Background images

Freeway
1

Hi Robert

This should really be on another thread so CKD (the original poster) can read their answer.

But

But how is this done with the background images? I click on the page and then the Appearance Button>Image>Select.

You have answered your own question here.

Once you use Select and locate the background image on your local hard drive then FW takes over and uploads a copy of that background image to the server for you. As simple as that - no hoops to jump through!

David

No, you did not read what I have said. The background images are on my server!!! I do not want them locally and I do not have the option to get to them. Again, I’ll click onto the body of the page and then the Appearance Button>Image>Select and I am not able to browser to my files on my server! Only my local drives, which is not what I want. All my other images are on the server, why can’t the background images also be in the same image folder on the server? This uploading every time is just wrong and I need to stop it.

I have a special folder on my server that is named with lots of SEO and inside are many images all properly named for SEO. I am able to have all my “normal” images linked to them. They are the same images as I want to use for the background images as well, but I am not able to get to them.

Is it possible to have your background images stored on your server?

Robert

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2

I believe you have missed the fundamental purpose and meaning of Freeway. This is abundantly clear in your many impassioned posts this weekend.

I have used Freeway professionally since 1997 to make hundreds of sites and countless thousands of dollars for myself and countless millions for my clients. I have exhibited Freeway for Softpress at Macworld and the LA Computer Fair. I built their online store, the ActionsForge, this FreewayTalk site itself, and am an excellent programmer in PHP, JavaScript, and HTML. Please believe me when I tell you that unless you are willing to let Freeway drive, and to give up some of your conceptions of how a site is meant to be developed, you are going to have an extremely difficult time of anything.

Let me see if I can boil the Freeway model down to one paragraph. Freeway is a desktop publishing application that does not print in PostScript, but rather in HTML, JavaScript, PNG, GIF, and JPEG. A Freeway document contains an entire site in an object model. This object model describes the pages, sub-page elements, their geometry, and links to external resources. Freeway does not read or understand HTML at all. (It can do some limited imports, but this is a one-way translation, not a literal read-and-understand.) Freeway’s object model is of higher precision and far greater depth than HTML is capable of representing, and each time you publish, that model is “dumbed down” into the flavor of HTML you have chosen, and the best possible representation of your design intent is generated – de novo – from your Freeway layout. When you save your Freeway document, you are saving a binary file containing more information than your published site. When you publish your Freeway document, you are generating the Web equivalent of a stream of PostScript on its way to the printer. It’s a throw-away artifact, a snapshot, a record of how your design looked at that moment.

You would not expect InDesign to look at a printed page and divine a finished layout document, would you?

Now if you want to hand code everything yourself, then you may certainly use a background image on your server. But you have limited your possibilities for ease of design and freedom of expression. Have a look in the manual for the proper use of Page / Extended, Page / HTML Markup, Item / Markup and Insert / Markup Item. Those four tools represent a way to create nearly anything you like. And keep your eyes open for Extended buttons elsewhere in the interface.

You can do anything in this application, and I mean that sincerely. Just don’t expect it to be something it’s not.

As an aside, this list is a family. Threatening Softpress serves no purpose except to make you appear – quite publicly – to be one of the younger members of that family. It’s like screaming your head off in the middle of a mall because you can’t have an ice cream. On the other hand, if you ask one of your (metaphorical) brothers and sisters for help, it will be given – tirelessly and without hesitation – and all you have to do is ask. Blood is thicker than water, after all.

Walter

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3

In the words of the Esure Advert - Calm down… all of us (yes, I
include myself). It’s a commercial business we’re in and we should all
remain level headed. It’s often the whisperer whose words are noted
most.

Sorry, I’m just catching up on the multiple threads fro Roger - I’ve
been out to lunch; something that should be a priority of SEO’s, too,
as feeding the body also helps clear the mind.

  1. Roger is right to raise his questions over the capability of Freeway.

  2. The method in which he does it, however, is somewhat disrespectful
    to others who may not share his opinion.

  3. If his beef is with the very construction of Freeway, that should
    be addressed to Softpress.

  4. If he wants help in making the most of Freeway within its natural
    and extended capabilities he has come to the right place and he will
    still be welcomed to ask how to achieve his aims, where possible.

  5. If you will forgive one little dig. hands up all of you who have
    ever searched for “rhythmically homogeneous”.

  6. SEO is only realistic if you achieve high rankings for highly
    probable search terms. It is not an art form where you claim
    superiority through displaying your ability to come top on searching
    spurious terms - Uh Oh! go back to beginning and calm down, I think
    to myself.

Truthfully, I believe SEO is important and that Freeway should comply
with its needs (as it largely does, but there is room for improvement)
and still suggest that if it doesn’t meet someone’s exact needs, there
are alternatives - albeit more demanding on time and effort to achieve
much of the same result.

Finally, my reference to aSEO handbook was purely allegorical (and for
those with a sense of humour) - but some SEO companies to publish
their own, I believe.

Colin

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4

Here, Here!, Yes, this is why we all use Freeway, and keep on using it! Stick around and learn more.

On 8 Mar 2009, 1:56 pm, waltd wrote:

You can do anything in this application, and I mean that sincerely.

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5

Walter,

So then you are saying that basically I am not able to keep my background images on the server with the rest of the images? Correct?

If so, then I need to have two separate stashes of the same images for Freeway, if those images are to be used both normally and as background images AND if I want to keep as much on the server as possible to make uploading easier and faster? I like the idea of keeping a separate folder of images of the server, though it at first really slows down the workflow.

Instead of a program (like GL) that just makes a copy of the original images and then files them on its own and never has to upload them again, as long as there is no change. I have to create a seaparate folder. Name the images with the long string of SEO terms. Then I have to upload them to the server and then I have to figure out and make a copy of each of those images new URL address and paste that into TextEdit. Then after I have made that long list of URLs, I have to copy each one separately and paste that into the Hyperlink window. Where GL takes less than a minute to accomplish all of this, I have to spend 30 minutes to over an hour to have Freeway do this very basic stuff. With GL, it can keep the original for you TIFF, PSD and then from its stash create the web ready file you need. You never have to worry about the original image ever again, nor where it is kept. It is a no brainer.

Truly, I want to make this program work out, as I do not want to go back to GL9, nor use Adobe products, if I can avoid them. There is no question that GL makes for much more and much easier SEO, but the visual things I want to do is much tougher for me to pull off with GL9, though it can be done with GL9, I just have to figure it out and I am hoping to avoid doing that. Now I am ten days behind schedule on this huge project. And thinking maybe I should not have been as ambitious as to take on this project. But I see an amazing site in my head wanting to be built.

Sorry if I seem to be rude at times, I do not mean to be, but I am an intense person and my main work is so critical that it rubs off with all I do. Should you ever have to have microsurgery, then you would appreciate the intensity. There are major expectations for what I do as a living by the surgeons and this expectation also rubs off on me expecting more than the usual when I purchase the tools I have to use in life.

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6

What I am saying is that Freeway generates a site on your Mac, and then mirrors that site up to the server with FTP. What is on your server will be overwritten by Freeway if it’s named exactly the same as something you’ve created in Freeway, but ignored completely otherwise.

I am quite dubious of this business of keyword-rich paths to background images. As far as I know, Google ignores anything that has to do with pure decoration.

Walter

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7

Walter,

I am still trying to get the actual answer to the question. So then I am not really able to keep my background images with all my other images on the server then?

Background images must be kept locally? Correct? And all other images can be stashed remotely? Correct?

Thanks,

Robert

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8

I don’t really understand why you would want to bulk upload all these images to your server.

If you start with the originals (SE Optimised or not) on your own computer safely stored with regular backups - is this not preferable to filling up your server space with unnecessary images where, lets face it, they are more vulnerable.

Then FW will only upload those that are needed and only upload those that are changed as you work on a site. You may take a while to upload your site the first time but subsequently it is quick unless you are adding or changing a lot of content. But not any slower than a standalone FTP app.

If you do not want FW to alter your images in any way there is the option of importing them as Pass-Through and they will remain unchanged. And in any event FW does not alter your originals but is smart enough to know if you have and to upload the revised version for you.

This is a long way of saying No - there is no straightforward way of referencing a background image on your server - you can hand code if you really want to do it - but what is the point when FW does it well.

David

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9

Well, yes and no. It’s really hard to create a manual link to a background image through the Freeway GUI. It’s slightly less hard to make a manual link to an image.

Ideally, to ski the fall-line of the Freeway workflow, you would do neither one manually. You would design your site in Freeway, dragging images into graphics boxes on the pages of your site, and typing or pasting text into HTML boxes. You would set background images on pages or divs using the Inspector. And you would upload your site through the built-in FTP client. And then you’d be done.

Spend some of the time you saved not fussing with image paths writing to influential sites in your market, and get them to write about and link to your site. That’s where the real damage is to be done, SEO-wise.

Walter

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10

Walter,

Indeed having other sites and businesses link to yours is one of the best forms of SEO there is. All that is done outside of the application programs.

I have been uploading my site a bunch so that I can see the changes on the web and read the URL strings and like. Each time I upload, though I have made no changes with all the background images, each and every time I upload, all of those images are re-uploaded and it is very unnecessary and using up too much time. It should realize there have been no changes made to the background images.

The website that I am building is totally based on background images and so I would like to get this figured out so I have a nice workflow. When done there will be over 100 different background images.

So I am really trying to plan this all out in advance.

Thanks,

Robert

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