comparisons with iWeb

Not a very good way to introduce myself, I know…but with the coming demise of iWeb I’m looking for alternatives and Freeway has been on my radar for a long time.

And for many reasons. I outgrew iWeb a few years ago and do need to move on, but one of the main things I love about iWeb is the simplicity of moving text and pictures around. It’s just dead simple and the results are great, so the question here is: does Freeway offer the same functionality?

Broad question, I know, but when putting together something like this:

iWeb is just a dream of drag, drop, type. It’s not the biggest issue I have with making the switch, but it’s part of it.

I downloaded the trial of FW Pro and ready to jump in.


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The first thing to realize about Freeway vs. iWeb is that it’s a
designer’s tool – not a content manager’s tool. You can start with a
completely blank page, and build up the most complex design you can
imagine in Freeway. At no point are you stuck with the look and feel
(however tasteful) that Apple have provided. I know that from my
perspective, coming from years and years of professional design work
in QuarkXPress and later InDesign, Freeway felt precisely correct.
iWeb was a disappointment, frankly.

But if your objective is to fill in the template blanks, and that’s
all you’ve dreamed of in an application for Web design and
maintenance, then I’m not sure if I would recommend Freeway. I am
quite probably the biggest Freeway bigot in the world, but I do say
that. Freeway just isn’t aimed at that target, so it’s not surprising
that it just plain misses in most senses of the word.

However, if you’re willing to invest in a different way of thinking
about the problem, and a different way to solve it, then Freeway is
the only application of its kind, and the only one that has precisely
matched the DTP idiom to the online world.

Walter

On Jun 11, 2011, at 4:49 PM, msadesign wrote:

Not a very good way to introduce myself, I know…but with the coming
demise of iWeb I’m looking for alternatives and Freeway has been on
my radar for a long time.

And for many reasons. I outgrew iWeb a few years ago and do need to
move on, but one of the main things I love about iWeb is the
simplicity of moving text and pictures around. It’s just dead simple
and the results are great, so the question here is: does Freeway
offer the same functionality?

Broad question, I know, but when putting together something like this:

http://www.msadesign.com/msadesign/Blog/Entries/2011/5/20_Vines!.html

iWeb is just a dream of drag, drop, type. It’s not the biggest issue
I have with making the switch, but it’s part of it.

I downloaded the trial of FW Pro and ready to jump in.


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Nicely put Walt!


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but with the coming demise of iWeb

Is that offishul?

I would have thought that Apple would have moved iWeb to a more HTML5-centric model.

D


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They haven’t done much of anything to it in the last two revs, more
templates, a couple new widgets, nothing even remotely ground-breaking
under the hood; and it remains entirely tied to their own Web services
on the MobileMe home page server. (So it’s not using a more portable
back-end, thereby tying you into their hosting.)

On the one hand, this is an excellent design constraint – a virtuous
circle that makes it easy for them to avoid the endless slings and
arrows of “not quite generic” shared hosting. Or GoDaddy, for that
matter.

On the other, it’s not that great of a deal for the end user, and if
Apple want to shutter MobileMe, then the hosting back-end will either
need to be duplicated elsewhere, or the front-end application will
need a serious re-tool. And about time, too.

Walter

On Jun 11, 2011, at 5:47 PM, DeltaDave wrote:

but with the coming demise of iWeb

Is that offishul?

I would have thought that Apple would have moved iWeb to a more
HTML5-centric model.

D


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A minor correction: while i believe that the first version of iWeb was tied to MobileMe, more recent versions allow publishing iWeb to third-party sites.

Charlie

On Jun 11, 2011, at 3:01 PM, Walter Davis wrote:

… it remains entirely tied to their own Web services on the MobileMe home page server. (So it’s not using a more portable back-end, thereby tying you into their hosting.)


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They do, but don’t expect the blog/photo comments, forms, or other
server-side magic to work there…

Walter

On Jun 11, 2011, at 6:08 PM, charlie wrote:

A minor correction: while i believe that the first version of iWeb
was tied to MobileMe, more recent versions allow publishing iWeb to
third-party sites.

Charlie

On Jun 11, 2011, at 3:01 PM, Walter Davis wrote:

… it remains entirely tied to their own Web services on the
MobileMe home page server. (So it’s not using a more portable back-
end, thereby tying you into their hosting.)


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With iweb you can start from a completely blank template and build a
very quick functional good looking page without relying on the stock
templates. upload to any server, even drop it into an existing site.
If you’re not uploading to mobile me, there are ways to include forms
and comments using the html widget.

With freeway, you get most of the ease of iweb, even use a stock
template if you wish. You can create a site quickly, but you’ll have
much more power under the hood. The learning curve isn’t big. Once
you’re comfortable, and find out all the actions and scripts you can
incorporate, you’ll wonder why you waited so song.

As to photo galleries, you can download the free Galerie program from
myriad - Galerie and
it’s so simple to incorporate it into a freeway site. I’d say easier
than iweb/mobileme implementation. Though it hasn’t been updated
recently, it still works great.

Blogs are still a challenge, but you could go with blogger and link
out - build your Blogger template in freeway for a uniform experience.

On Jun 11, 2011, at 3:16 PM, Walter Davis wrote:

They do, but don’t expect the blog/photo comments, forms, or other
server-side magic to work there…

Walter

On Jun 11, 2011, at 6:08 PM, charlie wrote:

A minor correction: while i believe that the first version of
iWeb was tied to MobileMe, more recent versions allow publishing
iWeb to third-party sites.

Charlie

On Jun 11, 2011, at 3:01 PM, Walter Davis wrote:

… it remains entirely tied to their own Web services on the
MobileMe home page server. (So it’s not using a more portable
back-end, thereby tying you into their hosting.)


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you can download the free Galerie program from myriad

I wouldn’t be relying on this to work on the most recent versions of OSX as it was last updated in 2007!

And of course Showcase - part of FW 5.5 on - will do as good a job.

David


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Galerie is working fine in 10.6. True, it may not make the cut next month when Lion takes over.

On Jun 11, 2011, at 4:44 PM, DeltaDave email@hidden wrote:

you can download the free Galerie program from myriad

I wouldn’t be relying on this to work on the most recent versions of OSX as it was last updated in 2007!

And of course Showcase - part of FW 5.5 on - will do as good a job.

David


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This is a rumor with a capital R, but still:

One thing to remember about Apple, is that while what “Steve” is
saying here may be excruciatingly true, it doesn’t mean necessarily
that they won’t release a different product in the near/medium future
in this same product space.

Walter

On Jun 11, 2011, at 5:47 PM, DeltaDave wrote:

but with the coming demise of iWeb

Is that offishul?

I would have thought that Apple would have moved iWeb to a more
HTML5-centric model.

D


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I wouldn’t be relying on this to work on the most recent versions of OSX as it was last updated in 2007!

This might clarify the situation. Runs but might trip.

http://www.myriad-online.com/cgi-bin/bbs/YaBB.pl?board=galerie;action=display;num=1277215163

s


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I’m kind of on the fence about what that exactly means with “yep”. I think Jobs was saying that the hosting offered for iWeb users would be terminated when the clouds roll in and not the app. It might be the whole iDVD thing too where they will just roll out something else, but I don’t get the vibe from that “yep” that it’s just over. I think the hosting part is though.

If you look here:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/06/12/jobs.says.iweb.going.away.after.icloud.shift/

It has an additional word added that is missing in your topic there of “hosting”.


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