Lepolt.com » Apple http://www.lepolt.com/blog Random stuff from my head to your computer Sat, 27 Mar 2010 03:13:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Crazy Going Slowly Am I http://www.lepolt.com/blog/2009/03/31/crazy-going-slowly-am-i/ http://www.lepolt.com/blog/2009/03/31/crazy-going-slowly-am-i/#comments Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:24:19 +0000 Jonathan http://www.lepolt.com/blog/?p=305 I have an iMac. Abi has a Macbook. We recently found out that the Apple Remote that came with my computer also works with hers. That’s a good thing if we plug her computer into the TV to watch a movie. It’s a bizzare thing when Front Row randomly opens on my computer because Abi stole the remote. It’s a bad thing if I’m messing around on my computer and Front Row opens up on Abi’s computer when she’s trying to do work.

Apparently I find it more funny than she does.

We have since taken care of the “problem.”

]]> http://www.lepolt.com/blog/2009/03/31/crazy-going-slowly-am-i/feed/ 1 iWeb Review: The Great, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly http://www.lepolt.com/blog/2008/02/07/iweb-review-the-great-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ http://www.lepolt.com/blog/2008/02/07/iweb-review-the-great-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/#comments Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:59:11 +0000 Jonathan http://www.lepolt.com/blog/2008/02/07/iweb-review-the-great-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ First of all, I apologize to all the non-Mac users that happen to fall upon this blog post, chances are you’re not going to care about this one much.  I’d like to take a few minutes to review the latest version of Apple’s website design tool, iWeb ’08.

iWeb comes standard with the most recent versions of iLife.  From Apple’s webpage: “iWeb makes it easy to create a website that’s stunningly beautiful — and totally you. Start with an Apple-designed theme, then customize it with your own text, photos, movies, and podcasts until it’s exactly what you want. And switch themes with a click anytime.”  These things are all true, although I found myself trying to make my sites more complex than iWeb had in mind.  More on that later.

iWeb was designed with the idea that its users would integrate with their .Mac account.  .Mac is simply Apple’s web hosting service that costs more than pretty much anyone else, and gives you less storage space and bandwidth.  .Mac does give you some new email addresses and the ability to sync/backup documents from your computer, but all things considered I would never purchase an account with them.

This already begins to affect the iWeb functionality, as you must have a .Mac account to use certain features such as blog comments, interactive picture slideshows, and only publishing changes from pages that have changed.  Confused?  Yeah, I don’t think it makes much sense either. 

Since I have a programming background, I decided that I could create a blog from a third party blogging site, update my blog template to match my iWeb template, and seamlessly integrate them together so that no one would be able to tell a difference.  Well, that didn’t work because the iWeb templates use a bunch of JavaScript, CSS, images, and some other stuff that made it more difficult than it was worth to try to mimic.  So, screw that idea.  After that failed I busted out my trusty Internet friend, Google, to see if other people had tried the same thing I did.  Turns out they did, and I came upon an application called iComment (link).

iComment utilizes a free third party commenting system called HaloScan (link) that users can integrate into pretty much whatever site they want.  I downloaded the demo of iComment to try it out and see if I liked it.  After running iComment a few times, I figured out that it was simply parsing my HTML pages and replacing/inserting text that HaloScan requires to display comments on a page.  Again, since I have a programming background I figured I could do that myself.  Turns out, this actually worked.  One excellent new feature of iWeb is called Web Widgets.  These things let you insert code directly into your HTML page, which was exactly what I need with HaloScan.  Sweet, right? 

I thought I was done. 

When I was testing my new comment functionality, I was using a web browser with an ad blocking add-in installed…this therefore meant that the ads HaloScan was inserting near my blog comments were not visible to me.  It wasn’t until my friend mentioned something to me that I noticed.  Since I didn’t set this page up to make money and look like crap, I kicked HaloScan off and decided to drop iWeb altogether.  I’ve since switched to WordPress as my blogging tool, and simple CSS for the layout.

Now don’t get me wrong here, iWeb certainly is nice.  It is by far the easiest web design tool that I have ever used.  It integrates very well with iPhoto so if you want a photo in a certain place you can simply drag and drop it on the page wherever you want.  It doesn’t get a whole lot simpler than that.  iWeb also comes with about 25 unique template styles, each with eight page styles so you can create a new page based on what it will be used for.  Example: blog, pictures, etc.  iWeb is also much, much nicer when it is used with .Mac, so all of the iWeb functionality can be used. 

For experienced web programmers, iWeb is definitely not the way to go.  There is no obvious way to make changes to the CSS, there is no easy way to edit the HTML code, and the functionality is greatly reduced when not used with .Mac.

In conclusion:
The Great
Ease of use, ability to make great looking websites without knowing a thing about the web.

The Good
Integration with iPhoto, WYSIWYG editor very intuitive to use.

The Bad
Adding HTML code through Web Widgets is awkward, publishing a site to a folder updates every single file on the site so it is difficult to upload only required files.

The Ugly
iWeb without .Mac integration is just a fancy version of Print Shop for the web.

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