Real World Adobe GoLive
by Jeff Carlson & Glenn Fleishman
Peachpit press, Berkeley Press, CA
$44.99 (USA)
$67.50 (Canada)

Review by Gary Coyne

When the company GoLive (creators of the program Cyberstudio--an internet website-creating program) was bought by Adobe, one of the claimed benefits for consumers was that Adobe would be able to expand the products's range at a faster rate and in greater depth. For example, one of these expansions was to create a pc version of the program. The advantage of a pc version of Adobe GoLive (AGL) (same program, new name) was that there would be more incentive for 3rd party companies to provide books and other alternative resources for GoLive users than the smaller, limited market provided by an Apple-only product. This book is a wonderful example of the results of that incentive.

When Adobe GoLive 4 (the first version released by Adobe) was first released, it came with a manual, no a phone book of 828 pages. And, while it was very good at explaining what was in the program, it was rather weak on explaining how to use the program. (The current manual shipped with Adobe GoLive has been put on a diet and comes in at a skimpy 435 pages). It is exactly how to use the program that "Real World Adobe GoLive" steps in to save the day. (For those who are curious, this book comes in at a muscular 723 pages.)

The key point in the Real World series of books is that they are intended to work with the user and let them know what to expect when using the program (i.e., what happens in the real world) as opposed to what's supposed to happen cited by the manual. The book is solidly written in a form similar to that of a friend over a telephone.

Typically, a manual simply explains how to perform a given operation hopefully in a clean, concise manner. In many cases this is sufficient because many programs are sufficiently straightforward that no peripheral problems are likely to present themselves. Creating pages and sites for the web however, tend to be different because nothing is static. You may design a wonderful site, but you have limited control of how the server is presenting the site, and essentially no control as to which browser, which version of which browser, what platform the site is going to be looking at your site, and how the user has set the defaults for their personal browser. Thus, such simple operations as how to set up a page, what fonts to use, whether to use rollovers and/or cascading style sheets (CSS) are not necessarily simple issues. In short, many books will tell you how to use these features, but how many of them will tell you what is likely to go wrong and what to do about the problem if something does go wrong.

One of the "things that should go just fine but occasionally doesn't" with AGL are problems associated with updating a site to a server. What is supposed to happen is that once a site is completed, the user then uploads the site to the server. Later, if changes are made in the site, the user simply reconnects to the server, AGL determines which pages have changed and/or are new and uploads only these pages (and additional material) to the server. Although many people have never had problems, others have had varying levels of problems. According to Real World Adobe GoLive, the problem is probably not AGL, but with the nature of FTP's lack of precision about time, what time zone the server is set to, and how well the server was set up to deal with time. Without going into the details here, suffice it to say that AGL has a way of dealing with these inaccuracies, but it isn't perfect. The authors have also extended suggestions to Adobe on how to better deal with the problems. This is the real world.

Throughout the Real World book, the text of how to do various operations is broken up by blocks of text set in grey. Although comments on the peculiarities of any procedure are detailed in the text, it is in the grey block that the editors go into detail on how various operations in principle are dealt with in reality. It is here that comments on how to overcome the program's (or the world's) peculiarities, and how best to deal with them--such as the example above. In addition to the "grey comments," there are also a myriad of "Tips." Thumbing through the book, I couldn't find two pages facing that didn't have at least one tip. These tips, set off by a slightly heavier font, help you work better, faster, and smarter. For no other reason, it is wise to thumb through every page--even in sections of material that you feel you know--to look for these tips.

The book is broken into five sections: GoLive Basics; Pages; Sites; Advanced; and Appendixes and Index. The problem with the title of the first section is that many users who have used AGL for a period of time are likely to skip it and look to other sections for "new" information. I would strongly recommend those who feel they know the program to at least skim through this section. The reader is very likely to find many neat "tricks" and features of AGL that they were probably unaware of.

Likewise, the Advanced Section is also a potentially poor title, as some readers may skip this section as they may not feel they need that level of program use. However, if you want to learn how to use the rollover action (or any action for that matter), you need to go to this chapter. Thus, like the first chapter, the reader is again advised to skim this chapter and let the material decide what is advanced (or useful) to the user.

With no surprise, this book (which is about a web page/site designing program) has an accompanying web site. The address for the site is <http://realworldgolive.com>. Items within the site include updates on the book, errata, extra tips and tricks, and even some sample text from the book. Although well made and nice looking, it seems that the authors spent all their time on the book and not all that much time on the site, as there is not all that much there. (There are only two items of errata which means that the book was well proofread.) One of the items that could/should have been there would be samples of the various items mentioned and/or discussed in the book: some examples of CSS; what to expect (or look for) when floating boxes go bad; graphics for image maps, color graphics to accompany the grey scale images in the book, etc. Perhaps some sample web pages to perform web-page autopsies (where the user can take apart a page and see how it was made and why the authors made it the way they did). There is much that could be here that isn't, and we can hope that the site will develop over time.

Likewise, in lieu of this material on the web site, an accompanying CD would have also been a welcome addition. However, the reality is that anyone who is (or plans to) write web sites undoubtedly has access to the web, so many of the issues addressed on a CD can easily be accomplished on the web. In addition, the web site can be maintained on an up-to-date program that a CD could never maintain. Thus, if given a choice between web site or CD, the authors probably made the best choice.

All that notwithstanding, these are minor points; this is an excellent book that should be opened on the desk of anyone using Adobe GoLive creating web sites.

Buy RealWorld Adobe GoLive

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December 02, 2008