Freshly Squeezed Reviews: GoodPage creates excellent pages

Posted by Frank Petrie Apr 25, 2005 at 12:14am

No longer restricted to obnoxious animated GIFs, the Web has turned into a visual show all its own featuring dynamic graphics of a much higher quality. Thank you broadband. Our computers thank you. Our senses thank you.

But all of this requires more work for programmers. There’s CSS layouts, JavaScripts, etc. which can be handcoded, but which steal away a ton of creativity time. And creativity is, after all, what you’re being paid for.

So, hand coders like myself are going the way of the Dodo (ask Grandma). Or maybe not. Enter GoodPage from TARI. When a company says, ” We believe that applications should be designed for use without manuals,” they immediately have my attention! Good page is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor unlike any that you have ever seen. “GoodPage is extremely easy to use—no learning time required,” YARI says. Extremely bold claim, that.

So, is it true? Can I learn to use GoodPage without a manual? And most importantly, can it produce quality code?

The Juice

In the demo, GoodPage immediately constructs a folder upon first launch that has examples to help you learn how to use the program.

From just a few minutes of nosing around the GUI (graphical user interface), you realize what a unique and powerful tool this is. A WYSIWYG tool that can do everything you need to create, publish and maintain your site from within one, single app! And you can even FTP from within.

You can work from within its dragger or its main pane. The beauty of GoodPage is the various layouts that you can work from.

In case you’re wondering why this application is so wonderful, maybe a little history is in order. “TARI is a small family-owned company in Central Europe … Software development team designs and develops software for Mac OS X, and had previously worked in NeXT environment.” A great pedigree and it shows throughout this application. This is intuitive and well thought out.

Simply brilliant.

The Pits

Nada.

The Rind

Nada.

The Pulp

So … a WYSIWYG hand-coding program. Who’d have thunk it? Apparently, TARI.

This US$99 application is brilliant. It adheres to all of the proper coding guidelines as set out by the W3C (coders will know why that’s important). Plus, as a hand coder who never became enamored with WYSIWYG editors, this is a dream come true. There is an adjustment period because it is so different from the work palette they you’re accustomed to, but that won’t take long to overcome.

I highly recommend pages to any person who does web design for a living. It’s amazing.

I’m now a Dodo with major cajones.

Macsimum rating: 10 out of 10.

System requirements: Mac OS X 10.3 and higher.

Have a product you’d like us to review? E-mail dsellers@macsimumnews.com

Frank Petrie is a freelance writer, curmudgeon, technologies and products specialist.

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