Iweb vs. Rapidweaver

Question

I´m actually considering converting/changing to IWEB 08 instead of RW.
I know there are several differences... but most importantly its important that my site looks good in IE... WHICH IT DOES NOT IN RW.
Does anybody in here have some knowledge of IWEB looks in IE on a PC?

Answer 1

It's interesting that your site does not render properly in Rapidweaver. In that application, it's the theme developer that has full control over whether the site renders properly in any given browser. The application itself has very little to do with that and to a certain extent, the plug-ins you use don't either so long as they aren't using bizarre HTML or styles to achieve what they need to. You should contact the developer of your theme and ask him or her to fix it.
In iWeb, there's no such thing as a "theme author" because iWeb has no architecture that pulls in theme HTML and CSS. Therefore it's impossible for anyone to insert hacks into the stylesheet to make things render properly in any browser. The best iWeb can do is create code that's compliant with the W3C standards and avoid code that's known to cause problems in major browsers. It has no way of knowing on any given day, which browsers are broken and require hacks.
With that said, it's important to note that the biggest issue isn't IE itself, it's whether the user using it has JavaScript enabled, has their cache settings set correctly, whether they're using the last update that was published for IE6, etc. In my version of IE, I have yet to see an iWeb site that doesn't look right. You'll get a lot of people viewing it from their work machines screaming to high heaven that iWeb doesn't produce proper code for IE, but they may not realize that companies often restrict scripts on those browsers to avoid malacious websites that would exploit them. Companies also run security software, home users do too, that interferes with whether certain kinds of content will appear on a page. That's not iWeb's fault. JavaScript has been around for a decade. PC users are just at a total disadvantage because their operating system is full of ways to use Javascript as an exploit. Therefore many PC's won't allow it and the user won't even realize this is the case. Meanwhile you're blaming Apple
You can never know exactly how any given IE user has configured their machine, but I know for a fact that if you have the latest version of IE6 and if it's configured to allow JavaScript, iWeb sites will render correctly. If you put HTML widgets on your page and insert bad code, well that's your fault, but I think everyone understands that. I had a guy having problems in Opera and Firefox but it turned out he had a giant image in his header that was causing the issue, not the browsers at all. So don't assume it's iWeb. In nearly every case, it's not.
People need to remember that iWeb was built as the last piece of iLife, as a mechanism to deliver your little iLife projects to the web. That's it's job and that's why the themes are the way they are. I don't think Apple ever expected people to start using it for small-businesses or other more advanced uses. But the interface is so fun and easy to use, can you blame anyone? Hence, I'm sure they're trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between the two camps. I'm fairly certain that's why you're seeing an HTML widget before even getting the menu option to "group" objects. Hum...
Ooops I'm rambling. Rapidweaver is good for people who need advanced features. It feels restrictive, creatively speaking, if you've ever used iWeb though. iWeb does not have the features that RW does. They each have different reasons for being, but only RW allows you full control over how something will render in any given browser. In iWeb that's impossible.