Apple unveils iWork '05 productivity suite - Page 3

I thought that some sort of spreadsheet or simple DB application were omitted as they are dependent on Tiger's CoreData frameworks.

It would be nice if they came out with a simple to use DB. Make a simple data model and then make something akin to Hypercard sheets on top, that with a few click / drag operations linked up to your data...

1999 called. They want their joke back!

It's more Mac-like than anything Adobe, MS or Macromedia ship. It's using all the latest Cocoa UI elements that Pages and the like use, the icons have been updated, etc. If you think there are particular things that don't look nice, let me and Andrew know.

My only critique of Create right now is that its been gaining so many features recently that its palettes are starting to get too numerous. There probably has to be some new thought towards cleaning up the UI in that respect. Notice that, like Page sand Keynote, its user experience centers around a multi-pane inspector and a resource library. The other important aspect is the exporting features, the Image Well (super-handy), its partnership with the PStill distillery for print publishing and the web page creation feature.

I think some of Stone's artwork on that page isn't great, and much of the given resources could be much better. That's at least partly my fault, since I was supposed to come up with some new stuff, but got sidetracked for a long time now with my day job, moving and whatnot. I have to get back on that. There has been some new gains in these places recently though. Still, the idea with Create is that you create your own content. It's not theme-driven or meant to be a color-by-numbers tool. I save my own resources to the library and reuse them all the time.

Besides, Andrew Stone is arguably the most responsive developer out there, so if there's some aspect that doesn't look or feel professional, just bring it up with him or the community.

I do like the range and depth of the Stone software.

And let's face it, even Apple has only recently cleaned up it's Aqua and layout to a decent level of refinement. But I'd love to see a Create on Tiger feeling and looking like a true Tiger app. It'd sell a lot more I think.

The thing I like about Create (and other cocoa apps, I guess) is how well it plays with Keynote (and presumably, Pages as well). Just dragging pdf's from the ink well into Keynote produces lovely scalable graphics with all the transparency set automatically. All you then have to do is add a drop shadow and it looks fantastic.

I see a lot of UI consistency between Pages and Create. For example, the Pages web site talks about using Masks to crop images in a non destructive manner. Create works in the same way, and it is really powerful!

Also, the copying and pasting of effects is the same in Keynote and Create.

Getting back to pages, it was nice to see that subscript and superscript buttons are available in the toolbar options. It remains to be seen whether the line spacing problems have been sorted though...


We need more screenshots!!!!


Cheers

Rich

Re:Keynote 2, I'd like to know if it can finally set up to run an automatic slideshow, ex. setting timings for each slide and being able to let it run.

Steve Jobs mentioned "Kiosk mode" in his keynote speech. Maybe that's what he meant?

This is the main reason keeping me from buying Keynote.

If a database application was added to iWork, maybe it would facilitate Pages's functionalities as a web design application?

Something along the lines of making customizable photo galleries, blogs, personal homepages, etc.

Yeah, didn't I hear about adding a blog server to Tiger?

That was "Pal," some sort of Internet synching service for Mac OS X.

Looks pretty different once you compare the images.

I can't answer your exact question, but I'm guessing you may be happy with the new version. I was looking over someone's shoulder during a demo of the kiosk mode and it seemed quite powerful. I beleive that the actions for graphics and text can be timed by any choosen number of seconds. I don't remember seeing that the whole page could be timed, but it makes sense that it would.

From Apple's site:

"When youre transporting your audience from one slide to another, you use transitions, and Keynote 2 offers you plenty of options here, too. In addition to offering you nearly two dozen transitions to choose from, Keynote 2 also lets you control the direction and duration of the transitions and whether they occur automatically or with a mouse click."

That looks like a "yes" to your question.

Thanks for sharing that info. Now I'm excited about getting iWork and finally ditching PowerPoint!

Video up showing more images of Pages and Keynote. Scroll down the page and its on the right side of the page.

Nice find. Anyone else find it odd they had a navigation bar with arrows at the bottom but wasn't clickable. You can do those things with QuickTime and Flash so I thought maybe they did.

Looks like a QuickTime export of a presentation on iWork. Safari Web view looks very good for me, giving presentations on web design stuffs.

as a frame user i am interested to see how pages works, but it looks like it is missing some of the things that *real* frame users make use of all the time: cross refs and access to the api/scripting engine (through MIF files etc). this is what makes frame powerful -- on the face of it there are similarities to other word processors. but being able to write custom calls for inserting types of data and x-refs etc is what makes it what it is.

if apple open up the backend of pages it could be the way forward

Nice article here. It is short but exciting. Jim Heid is the author.

I agree with Heid. The more I see of Pages, the more it dawns on me that's it's a Page Layout app.

Apple's trying to get around this by making the template thing a user's first choice.

Jobs was actually funny when he spoke of Pages' templates as being an "all-new" idea. It's not new. Almost every app I've ever bought comes with templates.

Maybe I'll change my mind when I get a copy of it, but for now, it's becoming painfully obvious that we have not only lost a spreadsheet app, but also an app solely devoted to text-editing.

And what text-editing app are we losing? TextEdit is still around. You still have Appleworks. And it looks like Pages will do pretty good word processing on its own by just starting out with a blank sheet.

Plus, TextWrangler is now free.

And, like every other app that uses themes, there is a preference to disable the themes dialog upon launch/new document.

(From Keynote 1.0):


Problem?

It's a word processor, page layout, PDf and wysiwyg webpage(potentially/in theory) app, to varying degrees. It needn't be just one thing.

I think it's great that Pages is a light DTP program, I just hope it functions well as a word processor too -- i.e., fast and fairly transparent.

Already it's looking like we'll have to wait until Pages 2.0 to see some of the more advanced WP features...

Anyway, looking forward to trying out this puppy.

I'm aware that the templates can be disabled.

My question is whether Pages "breaks" the traditional WP paradigm of just opening a document and starting to type, and whether a Pagemaker-like "text in boxes" metaphor is in use.

I'm not complaining about the Page Layout functionality. Do a search and you'll find me asking for a lower end DTP app on OS X from Adobe or Apple.

However, I also write for a living and there's a good reason writers avoid DTP apps.

I agree.

It's clear (and interesting) that Apple found enough overlap between the features of a WP a light DTP program to blur the lines between them. And it's increasingly clear, from the demo, they've pulled off DTP element with no small amount of panache. I only hope (and wait to be convinced) they've done a equal job for the WP part.

Ok, I see. Can't quite tell yet. Where'd I see non-Apple screenshots a few days ago?

Hey, Mariner Calc's not so bad. (I'm playing with it just now). Nice alternative to Excel. Not fantastic, not Mac OS X-like but acceptable non-MS spreadsheet.

But gimme Cells for iWork anyday. I love that Apple touch too much, 3rd party stuff seldom feels right.

WaSP has info on Pages html abilities or lack thereof. Not only is the code bad, it doesn't look right in Safari. Safari! Haha. Oh well, there goes my plans on using this to make Newsletters that can be published in multiple mediums.

More screenies.

Note that one screenshot shows that a serial number is needed for installation. Interesting.

Also, the size of the file for total install is 794 Mb.

Oh no. *sigh* :/

This is, unfortunately, true. At least, in the unofficial version floating around the net. I made a simple resume in Pages last night and exported it to HTML. It cleverly converted the fancy fonts to images so that Windows users can see the stylish fonts. However, all the formatting and layout work I did was lost--in Safari! I was shocked. But oh well. This isn't even an official version so maybe this will be fixed?

You know that within a week after Pages gets released and someone gets a look at the XML files these things are saved as, will release an HTML export plug-in.

This doesn't sound good.

Naturally enough, when using a program that allows you to control your layout of text and graphics cleanly and efficiently, any HTML export should lose much of that formatting... So, I'm wondering if you wrote a document using Pages' web-page template, whether the resulting file would be more web friendly??? (The web-page template may restrict you to how you position graphics, heading styles, and so on).

Anyone know?

[edit: I'm assuming you didn't write your resume with the web-page template, and assuming that there IS a web page template!]

Yeah? Where is my Keynote 1.x HTML export plug-in?


Nope. According to what I've heard the Pages software demo'd at MacWorld was gold master. The WaSP report was from an official build (hopefully).

I mean, I could clean it up but if things are really borked what's the point? Might as well design the entire web template myself. Sheesh, so much for not having to do my job.

The first template is a blank page. You open it and you type-just like any other WP. You can add text boxes if you wish to position text or link it with a graphic.

I couldn't find a web page template. I just made the document then used the Export feature which presents you with the following options: PDF, Word, HTML, RTF & Plain Text.

I don't think the ability to export as html, whether its the builtin function or a third party plugin, qualifies Pages as a web page app. A minimum would be a a reasonably reliable preview built in, like in Taco Edit, Dreamveawer or NVU. A true web page creator would have code view as well.

My guess is that Apple will achieve this with some kind of blogging/easy web page app later on. (Claris Homepage was actually a pretty good low end web page creation tool).

A nice first impressions (focusing on WP) over at ars.

Thanks for the link. It looks like there is some document info (word count) after all. I hope it counts the words in a selection as well as total word count.

I was just concerned that Pages wouldn't work like a true word-processor, which, if I'm hearing right isn't the case.

I'm not worried about individual features like word count. iWork will mature quickly once the rest of the suite is unveiled. Just look at where iLife is after five revisions.

What do you need for your true word-processor that Pages doesn't offer?

If Simifilm's first impressions are correct (and I'm sure this is a highly subjective matter anyway), speed in Pages is "ok" for text-centric documents on a 1ghz iBook G4 w/ 768mb of RAM.

According to the Ars forums, Mail Merge. I mean sure you could use the defense that Pages is $40 (half of iWork) but meh. Mail Merge.

I haven't been able to find any selection word count.

It's HTML is deplorable and it's exporting "fancy" text effects as PNGs who's transparency won't show in Win IE.

But I'm only using it for PDFs anyway, so I don't care, personally. I'd rather no HTML export though, instead of lousy HTML

After playing with it a bit, it really functions and looks just like a traditional WP if you just get set it so the stupid template selector doesn't open with a new doc, and you show rulers, and you set the inspector on "text."