© 7-9-04 Dr. Neale Monks

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• Product Name: Freeway Pro 3.5 for Mac
• Company: Softpress
• URL: http://www.softpress.com/en/freeway
• Category: Web Design
• Price:
  • $249 with either Navigation or Graphics FAST packs
  • $299 with both
  • Discounts for downloadable versions and for education, public service, and non-profit users
• Requirements:
  • PowerMac G3 or better
  • OS X 10.1 with 128 MB RAM or OS 9 with 64 MB RAM
  • ColorSync 2 required
  • 50 MB disk space
• Rating: 4 bounces - Pure Lust

Freeway Pro, and it's "light" version, Freeway Express, are both page layout tools for web publishing, rather than HTML editors with graphical front ends, like Macromedia Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive. In the same way that QuarkXPress documents aren't the PostScript files you send to the printer, neither are Freeway documents the things you'll upload to your web server. Instead, a Freeway document is a canvas, onto which you design your page, import graphics, add links, and so on. Like QuarkXPress documents a Freeway document can have as many pages as you want, as well as a pasteboard area onto which text, graphics, and other items can be stored without them actually being included in the final output. In fact anyone with experience of a page layout program will feel instantly at home with either version of Freeway, with its use of guides and placeholder boxes, page masters, linking text flow between fields, and typography tools.

Freeway Pro sports a clean, simple interface that leans heavily on a page layout paradigm.

Installation

Freeway Pro can be installed either from a CD or from downloadable installers available on the SoftPress web site. Installation is quick and simple. Unlike some other web authoring applications, Freeway Pro has a relatively modest footprint, around 50 MB or so, and then another 5 to 10 MB for any additional FAST packs you choose to install alongside it. Installing each of the FAST Pack plug-ins beyond the automatically installed Buttons FAST pack requires its own installer and activation key.

There are two printed manuals that come with Freeway Pro, a colourful quick-start guide that helps new users orient themselves, and a more detailed spiral bound book running to almost 400 pages that goes into much more depth. Certainly the best approach is to work with the quick-start guide first; it is surprisingly thorough and contains enough to get a fairly sophisticated web site up and running and to introduce the user to things like setting up master pages, selecting web safe colours, optimising graphics, and creating rollover buttons. A tutorial is also included using materials installed on the hard disk along with the application. Neither the manual nor the quick-start guide offers much information on the FAST Packs; documentation for these products comes in the form of PDF files (of which more will be said later).

The Freeway Interface

Freeway Pro has a Spartan interface compared with many other applications of this type, and partly this is because a great deal is accessed not by editing text or graphic files directly, but by running actions that do that job for you. Getting used to this can be a bit awkward at first; adding a link to an Acrobat file doesn't involve creating a hyperlink from a bit of text (say, "download PDF") within a longer passage, but by adding an Acrobat Action that tells Freeway to add that link when it publishes the web site. Indeed, you need to leave out the text you want to become the hyperlink from that main body of text and instead add it to the action itself.

Adding actions to pages and items is central to giving Freeway documents connections to downloadable files or multimedia files you wanted embedded in a web page.

There are two other views beyond the main page layout window, the Link Map view and the Master view. Just as with professional page layout, using master pages greatly speeds up creating web sites. A master page can include banners, headings, navigation bars, links, and music; indeed, pretty much anything you want all pages of a certain type to share. You can have as many masters as you want, so you might for example create one type for a photo gallery and another for pages with links to other web sites on. The best thing about masters is that any changes to a master are applied to all the pages that are based on it. Meta tags are easy to add and can be copied between pages or applied to masters so that all pages based on it inherit them. This is an essential tool for serious web developers because search engines rely a great deal on these tags to classify web sites before adding them to their catalogues.

Being able to cut and paste meta tag data is very useful and an important tool if you want search engines to identify your web pages and catalogue them correctly.

The Link View is a way of looking at a web site by examining the hyperlinks between the different pages and any other pages on other web sites. Buttons beside each local web page can be used to collapse or expand the links from it, so that you can easily streamline the view to concentrate on specific sections.

The Link Map is one of the more useful aspects of the interface, and allows the user a quick overview of how the web site is developing and what the connections are between the web site pages and the outside world.

Importing Existing Web Sites

Freeway Pro is best suited to users intending to create web sites from scratch. While it can import existing sites, these are converted to Freeway documents, and these are not usable by HTML editors. Of course any HTML editor can open up web pages exported from Freeway Pro, but if changed in that program, the results will need to be imported from HTML by Freeway once again. The problem with this is that Freeway doesn't import existing web pages perfectly. Precisely how big a deal this will be depends a lot on the web site. One based primarily around text and graphics with only limited use of things like image maps, rollover buttons, JavaScripts and so on will probably work out fine. A useful tip is to create a text formatting style and save it in the Styles palette, and then apply it to the imported text as required. With luck this will clean up any errors with things like font sizes and indentation. However, if your web site has a lot of pages, is multimedia rich, or uses lots of JavaScript, fixing minor errors on an ad hoc basis is going to be very tiresome.

Existing web sites (above) can be imported into Freeway but the results are rarely identical (below).

Creating New Content

This is where Freeway really comes up to speed. No other web authoring application I've looked at allows you to create so much content so easily. In most cases, dragging and dropping will do the trick. This isn't restricted to text files, but to multimedia like MP3s and QuickTime movies, graphics of all sorts not just JPEGs and GIFs, but TIFFs, BMPs, PDFs, and more. Once in place you can apply filters and adjustments on the fly (particularly if you have the Graphics FAST Pack installed) without changing the fundamental nature of the file in place. What this means is that if you paste in a TIFF file into the web page you are creating, it remains a TIFF even if you choose to export it as a JPEG when the Freeway document is published to your web server.

Adding multimedia files is as simple as dragging a song from iTunes onto your Freeway document.

The important thing to remember with Freeway is that you aren't creating HTML code; you're creating a content-rich document that happens to be exported as HTML. There's nothing that unusual about this approach, we do it all the time with programs like Microsoft Word, that are able to save files as both their own full-featured by proprietary formats (.doc files) and as files that can be opened by practically anything but don't have anything beyond the basics (.txt files). In exactly the same way, by using its own proprietary format Freeway shields the user from the complexity of direct HTML editing or having to work within the HTML format, as you do with Dreamweaver or GoLive. Unlike traditional HTML editing programs there's no need to optimise graphics files before pasting them into the web page document because Freeway takes care of that upon export. Indeed, the publishers recommend that you work with high-resolution images rather than risk importing a JPEG or whatever and have that graphic over-processed by being optimised a second time when Freeway publishes the finished web site.

Similarly, working with text is as powerful as it is straightforward. As with any web site authoring program, you have the ability to define text in terms of whether or not to use proportional fonts, which fonts you want the browser to use, what font sizes to use, and so on. You can easily create presets for these in the Styles palette, and then apply them on the go as you create new text or import text from a word processor or existing web site. But the real gem is the ease with which you can shift from regular HTML fonts to graphical ones - and back again! Typography has always been problematical for web designers. The usual fonts (Arial, Times, Monaco, and so on) are fine enough in their way but there are so many more exciting fonts. The solution has been to create GIF files in Photoshop or whatever that spelled out short passages of text in a more interesting font and often using typographical niceties such as leading and ligatures.

Of course the problem with this is that the text in a GIF file isn't editable so that it can be changed or used as a template for other bits of text elsewhere on the web site. With Freeway this isn't a problem. Text can be either HTML or GIF formatted, and it is easy enough to create a style using fancy fonts, colours, and point sizes, and then keep it on the Style palette for use anywhere you choose. Any text can be shuffled between any style, including from regular HTML text to GIF formatting, and back if you decide you don't like the results. Anti-aliasing and dithering can be applied to optimise any text as GIF files, but because the Freeway document isn't storing the text as a graphic file, only exporting it as such, the text remains editable.

The Style palette is a powerful tool for handling HTML and graphical text, and is one of Freeway's most impressive features.

The Style palette has another magical function: if you change the style, you change any text formatted using that style. This works with both HTML and graphical text, and so if your corporate image advisers decide you need to switch all the titles at the top of the web pages from 18-point Lydian Bold to 19-point Garamond Italic it only takes a quick change to that particular style to accomplish and the entire web site changes accordingly. This is a compelling reason to make sure all text fields belong to one or other style. Incidentally, because text remains editable whatever its format it is exported as, the spell checker will look at text that will ultimately become a GIF file in the final web site.

Odd this: Freeway Pro was developed in the UK, but there's no British English entry in the spell checker, only International English.

At times Freeway Pro did slow down, but only when working with very large single pages within a document (rather than simply large documents containing many pages). While working with a page containing a single body of text running to over 30,000 words, there would be a ten to thirty second lag between my typing the completed sentence finally being appearing on the screen. Of course there are not many situations where put such a large chunk of text into a single web page is a good idea, so this sort of problem will occur only very rarely, and other web design programs, such as Dreamweaver, are no better at handling them.

Links and Files

Many web pages include not just visible content but also files that operate invisibly in the background or are downloaded to the visitor's computer. Background music is perhaps the most popular type of invisible file, and Freeway handles adding many sound file types including MIDI and MP3 files. A special Background Sound action lets you select the file you want to use and whether or not to have it loop continuously or stop once it has been played through. Similarly, a Download Action is used to link to files such as Zip or Stuffit archives of things you want the user to be able to download. This should be used where you want a link from thumbnail graphic file to a bigger version of the same graphic, as is often required in gallery-style web sites.

Background music is easily applied using the background sound action.

The FAST Packs

Like many other programs, Freeway Pro can take advantage of plug-in modules that extend its abilities. SoftPress have their own series of plug-ins called FAST packs, or Freeway Advanced Site Tools to give them their full name. By default, the Buttons FAST Pack is automatically installed and is for making Aqua-style buttons for use as an alternative to hypertext links or thumbnail graphics. There are two others Fast Packs, one or both of which will be installed as well, depending on your purchase, the Graphics FAST Pack that offers tools for manipulating images embedded in web pages, and the Navigation FAST Pack for creating things like menu bars and site maps. There is a fourth FAST Pack, Data Designer, which is used for integrating FileMaker Pro databases with Freeway documents, that I didn't test. Documentation for the FAST Packs comes in the form of PDF files and is a good deal brisker in tone than the very detailed manual to the main application. This is a problem, as in some cases what they describe is complex and difficult to understand. I wasn't able to follow the Navigation FAST Pack instructions for hierarchical menu bars at all, and didn't find the text descriptions of what I was meant to be doing an adequate replacement for screenshots. While there were some small pictures of the options I needed to choose in the various palettes, there weren't any showing me what I needed to create in the Freeway document itself. The integrated help wasn't any use either; as far as I could tell this was exactly the same material as that supplied in the PDF documentation.

The Button FAST Pack is simple enough to use: you choose a graphic field, run the Buttons action from the Items menu, and make you modifications in the Actions palette. While there is some flexibility to the final appearance of the button with regard to its shape and colour in the Action palette, the button's label come from another item, a text field, that overlies the button layer. To make authentic Aqua-style buttons for example, you will want to create a GIF-formatted text item using the Lucida Grande font. By nudging the text item so that it sits over a glossy blue Aqua button, you'll get the design you want while retaining the ability to edit the text should you change your mind about the label. It doesn't matter that the button layer and the text layer are separate things in the Freeway document; when you publish the site Freeway Pro composites the two layers into a single web-optimised graphic. Once you have created a button, you can then selected it and add a link to another web page or file, or some other action like a JavaScript if that is what is required.

Button and text fields remain editable as separate layers in the Freeway document, but export as a single graphic.

The Graphics FAST Pack is a much more complex product, but one that you will find useful or not depending on the other graphics tools at your disposal. If you are already using a full-blown graphics package such as Photoshop or GIMP, then it really isn't all that critical. Basically it offers a variety of image filters than can be applied on the fly to graphics, such as fades, frame effects, and colour manipulations. Of course the key difference between the Graphics FAST Pack actions available in Freeway Pro and comparable effects possible with the filters in a graphic program is that these don't actually change the embedded art in the Freeway document, only how it is outputted to the web site. If you change your mind about a certain effect you've used, you can easily remove it or replace it with another one, and upload the new version to your web site. Another aspect of the Graphic FAST Pack is its ability to create simple artwork, primarily polygons of various types, and then apply complex colour fills and shading gradients to them. The main purpose of these tools is to make things like buttons and symbols to catch the visitor's eye; again, there isn't anything here you cannot do in, say, Canvas or Illustrator, but being able to create and change these sorts of things within the web site document without needing to go back to the original artwork files can be a real timesaver.

The Graphics FAST Pack allows designers to apply a variety of reversible filters to their images that are carried forward to the web pages, but without actually changing the original image.

The Navigation FAST Pack is, of the three add-ons look at here, probably the most compelling simply because it does something that isn't easy to do any other way, and that is add navigation features to your web site. For many people, menu bars are the simplest way to give visitors a quick way to hop between sections of a web site, and one tool in the Navigation FAST Pack is designed to facilitate this. In a traditional page layout program, the user would create graphics for each of the buttons in the menu bar, and then align them carefully in a table so that they formed a coherent unit. If you wanted a rollover effect, then you needed to make appropriate graphics for that as well and add the HTML code necessary to tell the browser to switch between the default menu item graphic and the rollover one. Instead of having the user go through all these steps, Freeway Pro extends the table tool users can quickly create menu bar 'blocks' of buttons. As with any other text field, the entries in these tables can be converted to a graphical format so that special fonts, colours, and other typographical adjustments can be applied as needed. As noted earlier on, menu bars can be made more complex by applying hierarchical submenus to them. These are menus that pop out when the mouse is held over one particular menu item, for example where there might be menu items for different sections of a web site, such as sales, support, and contact information, you can add submenu items for each of these, for example technical information, downloads, and FAQs for the support category. When used carefully, these are a great addition to complex web sites, but I didn't have any luck at all with this particular aspect of the package, primarily because the instructions weren't clear enough. On the other hand, the site map tool was a cinch to use, and should encourage many people to include these practically essential adjuncts to well made web sites.

Being able to turn a table into a menu bar is one of the benefits of using the Navigation FAST Pack.

Resources

One problem the user is likely to create for himself are missing resource errors. This happens when the user deletes a piece of original artwork that was imported in a Freeway document, and then tries to publish the web site. Even though the edited and resampled version of that graphic is safe and sound in the Resources folder, Freeway stumbles because it cannot find the original graphic. This stresses a key difference between Freeway and a regular HTML editor: it doesn't work with the HTML files and associated resources, but with a Freeway document and your original artwork. In short, you want to create an artwork folder on your hard disk and keep all the original graphics files there and work with them using Freeway or your graphics editing program of choice. For all intents and purposes, ignore the (perhaps similarly named) graphics files created by Freeway and stored in the Resources folder in the Site Folder that Freeway uploads to your web server. If you do delete the original, you can tell Freeway to use the outputted graphics files in the Resources folder as the originals, and it will work fine, but remember that it is now working with the edited version of the file that may be of lower resolution or quality than the original.

Conclusion

Providing you understand what Freeway Pro is about and don't try to use it as an alternative to an HTML editor, it's very difficult not to like this program. It produces nice clean HTML code that looks good in all the major Windows and Mac browsers and it comes with lots of tools for creating web page goodies quickly and easily. It is certainly competitively priced -- with any one of the extra FAST Packs it still costs less than Dreamweaver or GoLive! The QuarkXPress-like interface will be familiar to many Mac users, and the text and graphics tools, the master sheets, and variety of actions for adding multimedia and data files, make it a completely painless way to create stylish web sites in very little time using the skills many Mac users already have from working with print or graphic design.

But it isn't a Dreamweaver alternative. If managing and developing existing web sites is important to you, or you need to edit HTML code directly, then Freeway Pro is probably not the application you'll want. While Freeway Pro's HTML import facility does a reasonable job of turning web pages into its own document format for subsequent modification, you cannot simply slot that page, or any new pages made with Freeway Pro, straight into an existing web site. Really your only option is to import the entire site into Freeway Pro, check the formatting, links, JavaScripts and so on are correct, and then replace the original web site with the new web site created from the new Freeway Pro document. This isn't too onerous if you have a small web site, but if the web site in question has hundreds of pages then the effort involved doing this may be just too great to be worthwhile.

- Dr. Neale Monks

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