Mar 30
A new XHTML/CSS tool on its way?
2004 at 01.55 am posted by Veerle Pieters
I came across an interesting read this morning on MacOS Rumors. So yes this is still speculation but certainly something to think about for a minute. I’m talking about the rumor that Apple is maybe considering making a web design application. First thing that pops into my mind is a consumer based app (ala PageMill), easy to use but not for us pros ;-)
But wait this seems not to be the case since the guys of Mac Rumors are saying:
Apple appears to be putting a very strong emphasis on the quality of what this new web development application will be outputting in terms of the finished product: high-quality XHTML, CSS, RSS, the latest and best-optimized image formats like PNG, et cetera.
Modern, well-written XHTML/CSS can do wonders with a design that looks and works at least as well as legacy designs, but with a tiny fraction of the code, data size, and page load times. Apple wants to be able to show its source code output with pride to even the most exacting of web design geeks, and be able to compete seriously in the business web development space.
Apple has already some amazing PRO apps like Final Cut Pro which is a breeze to use btw. So imagine a program that fully supports the latest web standards and be able to view all the CSS and XHTML tricks in lay-out mode and is easy to use. Apple is a company that understands the needs of users very well and is able to translate all this into something usable and intuitive to use. With the rendering engine of Safari it wouldn't be that difficult to accomplish such task. If this proves to be true I would certainly be considering using such a program. Time will tell but this rumor doesn't seems so unlikely if you ask me.
14served
1
Another cool iApp :-) or iCode
They probably read my cry for help ( on not being a code person ;-) )
Steve is listening in on his blog
;-)
2
I really hope this turns out to be true. I can hardly imagine how good an Apple produced XHTML/CSS editor would be. Ah well, wait and see…
3
That would be great!
Currently nothing can produce clean valid XTML 1.0 code, except BBEdit + W3C Validator ;) That is not very user friendly and most people (like myself) would prefer a CSSEdit-like XTML editor to produce clean and comliant code.
I just hope this “alleged” iApp is read, doesn’t suffer usual iApp 1.0 slow mode and I seriously hope Apple does not use this opportunity to charge people for iLife ‘04-2 or something
I still refuse to use PNG on the grounds that Internet Explorer does not support it properly and 80% of people out there still use IE :(
4
Didn’t Jeffrey Zeldman (he of “Designing With Web Standards” fame) announce last year that he was doing some work for Apple?
I haven’t noticed any changes on the Apple Website…. so maybe this was what he was talking about. In fact, this would be the ideal person to hire if Apple wanted to oversee the quality of the code that’s produced by iBlog (or whatever) - and then promote it.
5
@Robert Castelo: Yes this could be a clue who knows. I remember reading something about that too. This would be great! If Apple uses Zeldman’s advice on this then I can only imagine something perfect will come out of it…. all speculation here of course… and dreaming too ;-)
6
Oh boy, I would love to see such an app from Apple coming out!!
7
I’d like to see Apple get Safari right first.
If they can do that, then I’ll believe they can make the leap to a Dreamweaver/GoLive competitor, and not an entry-level tool like RapidWeaver.
Long live BBEdit!
8
Zeldman and another css pro have gone to work at Apple, and they have redesigned most of the apple.com site to be much more xhtml/css compliant.
Would love to have apple make available a cool iCss or iXML app. perhaps a module of Safari. Also would love to be able to publish easily to my .mac page. Can’t wait for this to surface, whatever it is…
9
I for one really hope this rumour is true.
10
The problem is this rumour is from Mac OS Rumors - not very reliable.
And they try and explain this app as combining Safari with AppleWorks. Why would someone want to do a spreadsheet in a XHTML/CSS editor? Word processing maybe.
However, NeXT did have a basic HTML editor bundled with their OS. And this made it into early versions of Mac OS X. But it was pulled out before 10.0 I think.
But now Apple’ve got WebKit, they may very well be extending it to do a WYSIWYG XHTML/CSS editor. Don’t get you hopes up though. I doubt Apple will compete directly against Adobe and Macromedia. They’re too clever for that. I’d expect they’d do a basic iApp editor like Freeway or Mozilla’s Composer that worked exclusively and seamlessly with their .Mac services.
11
One of the great things about the iApps is the way they integrate. This would be a killer feature for a personal Web application.
For example allowing you to pull data from iPhoto to create a gallery, and blog about each photo, link to your iTunes data to show what album you listened most to this week, iCal automatically posting what events you’ll be attending, and iChat showing your status on your website.
I know there are currently applications that do most of these things, but it would be nice to have them all in one blogging application and integrate them together - e.g. link a calendar event with photos a playlist and blog post.
12
After my initial excitement, I’m wondering if it might turn out to be a rapidweaver style thing. That would be a real shame - I want my pro app!
13
@Jon, yeah me too. With all those comments about the “i”-thing I’m starting to have doubts too. What I think would be perfect is some sort of hybrid of a CSS app in combination with XHTML features (preview etc.).
So a bit like some CSS apps out there but more extended… and… with the cool Apple look and intuitive interface. In other words you can create both CSS and HTML/XHTML.
And yes I know that DreamWeaver MX2004 has these features, but the layout mode isn’t well supported (yet?), so I often use BBEdit or I just work in the code view of DreamWeaver. God!... Hear us talking! We almost forget it is just a rumor ;-)
14
I know - its nice to think it _could_ happen though!