Sunday, November 28, 2010

The Return of GoLive (CS edition)

The new-new Golive program arrived!
Way ahead of...what was predicted, the program, its immense instruction manual (Srsly its like 300 pages) and all important CD+serials, have all arrived. So it is time for a progress update

Skip for planning of actual content....

Progress:
Successfully installed program
Program updates itself for no apparent reason- success
Refuses to open .site file of SonicGear, says its 'too new'
Program tricked into downloading all of Sonicgear from the server (takes over 2 hours)
Program successfully tricked into opening site because it downloaded it.
Breaks img links arbitrarily on several pages for no apparent reason
Main Malfunction Currently: randomly opens & closes object placement pallet (its what makes the images & text boxes go...you kind of need this open at all times if you want to...do anything) at any time it chooses.

Naming problems:
All other adobe programs tend to go 1 thru 9, then skip 10 and name themselves "CS", and then CS1, CS2, CS3 on and on. Golive did not. To be ornery, it went from 8 to CS, then CSX, and then finally 9. Inexplicably, 9 is worse than all the others with a more horrible interface that's purposely difficult to use. If anyone saw 9, it isnt any wonder they terminated the golive brand. Viewing CS would have likely saved it from termination. (well aside from the whole pallet with a mind of its own) But at least the text tool in this one isn't some random black blob, and the paragraph options arent some static filled cubes of guesswork.

So yes the site was "Too New", since 9 was the final golive and this CS one here is actually a downgrade to 'broken golive' which was what died last week. Not that I am all that sorry, it worked most of the time but was cranky as a can of bees. So long as this one can repair the links and the pages STAY FIXED, and the pallet stays open most of the time, it will be just fine.

CONTENT PLANNING:
This update. Use the index to inform regular readers of this blog post. Put out all the fires caused by downloading the site from the server. (AKA eliminate arbitrary broken images)
Hidden benefit- ANYthing that was broken on SG should be corrected. Most people don't write to inform about broken images so they stay broken forever. Until now...

Update:
Not really. Fixing everything will take up all the time the update would have required. (and maybe even more) There won't be an actual item-update this week unless there's a "2nd update" during the week. Too many problems were caused by the new program & getting everything right again. The 'bad code' spawned by brokengolive also ruined several pages. When it was 'dormant' on the uploaded page, it was still present when downloaded. The dormant code ruined 2 whole pages so far, which causes scratch-re-build aka mega-time-waste.

The site isnt completely restored to working order, but it is very close. There will be a content update next week no matter what. Midweek is looking likely for an update, or at the least, a fix to the rest of everything that broke on the way in.

Bottom line:
New program will work better & faster than golive9, once everything is restored. No bad code, no mass of glitches. Outlook: hopeful.