has a number of very powerful tools for graphical creativity, but it also lacked a number of features that I felt I really needed.

Currently I use RapidWeaver, which overall I like, but I wish I could combine the best of RapidWeaver and the best of iWeb into one program. For instance, the creators of RapidWeaver have been promising a table generator for RW for the longest time, but it's never happened. Currently, if I want to create a table, I have to create it in DreamWeaver and paste the html code into RW. However, because iWeb uses the same objects created in Pages or Keynote, I could create a better-looking table in one of those apps and paste the object itself into iWeb.

Although I like iWeb--or at least the promise its features seem to give--my complaints against it are significant. I update my blog more than any part of my website, and at iWeb's release there was no ability to natively add comments or trackbacks. There's still no trackbacks, but in an interim release earlier this year, comments were added and I actually like their implementation better than the Haloscan comments I use on this site. Another big problem I had with iWeb was that it didn't allow for html snippits. So there's no way to add sitemeter, a blogrolling.com list, a YouTube video or even any of the occasional Amazon Associate ads that I place on here. Actually, there are a few third-party utilities that help with this, but they are all hacks in one way or another. And generally I don't like to add hacks to software or my OS because invariably if the original company updates the software, the hack is incompatible and causes problems.

iWeb also doesn't allow the creator to change templates which I find to be mind boggling. Even Blogger allows for a different template for any whim of a reason. The templates that come with iWeb are very creative, but none are exactly what I want. Of course, I haven't found a perfect template here in RapidWeaver, either. The current one I am using is a compromise.

However, with the coming year, hope springs eternal that iWeb will be updated to addresxxxxxxxxxxxs some of its shortcomings. iWeb isn't popular enough to get a lot of attention in the rumor mills, but Think Secret posted some info a few weeks back that seems to indicate that iWeb 2.0 will add a lot of the features that should be there already. If everything that has been rumored is true, I may very well switch to using iWeb instead of RapidWeaver for my site. That doesn't mean that I would every take down these pages because some of my posts have various links to them from elsewhere. But I would gradually recreate as much as I could of the blog and completely move over the other pages to iWeb.

In the meantime, I'm going to create a very scaled down "This Lamp iWeb Mirror Page" as a kind of experiment and so that I can become more familiar with the program. For every post I add here, I will also create a copy there and perhaps a couple of previous posts as well. My hope is that iWeb 2.0 will allow me to change templates because I really don't like the one I'm using in iWeb, but it will work best with my blog. If iWeb 2.0 doesn't serve my needs and I don't switch, I won't have put too much effort into my little experiment.

Link: This Lamp iWeb Blog Mirror

Tags: iWeb, Apple