Installation and Use

GoLive 6.0 installed without a hitch, with one exception, on our PowerBook. The problem that we encountered, which also set off more than a moment of panic, is that we had to manually enter the serial number of our copy of v4.0.1 during 6.0's installation as well the new 6.0 serial number. This is because we bought the upgrade version. We had thought that the installer would simply look on our drive and confirm that we had a legitimate copy of v4.0.1 installed and continue on but we were wrong. To make matters worse, one can not get GoLive 4.0.1's complete serial number from the installed application and we didn't have a CD or documentation since we had downloaded 4.0 and its 4.0.1 update. It took quite a search for us to find the three-year-old email with the full serial number. This experience reminded us once again of the benefits of carefully archiving email and maintaining an updated list of software serial numbers and unlock codes.

We have used Adobe GoLive 6.0 under Mac OS X 10.1.3 for a week updating Macs Only! on our 500 MHz PowerBook G4. Here is what the new interface looks like:

Fortunately for us, it is very similar to 4.0.1 but with a much nicer Aqua look with very detailed icons, 3-D shadowing and all. In 4.0.1 we normally worked with three floating windows open: color, objects and inspector. In 6.0. the object and color floaters are combined into a single window with a tab to choose between them. We like this and now work with just two floaters open. Another thing we like is that one does not need to confirm an entry in the floaters' fields with the extra step of clicking a check mark button.

Using v4.0.1 in OS X's Classic mode is slow. Version 6.0 is much faster in OS X. We measured the time to launch the application, open the current Macs Only! html file and to save it after making a change. Here are the results:

Time for Task (seconds)

Task	v4.0.1	v6.0
Launch App	42	19
Open File	12	2
Save File	4	<1
Display Source	6	2
Display Layout	10	2
Display Preview	12	2

Aside from the speed improvements, v6.0 also does a better job of opening a file's window to the size it was when it was closed. This saves us a lot of time resizing windows. We also like the new ability to color the background of individual cells differently [Update--Ian Price wrote that this could be also done in 4. "You can also shift-click (on a Mac, anyway) multiple cells, after one is selected, and change the color for all of them." Thanks-ed.].

We noted only two problems in 6.0 in a week's use. First, the "Increase/Decrease list level" buttons on the tool bar only work with ordered lists. We used the same buttons in v4.0.1 to create instantly indented paragraphs like the text quoted from Adobe's press release above. In 6.0 we have to select "Type->Alignment->Increase Block Size" from the menu bar to accomplish the same task. We do not know if this is intended to be a feature or is a bug but it's an inconvenience to us. Second, when we first tried to create the table above, the Table Inspector was blank with the table selected, i.e. none of the table controls were visible. We had to quit and relaunch GoLive to get the Table Inspector to work again. This has happened only once so far.