golive for a purist?

Would a purist want to give adobe's golive a chance?

[vwds]

I ask only since I will be getting GoLive CS2 with the CS2 premium package. I am a hand-coder all the way, and was wondering if GoLive will enable me to hand code and generate templates from the hand code. Also does anybody know how well the code it generates validates? Any and all other helpful tidbits would be nice too...

Thanks

[ManAboutTown]

Short answer - steer clear.

Long answer - I've never been a web designer until very recently, and even now I wouldn't really call myself one. I've been a writer most my life. The point is that even I know GoLive is incredibly inefficient, it loads your code with lots of errors and crashes far too much. I don't have CS, but I've heard from enough people that it crashes more than the version I have. And the version I have (6.0) crashes way too much. I have no idea how a company could have put out such a product. If you're doing a no-nonsense site and can put up with that, then it's ok to use. (However, sometimes while using GoLive I'll want to throw my computer out the window. I've lost pages - as in they were completely erased - when GoLive crashed. I don't have enough brain cells to understand why they vanished, or enough curse words in my vocabulary to let off the proper amount of steam when that happens.) If you need a real pro site, GoLive is not what you should use.

Yes, you can hand code all you want. But the reason I got the program is because it does all the coding for you. Unfortunately, that's where the trouble begins. There is no point to owning this program if you hand code.

I don't think I'm being overly dramatic, because if you take your work seriously you don't need to use inferior tools. I like doing the content part of my site far more than the design, and I don't have a lot of design work to do, so using GoLive has been tolerable, but on the lowest end of the scale.

It's too bad, because if someone at Adobe would fix all the crap, it wouldn't be a bad program. Then again, you could say that about anything else in the world - if this wine didn't make me puke, it might taste good, etc.

[Occupant]

In contrast to ManAboutTown's experiences, I have been using GoLive5 for several years and still am amazed at the things it can do that save me time and frustration. I've used other editors and am able to do a fair amount of HTML without the WYSIWYG software, but find the ease of creating a site with GoLive overcomes any problems it might have. But, be sure you have plenty of RAM in your machine. With GoLive open and Photoshop at the same time, at least 512M is needed, otherwise, expect some crashes. There is a large community of GoLive users and lots of free plug-ins, actions, etc. avaliable. Tutorials available at a number of user sites. Short answer - I love it.

[vwds]

I appreciate both veiwpoints here. I looked at it earlier, but was not inpressed. though the version I will get (it is part of the CS2 premium I ordered) will have the latest version with CSS layouts supposedly. I plan to give it a try. Another feature I was attracted to was the co-author program that would allow my clients to add content without having to come back to me (both good and bad!). I suppose the question I posed was sort of unfair as golive CS2 is fairly new, but we will see.

VWDS

[ManAboutTown]

GL5 does not have the instability problems as 6 or CS1 or CS2.

From PC World review:
"While testing GoLive CS2, I was reminded repeatedly that it was indeed a beta version: The program crashed at a rate of about once every 30 minutes."

From creativepro.com:
"Previous versions of GoLive weren't known for their stability. Unfortunately, GoLive CS2 doesn't solve this problem."

[Robert Charlton]

Accidentally came across this thread, and I've had a similar question that I just haven't gotten around to asking.

A while back... I forget how long ago... I won a copy of GoLive 6 as a door prize at an Adobe presentation. I forget how long ago that was, but it was the current version at the time.

I've never installed it because...

a) I was running Windows 9x...

b) I hand-code everything...

c) A client whose site I optimized had used GoLive to build the site and it was the worst code I've ever seen.

Now I have a P4 machine running XP Pro with a gig of RAM, and I assume my machine can handle the software.

So I'm wondering too whether there's anything that GoLive might do, like site linking diagrams or whatever that might make it in some way useful?

At the time I won the package, I wished it was Illustrator because that would be nice to have. Anyone want to trade? ;)