Back in January I wrote a review of iWeb 1.0 as part of my iLife 06 review. The result? iWeb was a great addition to iLife, though a little thin on features. I scored iWeb 1.0 a 3.5 out of 5.0 points. iWeb 1.1 is here. Does it do much to help iWeb’s cause?

Firstly, please note that this review assumes that you’ve read the previous iWeb review. If you haven’t read it yet, read it.

Done? Great. Read on.

Let’s take a look at my earlier complaints, and what iWeb does, if anything, to rectify them:

iWeb has a funky file-handling scheme

iWeb 1.0 stored the files away in your Library folder and did not actually create the HTML code until you actually created the page. This behavior remains, which makes sense considering that this is just a .1 update.

iWeb outputs bulky code.

Another complaint I had was that iWeb’s code was bulky and ugly. Well, the code is just as ugly as it was before, but As MacRumors reports, it does improve site load time, presumably by optimizing image sizes. That’s good to see.

iWeb lacks more advanced features

iWeb remains very simple, but does add a few new features, like comment (and attachment!) support and the ability to add a search field to your site. There are also six new themes included in iWeb 1.1, in case you found the preexisting suite of themes to be too restricting. Two themes include “Notebook” (sample) and “Highlighter” (sample). Other themes include an “elegant” theme (a more formal design), Doodle (think your notebooks in high school), Cloud 9 (a fluffy blue, pink, and violet theme), and Gazette (made to resemble a newsletter). However I still can’t change the freaking theme after I create the page.

Adding a comment to an iWeb-created blog is very slick (screenshot from Safari):

Yup, that’s right; it even generates captchas. Site owners can even manage (delete) comments, either through a web browser or iWeb itself (File menu > Manage Comments). Unfortunately, it seems that the commenting and search features are .mac-only goodies. Bummer, but I guess it requires a database backend?

More goodness

Publishing has been greatly improved in iWeb 1.1. Instead of hog-tying the entire application, publishing will be done in the background as iWeb “prepares” to publish the site or any updates made (e.g. generating the code). Instead, it will show a “pie” progress indicator like what Mail uses. You can’t quit iWeb while it is updating, but it is much preferable to the previous method. iWeb still does tie up the entire application when preparing to publish, but this time the dialog box has a cancel button. Yay!

Creating a photo album has been made even simpler than before. A minor addition to iWeb 1.1, users can now drag photo albums from the media browser to the iWeb editing area and iWeb will instantly create a new photo gallery page. It’s not really something I was hoping to see, but definitely a nice touch.

Also, Apple took steps to make iWeb less obnoxious to iWeb users who do not have a .mac account. Previously, iWeb would open a lovely nag dialog urging users who didn’t enter in a .mac username and password to subscribe to .mac. This wouldn’t be so bad if it happened once on first run, but it pops up every time you open the application. Apple easily fixed this by adding a simple “don’t show again” check box.

Some not-so-goodness

Yes, iWeb still takes up a crapload of hard disk space unless you do some serious cleaning up (removing the extraneous language files using a tool like Monolingual). iWeb is also a memory hog and will gladly take all the memory it can get its hands on; it’s currently digesting over 320 MB of RAM on my iBook (which is fully loaded with 1.25 GB). Also, the lack of a basic FTP client does make things a little more difficult for non-.mac users.

So what?

iWeb still has a few flaws, however iWeb 1.1 is a step in the right direction. I would still like to see features such as the ability to directly manipulate HTMl code, but that may be asking too much of iWeb. At any rate, iWeb has earned itself a higher grade.

Articles in this series

1. iLife 06 Review Part 1: iPhoto
2. iLife 06 Review Part 2: Garageband
3. iLife 06 Review Part 3: iWeb
4. iLife 06 Review Part 4: iMovie
5. iLife 06 Review Part 5: iDVD
6. iLife 06 Review Part 6: Wrapup