I’m sure you’ve heard nothing but good things about the happy and joyfulness of the occurrences that took place ‘roundbout the start of this month... something like August the 8th or so? Apple did a “good thing” and released not only new iMac hardware, but also birthed (complete with requisite butt smacking) those adorable software twins, iLife ’08 and iWork ’08.

In the dark crevices of the tuberweb, though, there are those that actually harbor some mild dosage of resentment towards the new kids. People who are intimating that they may not have been ready for “prime time” yet (calling them iLife... oh, wait and iWork oy, vay!... the cads). While you won’t find any such name calling here, I can state that iWeb has caused some measure of discomfort.

I’m one of the few that dove into the XML behind all the coolness that iWeb was bringing us to try to wrest some further refrigeration from it. From my prior years of spelunking into the dark untamed Keynote XML, some markings were familiar like the smile of a long lost friend. Other parts were wild, unruly, and not very fun at parties. With the help of my guide (a Mystic of sorts), we traipsed o’er hill and dale, making new discoveries and some frustrating realizations.

XML is a powerful thing. Using it, you can describe pretty much whatever you want to, whenever you want to describe it. Let’s make a bad analogy even worse by looking at houses. As you start to build your XML house you determine what you need to define a room. You figure that all you need to have are BATHROOM, BEDROOM, CLOSET, GARAGE, KITCHEN, DEN, and DINING ROOM. Now, you go about defining those.

If you use something like this,

ROOM (floor, walls, ceiling, stuff in it)

Then you could have

BATHROOM (tile, off-white, white, toilet, sink, tub, etc.)

and

KITCHEN (wood, tan, beige, sink, stove, fridge, etc.)

and

GARAGE (cement, bare, white, tools, autos, etc.)

And, through the formidable power of XML, you could change BATHROOM to

BATHROOM (tile, tile, white, toilet, sink, shower, etc.)

and suddenly, all of your bathrooms have showers instead of tubs.

In the case of iWeb, once you define the “house”, you can change colors, positions, styles, all sorts of things and it keeps track of it for you. Each theme was essentially a “house”. The problem with these “houses” were that they weren’t quite complete and while one house may contain a DECK still another house may have a VERANDA and yet another may have a DEADLY MOAT. The great thing about XML is you can define whatever you want and it can exist just as you defined it. That’s also the bad thing about it.

When one house has

BATHROOM, BEDROOM, GARAGE

and another has

BATHROOM, BEDROOM, STUDY

well, what one person has defined for GARAGE might not include an allowance for (books, comfy chair, big desk) and what someone else defines for STUDY surely won’t contain  such diverse elements as (boat, sports car, storage-for-junk-that-doesn’t-fit-elsewhere). This was the theme situation in iWeb 1. Each theme knew exactly what it’s parts were about but, since each one had it’s own unique set of XML descriptions, they couldn’t easily be switched from one to the other... this is why once you chose a theme, you had to stick with it.

One of the things that iWeb 2 brings is the ability to change themes whenever you want. While my first impression of this ability was a hearty “Yay”, when thinking on the above, it was tempered with an “oh”. I knew that something fundamental in how themes were defined HAD to have changed. Every “house” now had to all have the same descriptions across the board. Even if a “house” didn’t have a GARAGE, it’d still have to include

GARAGE (ain’t got one).

Each and every theme had to have been worked over with a fine tooth sledge hammer and forced into one XML description that includes all parts of all themes. If you’re thinking that this is bound to break OLD XML (the XML from version 1.0, say) you’d be right. Using the clearly defined examples from above, an iWeb 2 would simply need to make a few substitutions here and there, maybe some additions and you’re set, right? ABSOLUTELY.... IF iWeb 1’s XML was clearly defined.

Oh, it was good enough when all the themes were separate. But, when you need to combine them and the XML doesn’t even follow it’s own rules...

for example, if

KITCHEN (wood, tan, beige, sink, stove, fridge, etc.)

and

GARAGE (tools, autos, etc., cement, bare, white)

were both valid even though GARAGE puts stuff first, then something is going to break. And something did. And the direction of this breaking was down. iWeb 2 did the best it could at bringing over a lot of things, but, due to these kinds of inconsistencies, it wasn’t able to do it perfectly. Some people lost images on photo pages, some lost their comments, all manner of things were happening in all manner of ways. I was seriously considering starting it all over with a fresh site with the supposed better XML of iWeb 2 and all that meant. iWeb 2 would not even save to a file that iWeb 2 would recognize and open... that’s just how bad it was.

While I was giving this some thought, iWeb 2.0.1 was released. I took my backup I had saved off before allowing iWeb 2 to alter my Domain file, placed it in the correct folder and started iWeb 2.0.1. It opened the old file a lot faster, when saving, it didn’t lose any large swaths of content and it didn’t keep asking for where my Domain file was each time I opened it. These developments made me feel a little bit better about keeping the old site going, so I started working on the things that were broken (summary images, the visual archive page) and decided to go ahead and try a post to see how it goes.

As a result, it’s been some time since my last post. I’ve got some fun Keynote shapes I’ve been working on and can’t wait to work through these bugs and get them posted for you to download and enjoy. While they may not be doozies, per sé, there will be a distinct air of doozishness about them.