At first glance, iLife ’09 doesn't appear to offer much in the way of improvements to the iWeb user. But after delving deeper into Apple's announcement, it's apparent to me that the new version of iWeb has significant changes that should help in the design and publishing of iWeb sites:

• It appears that there are some new themes. In particular, Fine Line has the appearance of a WordPress blog, while BeBop has a happy, retro 50's look.
• The Media Browser has a new added button—Widgets. This button makes it simple to add a number of widgets, including a new countdown timer, RSS feeds, and YouTube videos. There are even widgets that can embed iSight photos or videos into an iWeb site.
• The biggest change appears to be in the area of publishing. Publishing your iWeb site to any server other than MobileMe used to involve publishing the site to a folder, then uploading the entire folder to the server via FTP. Now you just enter your FTP server information into iWeb, and you can publish your site and any changes directly to the FTP server.
• Apple has also linked the new iWeb with Facebook. Any time you change your iWeb site, your Facebook friends are notified so they can see what's new.

—Posted by {screen_name} on January 12, 2009