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Looks like iLife 2010 maybe on it’s way

I am not normally one for believing in the hype that surrounds Apple, but lets face it there has been an awful lot of speculation about an ‘iSlate’ of late if any of the Apple Rumor Blogs are to be believed. Tonight however there is a newer buzz; iLife 2010 could be on it’s way.

And we all know what comes with iLife! Our favorite web design application of course. And so you don’t have to go searching round the www to find all of the gossip, here are a few links for you to take a look at.

The first if from the AppleBlog and was written sometime ago. The post seems to go into some detail about what could be expected within each application, but it doesn’t look that promising for iWeb: The Apple Blog – Predicting iLife 2010

The second post comes from The Apple Insider and talks about the forthcoming Apple event towards the end of this month: The Apple Insider

And finally a similar post to the previous one this time from the iTech Report Blog.

Now I know these sorts of rumors start flying around the Internet this time of year, every year but it would be lovely to see an update to iWeb don’t you think?

For me the addition of HTML editing would be lovely, as would more interactivity with Google (we can add adsense, why not analytics and webmaster tools stuff?) but I can’t see it myself.

So if iLife 2010 does make an appearance in the last week of January, what would you like to see happen to iWeb? Leave a comment and let us know.

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14 Comments

  1. I’d like to see comments being added without MobileMe, Google analytics and forms implemented.

  2. Funny you mention it, I sent a feedback to apple in november asking them what I would love to see in the next iteration of IWeb:

    My feedback I sent to Apple developers:

    Dear apple developer,
    I have been using Iweb for over a year now (please see what I created here: http://www.wesdotphotography.com/Home.html). I loved and enjoy creating this website for my parents’ in law pictures and Iweb has made it a almost painless experience. I’m not a website designer, I understand little of html, css or any other web language coding but Iweb can almost make you forget about that. Now if I’m sending you this feedback is because Iweb (I’m using IWEB09, from ILIFE09 as well as IWORK09) as some shortcoming that I will love to have solve. I totally understand that you may not even read this message but I think if we (your customers) do not provide feedback you will not know what problems we encounter.

    So, here to the fun part:

    1. IWeb publish to mobileme or any ftp server that you may choose, that is great but we should be able apply any metadatas we would like before publishing.
    2. I would love to be able to apply Goggle analytics (or any other code like statcounter) to each of my pages inside of Iweb before publishing. Right now I’m force to publish to a folder and use third party like IWEB SEO tool from Rage software or MassReplaceIt to apply any change I want.
    3. Be able to use Paypal or other merchant third party baskets so people can by my products (why not using an Apple merchant basket to integrate into Iweb). Paypal buttons work great with html snippet but it will be even better if they could be integrated directly into Iweb.
    4. Allow RSS feeds to work even if we do not use mobileme hosting, right now I’m using feedburner, it works great but I must replace the link http://www.wesdotphotography.com/Wesdotphotography/blog/ by http://www.wesdotphotography.com/Blog/ this extra Wesdotphotography in the middle does not allow me to access my blogs entry using RSS readers. I think if I could use the RSS function in IWeb it will work better.
    5. Why not leaving the search function available in the blog section accessible regardless of the hosting company? actually this search function could be available for the whole site, not only blog.
    6. Please give us more icons to use, I’m force to dig around in the web to find icons that suit my needs, if Apple was providing some all Iweb created site will show some uniformity that people will identify better (look at this page: http://www.wesdotphotography.com/About_Us.html) I have several icons on the top that are not that pretty and do not look consistent with the quality looking of Iweb.
    7. Please, please make an effort to produce website that look better in Internet Explorer, we all agree that IE is a terrible browser and my site look great in Safari, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Camino, the problem is that they account for 60% of the browsers out there, IE is still used by 60% of people out there: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp Look at my home page using IE and I was forced to put a message urging people to switch
    8. I like your slideshow feature in Iweb but I can not use it because I can not put a paypal button underneath each picture the slideshow display, so I’m force to use a blank page for each of my picture, so far 240 pages, it is a lot to maintain.
    9. Please allow us to create dropdown navigation bar it look so much prettier that the bar I’m using right now (check here http://www.wesdotphotography.com/Tools.html for a sample of a bar I will love to have implemented)
    10. In your slideshow how about allowing a zoom funtion like litebox or fancy zoom.
    11. better integration of Iwork and Iweb, I tried to create a slideshow in keynotes and integrate it into my home page in Iweb, I could not figure it out.
    12. Contact page (or forms) I use Google Docs for that: http://www.wesdotphotography.com/Contact.html it works fine but I’m sure Apple could implement something similar and better designed.
    13. Forums, here is my forum page: http://www.wesdotphotography.com/Comments.html as you can see not very popular, I know mobileme as a forum (discussion) option it will be nice if this option was available for third party hosting.

    I think this is it, if Iweb could contain part or all off this features next release date (may be january 2010) I will be very excited to upgrade.
    Thanks for reading me again.
    Thierry
    webmaster@wesdotphotography.com

    1. Wow Thierry,

      You have really given that one some thought. Some of the things you asked for there though are dependant on the server you are hosting on and so aren’t possible to add to iWeb. The search function for example on non-mobileme sites.

      Tim

  3. I REALLY hope we see HTML editing in the next version of iWeb – it would be awesome if we could just press an “HTML mode” button and immediately be shown the website code, right in the iWeb window. Then any changes we made could be seen when we viewed the site in the WYSIWYG mode.

    Other than that I would also like to see and easy way to add rollover buttons, drop-down menus, customizable search boxes, and flash files.

    I would also love it if the output code was improved, and if there was an easy way to do SEO without messing around with HTML.

    As you can see, I want waaay too much!

    I definitely don’t expect all of it, but I would love it if they added some of the above (especially the HTML editing mode).

    OK now I’m rambling.

  4. […] View post: Looks like iLife 2010 maybe on its way | All About iWeb […]

  5. HTML editing is a must

  6. Tim,
    True about the search button, but Google can do it why not Apple?
    I hope we get a significant update next week, will see what Steve has in his hat 😉
    Thierry

  7. @Thierry: Google can do it because they have already indexed your website and all your content. Apple hasn’t. I find it unlikely that a search function gets added for non MobileMe hosted websites. A search feature is a complex thing to add when you don’t know what kind of server the website will be hosted on or what resources are available.

    I also find it extremely unlikely that an HTML mode gets added to iWeb. The way iWeb creates websites is very different than how a normal person would write HTML code. Look at the source code for an iWeb site. Even if Apple added the ability to edit the HTML code of an iWeb site no one would want to even begin to work there way through it.

    Paypal integration, or other ecommerce/business related features are also unlikely since iWeb is focused more to the personal website than the business website.

    I am on the fence on whether or not they would add direct support for Google Analytics or other analytics software right from within iWeb. The reason is because of Apple and Google’s relationship.

    We’ll have to wait and see next week for sure though.

  8. I highly doubt Apple will go mainstream with iWeb and the main reason is MobileMe.

    I mean they have some very intelligent people at Apple and look how they make the program, very SEO unfriendly.

  9. @Paul, Tim and Shawn,

    They were wishes, I’m not a pro webmaster far from it, but without Iweb I may never had created a website. I’m looking forward to next week announcement, but Ilife may get only a small highlight. Based on “rumors” from the web Steve will have a lot to talk about.
    Will see.
    Thierry

  10. I use iWeb extensively. For FTP publishing, google analytics support, form generation, and leaner code (faster site) if possible would be my primary improvement suggestions.

    Rich

  11. Well as per the comments about paypal…it is already availiable to integrate it into iweb sites. Paypal will just give you the code after you set up your pricing etc…then you get your button and paste it into html snippet widget and there you go.

    As far as HTML, well they would have to do a total rewrite on how iweb is coded. The site pages, blogs etc are all in javascript css, that most all search engines dont scan except google has just started to index java stuff but it takes longer for them to index it. The good news is that the text inside the blog for example are in .xml text format and google can read that, I just dont know if they can see it through the java styling scripts (css).

    We shall see, my whole blog is in this and if I check the source code in safari, it doesnt show the text in the blog home page which has the title/summary area. Once you get to the blog page post it IS in the source code, BUT can google get that far while crawling? my blog is http://applenewsonline.com to see this in effect yourself.

  12. Great comments and suggestions. Thanks for stating them to Apple

  13. I don’t think that they will ever let you mess with the HTML code that the app. outputs, because a lot of people write bad HTML… I’ve got friends that are html guys but their sites don’t pass the WC3 test as iWeb sites do and standards are important to Apple as we all know!

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