I like you Apple. I really do. But I have previously written about my dislike for you. There is a new version, and I really wanted to use it. But I can’t bring myself to do it. I just can’t. There are just SO MANY things wrong.
Simple Stuff
The stuff I complained about last time. The stuff that is still there. Everything is still positioned statically. The layout isn’t dynamic. It’s still quite unclear what parts of each page are headers/footers/etc. You can now add HTML so you can do things like Google Ads.
Inspector Hell
But why do I have to use the stupid inspector for fonts? Why can’t I chose some predefined styles (or do that myself)? I don’t want to choose that I want 15 pt fonts, I want to choose <h2> and style that.
Why do I have to do URLs through the stupid inspector? Why can’t iPhoto tell me where that link goes to without the inspector? Why isn’t it a little pop-up when I hover over the link? Why doesn’t it show up in a status bar (which doesn’t exist)? Why can’t I set the alternate text for images?
.Mac Reliance
Why am I tied to .Mac? I want to publish to my server. This is a feature that was available on FrontPage around 1996. That was a decade ago. Yes, I can publish to a folder and then to FTP that up, but why can’t iWeb do that for me? I understand not having the features that require server-side intervention (comments, counter image, etc), but not being able to publish is pointlessly limiting.
Site Layout
What is the default page on my site? That wasn’t clear to me quickly. That is about the most basic question I had. I just want my blog page as my default.
Blog Problems
So I made a blog page, and I wanted to put my old blog entries in there.
There is no import that I know of. Now I was basically expecting this (and since my data is in a custom format, I would have to translate it anyway). But trying to put together a few entries just raised so many problems.
So I tried to make a few myself. Let’s ignore the font problems above. Let me ask you this… why can I only display one kind of picture on the main blog page? What if I don’t want a picture next to one entry? What if I want to have a portrait picture next to one entry and a landscape picture on another? Why is it every entry gets the title of the blog from the template and not the one last entry I made? Why do I have to change that on every single entry? When putting a photo on a blog page, why can I reposition the photo in the photo container, but not zoom in on it? That’s an 8MP photo, I should be allowed to zoom in.
Customization
Why do I have to use one of your templates? Why can’t I deviate even the littlest bit without running into huge problems? Why can’t you publish a way for me to make my own templates?
Summary
This isn’t Apple software. There is no polish. Why did you rewrite iMovie? iWeb is the application that sticks out like a sore thumb as horridly rough-edged.
Maybe I’ll go to Wordpress. Maybe I’ll just rewrite my current software in Java so I can easily modify it and fix it’s rough edges.
