I had to do a really quick “placeholder” web site today, I don’t really care how the code looks, I just wanted something fast.
Hey! Let’s check out the new version of iWeb. Nice themes, this will do the trick.
Build my 2 page site, and then export it. Any then, throw it out. Here’s why:
5. Frontpage produces prettier code. Or Word, or… you name it. Pretty much any generated code looks nicer than this stuff.
Notice how it declares the height twice in the <div> tag. Don’t even get me started on how declaring absolute heights for everything is completely unnecessary, but to declare it twice? That’s just sloppy.
4. If you ever want a search engine to index your site, forget about iWeb. The majority of the headers it generates are images. That aside, it creates a folder of files with several <meta redirect> files. In fact, anything named index.html… not actually a useful page, just a meta redirect.
3. Okay, do get me started on setting the absolute height of everything.
Including the page.
In several places.
So, what this means is that when I went to put in a basic form at the bottom of the second page, something that iWeb won’t let you do. Not a problem, I knows me some of that HTML Voodoo. Pop open the file in TextMate and put in my code. Preview in browser… nope, page ends where the iWeb content ends. Let’s hunt through the combination of embedded style declarations and attached style sheets to see if we can figure out where the page height is being set absolutely.
2. The javascript! My god the javascript!
This page was simple, the only dynamic thing (if you could even call it that) that it had was a mouse-over changing the text colour on the links. Why are there so many lines of javascript for every page (5 linked .js files and embedded js at the top of each page)?
1. The bloody “Made on a Mac” watermark it places at the bottom of each page. At least in iDVD, I can wipe out the Apple branding with a single preference click. You have to delete it from every page in iWeb. Additionally, if you change the background colour/image on one page, you have to update it on every other page… why do they even bother pretending that they’re supporting CSS/XHTML in iWeb, it’s a total joke.
