Obituary: GoLive is Dead. Long Live DW!
April 28th, 2008Le Roi est mort. Can software that was never the market leader be considered “the king”? Perhaps only in our hearts. GoLive had long been our personal favorite, when it came to HTML development, and we were deeply saddened when Adobe dropped it from the Creative Suite. We got a tad bit excited when Adobe released version 9 last summer. But the pleasure was short-lived. Today, Adobe has dropped GoLive development and distribution.
The news isn’t entirely shocking. We estimate (based on highly technical statistical analysis called “guessing”) that approximately 9 people on the planet upgraded to GL9. Virtually everyone else saw the writing on the wall a year ago and started learning Dreamweaver. But if you haven’t made that swtich yet, not that there are some good resources available for moving from GL to DW, including a migration kit written by our friends at Adobe Lynn Grillo and Adam Pratt. Lynda.com also has a title on the subject by Garrick Chow (remember you can get a week’s free subscription at lynda.com/IDsecrets).
If you live in the states and you’re trying to get up to speed with DW, you might also be interested in a new series of seminars produced in May and June by MOGO Media and presented by the wonderful Brian Wood. You can find out more about that at mogoseminars.com.
By the way, we’re told that Adobe is also offering a $199 cross-grade offer to buy Dreamweaver if you currently own GoLive. (We can’t find a reference to that anywhere; perhaps it’s being sent as email to registered owners?) We don’t think there are any deals for upgrading from GoLive to the full Creative Suite, which is a shame.
What does any of this have to do with InDesign? Well, GoLive was becoming an HTML tool for InDesign users. That is, it was growing paragraph and character styles, dialog boxes and panels that look like InDesign, and other features that a designer/ID user would love. Dreamweaver, on the other hand, continues to be more of a developer’s tool than a designer’s tool in our opinion.
But there is also a bright light on the horizon: It turns out that the current Dreamweaver product manager is none other than Devin Fernandez…. Yes, the same Devin who was product manager for GoLive for many years! Devin understands both sides of the argument: the developers who want dreamweaver to be a hard-core experience, and the designers who are “code averse.” So while we don’t yet know anything about Dreamweaver CS4, we can only assume that he has our best interests at heart.
I’ve known GoLive since it was still owned by… GoLive (remember that?).
I used it in the latest version (I realy liked it). Sad to hear, I was a bit of GoLove fan (it was easy to use), never cared much for DW. But, live goes on…
Rats! I’ve I’d known GoLive 9 was available I would have bought it, and now it’s too late! As it is, I’m using the old GoLive CS2 and the design standard version of CS3 (without Dreamweaver, which I don’t like).
Is there anywhere I can buy GL9 now that I know it exists?
I bet that people will be unloading their old copies on ebay now that GL is end of the line.
DW needs some serious help in the GUI interface department. It is horrible in that regard. GoLive was so much easier to use, the palettes, windows, etc. could be adjusted for width, and on and on. I always used both at the same time (because earlier GL did not have the check in/check out function that DW did), so when I switched full time to DW, it wasn’t a huge deal. But boy, if DW could get a real upgrade, unlike CS2 > CS3 (that’s a joke.), and grow some user functionality, I’d be happy as heck.
Wow, John, I feel just the opposite.
I hope that DW doesn’t grow to look to more like GL. I’ve used both and so much prefer DW’s interface.
Now, when will PageMaker join the ranks of ‘discontinued’ along with such greats as Adobe Type Manager Deluxe?
I happened to stumble across GL9 when I upgraded to CS3. And since I’ve been a GL user since it was CyberStudio, I bought it in hopes of prolonging the inevitable — I’m still prolonging. In fact, I still use GL 8 (CS2).
Anyway, bidding starts at $100.
The only times I opened GoLive was by accident and I gave it a try, but it was the most horrible program (as far as UI & workflow were concerned) I’ve ever used. No wonder Dreamweaver ‘won’ and GoLive has been put to rest.
Let’s hope they don’t make it too GoLive-ish but some more visual integration with the rest of the Creative Suite wouldn’t hurt Dreamweaver.