Opera has released Opera 9 beta 2 with some new features and fixes including Widgets

Promising concept, but not quite ready for ptimetime yet

I have nothing against Adobe (Photoshop, you know), but I don't think they get what makes most of the Studio 8 programs so great. My colleague Gary Coyne swears by Adobe GoLive, but I've never been able to shake the belief that it was developed by frustrated page layout programmers who wanted the web to behave like the printed page. With Macromedia Studio 8, you get a suite of programs that understand the freedoms and restrictions of web design, and that deliver the tools that behave in a manner more conducive to designing sites that behave the way a website should.

Venerable application still the email client gold standard

I fear programs such as Comic Life Deluxe, because I fear people who think that talking cats are funny. Talking cats are never funny, no matter how good their writers are. After all, the types of people who want to give their best jokes to cats really shouldn't be giving their jokes to anyone. Don't believe me? You go read Garfield. The cat's funnier when he doesn't actually say anything. But I can't fault Comic Life Deluxe for the wealth of creepy cat comics it'll help produce any sooner than I can fault the pen for Garfield. Comic Life is just a tool, after all, but what a fantastic tool it is.

Still the prettiest OS X FTP client, now a whole lot faster as well

A nice, Open Source alternative to Microsoft’s MSN Messenger client

Three brand new browser release alternatives to Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox
SeaMonkey 1.0 Beta Web-browser Suite
Shiira 1.2 and Shiira Browser Widget
iCab 3.0 Beta 382

If you've purchased the Adobe Suite, you also received a Total Training DVD with basic tricks and tips and how to use all the programs. If you wanted more information on GoLive and/or are new to GoLive (by way of CS2, or purchased GoLive separately), this is a great DVD training video for you.

I like to think of GoLive as the "Mac" of web design programs. Those who use it love it, swear by it, live it, and yet it's Dreamweaver (read "PCs") that has the majority market share. Now that the purchase of MacroMedia by Adobe has gone through, the full future of either program is truly known by very few people. Regardless, the full result of this will be years in the future (really) and GoLive CS2 is here to use now.

Reviewing BBEdit has become a bit weird for me, because it's kind of like reviewing my arms; I need it to get anything to done. If I was suddenly forced to use my old LCII with only 40MB of hard disk space and could store only one program on the hard drive, it would be BBEdit v8.

They're all good by historical standards, but some are better than others