I appear to be missing something I have only been using Express Trial for a couple of days but hit a problem when I tried to use “Text Link to New Window” as I wanted to position the Pop Up. Following advice from Freeway Talk I downloaded “Spawn New Window” and loaded it by dragging to Freeway Icon in the Dock. OKed it but now cannot find it when I try to Insert Action. Loading again says I am replacing with a new version.
Is there something else I have to do to get this to appear in the insert menu?
It appears that the action can also be used in a run of text by clicking in your text until you get a flashing cursor and then Insert>Action Item>Spawn New Window.
You can also apply it to a graphic item
This from Paul’s web page
This suite of Actions lets you trigger new windows from image and text links, and gives you a high degree of control over the new window when it is opened.
If you still cannot get the action to show when you have selected a graphic or clicked in a run of text then quit FW. Restart your Mac and restart FW.
This doesn’t make sense at all, I had already closed down and restarted ( I have only recently converted to a Mac after many years of PCs) that doesn’t make any difference.
I have looked at the actions through Edit>Actions but SNW doesn’t appear there. I have tried loading through this again I get the message “You are about to install Freeway actions that replace newer”, why does it think they are newer? I then OK this and nothing appears to happen, is this usual or should I get some confirmation message?
Is there any other place that I can see the actions and check whether or they area active?
Final thought could this be due to the fact I am using a trial version, I thought it was a full version but according to Softpress’ website, if I purchase I have to download a Full version which suggests they are different. Will send them an e-mail.
I have had a reply from Softpress which says that SNW only works with Freeway Pro but when I loaded I didn’t get a message saying it was incompatible. Not very impressive especially as I am trying with a view to buying.
I am now back to square 1 “Text Link to New Window” doesn’t do what I want, to use SNW I have to have Freeway Pro, is there any other action which allows me to specify the position of a Pop Up?
Basically what I want is what I thought would be fairly simple. I have website which contains a programme of events. What I want is the facility for certain events to click on or roll-over the text title for that event and a text pop up to be displayed alongside or on top of the event with a text description of that event. Freeway puts the Pop Up in the top left corner of the screen which is not satisfactory.
I am looking at several pieces of Mac web design software as basically I want something that will do what I want without having to write HTML or other language i.e. a complete web design package.
Unfortunately, what you want to do isn’t something that can be done out of the box using Express.
Joe
On 26 Apr 2011, at 20:26, ElBeardo wrote:
Basically what I want is what I thought would be fairly simple. I have website which contains a programme of events. What I want is the facility for certain events to click on or roll-over the text title for that event and a text pop up to be displayed alongside or on top of the event with a text description of that event. Freeway puts the Pop Up in the top left corner of the screen which is not satisfactory.
I am looking at several pieces of Mac web design software as basically I want something that will do what I want without having to write HTML or other language i.e. a complete web design package.
Thank you for that the show/hide layer seems to be doing exactly what I want, it appears on a quick look to only work with graphic items but that isn’t a problem. I will explore further and let you know how I get on.
Joe
Another disappointment during using your trial version, your website doesn’t make it clear that Third Party Actions only work with the Pro version
There shouldn’t be any at all (apart from the ones that come bundled with Freeway) but there are some out there in the wild. There are a bunch listed as compatible with Express on ActionsForge.
Joe
On 26 Apr 2011, at 20:50, DeltaDave wrote:
@Joe
Is there a definitive list of what actions are included with and available for Express?
Something that would be great to have (and maintain) on the
ActionsForge Wiki is a list of the built-in Actions in both Pro and
Express (and, dare I ask, their current versions). Or maybe this would
be a good thing to keep on the KnowledgeBase.
Walter
On Apr 26, 2011, at 4:13 PM, Joe Billings wrote:
There shouldn’t be any at all (apart from the ones that come bundled
with Freeway) but there are some out there in the wild. There are a
bunch listed as compatible with Express on ActionsForge.
Joe
On 26 Apr 2011, at 20:50, DeltaDave wrote:
@Joe
Is there a definitive list of what actions are included with and
available for Express?
Something that would be great to have (and maintain) on the ActionsForge Wiki is a list of the built-in Actions in both Pro and Express (and, dare I ask, their current versions). Or maybe this would be a good thing to keep on the KnowledgeBase.
Walter
On Apr 26, 2011, at 4:13 PM, Joe Billings wrote:
There shouldn’t be any at all (apart from the ones that come bundled with Freeway) but there are some out there in the wild. There are a bunch listed as compatible with Express on ActionsForge.
Joe
On 26 Apr 2011, at 20:50, DeltaDave wrote:
@Joe
Is there a definitive list of what actions are included with and available for Express?
Please bear in mind that I have only been looking at Freeway for a few days and I have only had a Mac for about 3 months, although I have had 30 + years experience with PC’s. Some of my problems may be due to inexperience with Freeway and / or the Mac but I am comparing with what I am able to do on my PC with what I thought was a relatively unsophisticated piece of web design software. I have also looked at several other pieces of Mac Web Design software and have found that all of them are fairly basic so far Freeway seems to be the best. My observations about disappointment also expresses what I found with the other software.
Freeway is the only software that I have found so far that has a table facility and rightly or wrongly I tend to use tables on my websites. The first problem I came across was that you are suppose to be able to load a table into Freeway that is in csv format. This I did but the import facility would not pick up the csv file I had created in Numbers 09. Searching the web I found out that this has been a problem since Numbers 08, the solution use Excel. Not very practical for people that don’t have Excel. I had to load my table using copy and paste for each cell!
Working with cells is cumbersome as well, it may be I have missed something, but I don’t seem to be able to select more than two or three cells as a group which means it is tedious if I want to change Font, Font Size or Colour, I seem to end up doing each cell individually. Change colour is cumbersome, when you press the downward arrow against the current colour once only did I get a a selection of colours to choose from every other time the Mac colours window is presented. But before I can use this I have to select the text I want to change colour otherwise the cell background colour is changed. I did find out though that I can change a cell from HTML to a gif which would then let me use the show/hide layer David talked about.
I could avoid using tables by setting up just HTML items and aligning them but again a feature that you don’t have is a size facility so I could select a number of HTML items and size so that height and / or width matched the smallest or largest.
It may be that the answer is that I need Freeway Pro but this is a home computer and I am unlikely to create and maintain more than three or four websites so can I justify spending over three times more.
I will now go and read up about Targets so I can see how to use the Show/Hide Layer Facility.
A quick hint about tables – if you want to affect a bunch of table cells at once, click on one cell in the table, so it gets the blue highlight ring (not the flashing text cursor) and then press Apple-A (or choose Select all from the Edit menu). Now you can change multiple cells at once with respect to text style or other attributes.
One other thing – if you’re using tables (drawn with the table tool) as a layout element, i.e. to position your layout elements in the browser – you’re duplicating what Freeway Express already does. Anything you draw on the page – even a table – is nested into a cell within an invisible page table, and shimmed into place with invisible GIF images, so even IE 5 can’t screw it up.
You can’t turn this off, and if you turn on the HTML view, you can see it being modified while you move elements around on the page. The Align tool and the Inspector’s numerical dimension and position fields are your friends in making this invisible table more rational, as Freeway’s layout algorithms are constantly trying to simplify the resulting table to the fewest possible number of cells, and alignment and matching dimensions are powerful clues that it uses in its determined pursuit of simplicity.
If you’re used to other Web editors, you may be over-thinking things when you come to Freeway. It’s best to remember that many many years ago, Freeway was a DTP application called Uniqorn, and it was talked about in the same breathless tones as QuarkXPress or Aldus PageMaker by people who knew what a proportion wheel or a composing stick was.
I am now making progress I spent a bit of time yesterday downloading, reading, watching tutorials and experimenting with the Show/Hide Image action and was eventually able to produce something similar to what David had set up for me. Thanks for that David as I learnt a lot about actions going through this process .
Walter your information was very useful as during my experimentation I found that it wasn’t easy to make table items into Graphic items on which I could then use the Show/Hide image action. I am now in the process of building my table as Walter explained by using a combination of Graphic and HTML actions.
Thanks to everybody who replied iI am grateful for all the information that has been supplied
