Fin

Freeway
21

Can we get some kind of pledge going here?
Joe, what do you need. you have the love, tell us the hard facts. Can we, your loyal community, do something to pull this together?

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22

The People of Softpress:

Like so many users Freeway Pro was my gateway application into building websites, some 14 years past, amazingly. Despite having quickly outgrown it about a decade ago my frustrations nevertheless set in motion a desire to learn more about those aspects FW kept hidden. So even though FWP wasn’t a good fit for me a handful of people from your community have consistently inspired me to grow and explore, even if that very encouragement ultimately took me away to greener fields.

I can’t truthfully say this news comes as a surprise, I absolutely know some of us saw it coming for a long time, but I nevertheless feel a twinge of sadness. By any measure Softpress had a good run, but it’s not all bad.

While we may be saying goodbye to Softpress and Freeway the people behind the product aren’t disappearing anytime soon. Change may be difficult and scary but it’s also good. Personally I’m excited for the people of Softpress, new opportunities await and I for one am curious to see where these talented people end up. For me it’s not so much goodbye but rather, “See you ’round the (virtual) water cooler".

My best to all of you.

Todd
Office (Chicago): 312.212.3955

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23

I had to sign up for a new account to post this. I echo the kind sentiments and general sadness put forth here by others.

Freeway has been a reliable and delightful software to use for me from version 3.5 on OS 9 all the way to 7.1.3 today.

I wish there was something that could be done to keep the Freeway Pro platform moving forward. It is with great sadness that I have seen so many creative, friendly communities like the Freeway community shrivel up over the years as everything becomes more modern, fast paced, and automatic (for better or for worse).

Best wishes to all reading this.

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24

Well that’s a lot of news to take in from the past week while my Mac has been in hospital!

Richard, Joe, I’m very sorry to hear that, and may I wish you all the best in your future endeavours - you’ve been a great help over the years. Richard, I remember you rang me up personally many years ago when I had a problem that couldn’t get sorted, much appreciated.

Sorry to see you go…

Trev

On 4 Jul 2016, at 15:15, Joe Billings email@hidden wrote:

To all our friends, partners and customers:

The end of Softpress Systems Ltd. has come. It has become clear that our prospects, both in terms of current revenue and new product development, are insufficient to sustain the company as a viable entity going forward.

It is with great sadness that we have made this decision; Softpress has been a part of our lives for over two decades. The challenges that we have overcome, the friendships we have found, and the daily efforts we have shared as a team, have defined much of our lives since 1993. Some of our team have been “on duty” here at Softpress Towers since the beginning.

We will do our best to ensure that users can get community support in the short term through FreewayTalk, though there are no plans to further develop our products at this time. Customer downloads will continue to be available.

We wish we could do more. Who knows what comes next?

Thank you for your support over these many years.

For the whole of the Softpress Team,

Richard Logan and Joe Billings

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25

Like so many others I am sad to see this day come, though not entirely surprised. I’ve got a lot of respect for Softpress keeping Freeway alive as long as they have. Maybe some third party will find Freeway an interesting takeover prospect?

Freeway was not my first platform for learning web design but was certainly the one I invested the most time into. It gave me access to this fabulous community of helpful and considerate users and developers who many times went out of their way to help me solve problems for no other reason than having asked. I did my best to be helpful in this community where I could in return and found personal satisfaction in that as well. All of you I have communicated with over the years have enriched my life immensely.

It is always sad when things come to an end. But change always brings something better eventually.

I wish all those at Softpress the best of luck moving forward.

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26

Blessings to you, Joe, and to the staff. May great things happen to each of you.

Thanks for 12 years’ worth of helping this elderly amateur (since v. 3.5) put out a website that has kept me happily busy over those years. Your tech support, and that of this forum’s members, has been a great help to me. Thank you!

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27

Just back from a trip to Madeira tonight to log on to FWT and be met by this totally unexpected post.

Like everyone else I am shocked/surprised by the announcement.

I too have been a very long term user of FW, Richard sold me my first copy way back when.

I have dabbled with others and never really found the synergy I have with FW.

While I am happy to work under the hood to twist FW to my bidding I did always seek features that weren’t forthcoming from SP - however as long as I have a Mac that can run FW7 I suspect it will remain a major tool for me.

Over the years I have supported the FW community with answers (and questions) for fellow FW Talkers - I will do my best to continue that support.

D

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28

Thanks Joe. I managed to figure out how to copy the preferences from by backup to activate version 7.

I will use Freeway until it just doesn’t work anymore. It’s tragic that the program didn’t reach the critical mass you needed and I will miss it when it finally gives up the ghost.

Good luck to you in whatever creative endeavors you pursue.

Tom

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29

I will be interested in hearing, after some of you advanced users check it out, how Fwy Pro 7 works on the upcoming macOS Sierra. I’m hoping that there will be no problems.

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30

This has hit me more than the Brexit vote! So sad to hear this news. This is the only software that I really connect with and also has an amazing community of other, very helpful, users. Is there anything that can be done?

Say it ain’t so, Joe. I wish you and your team all the very best and thank you for everything.

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31

It is impossible to adequately express what I am feeling right now. In light of what Freeway has been to countless web designers worldwide through the years, this news truly cuts to the heart. It is a day of tremendous sadness, not merely over the loss of a phenomenal software product but also because the brilliant team who gave it life will now disband.

To Richard Logan, Joe Billings, Jeremy Hughes, Simon Manning, Stewart Fellows, Anna Henderson, and the rest of the amazing SoftPress team, with a humble and sincere heart I wish to say THANK YOU for making the world a better place. Your work made a huge dent in my universe, for the better.

James Wages

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32

On 5 Jul 2016, at 6:08, Jim Feeney wrote:

I will be interested in hearing, after some of you advanced users
check it out, how Fwy Pro 7 works on the upcoming macOS Sierra. I’m
hoping that there will be no problems.

Indeed.

macOS Sierra disables QuickTime by default (in Safari) and it introduces
a new file system - plus, in general, that Apple tries to enforce
developers to via App Store and the sandbox/security settings of the
system to enforce the way they want applications to work.

Hence I am suspicious that Freeway may not work in Sierra.

leif halvard silli

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33

Freeway has been a part of my life and career for… 20 years or so since I started using it for the Alsoft web site. I remember being so taken with that when I found out it existed, I wanted UniQorn, too.

Freeway allowed me to start my own web development business after I left that job.

I loved what Freeway let me do. I loved that I didn’t have to deal with the code that was the same every time, and not only could I focus on my design, but I could focus on my code bits as well. This resulted in my Actions for miniCMS, pMachine, and ExpressionEngine.

I loved how responsive and supportive Softpress has been throughout the years, and I loved being able to help promote Softpress among users here in the U.S. I loved getting to meet some of the Softpress team in at MWSF, as well as some of the other users at MWSF and MWNY.

Thank you Joe, Richard, everyone still and previously at Softpress for what you did for us. And thanks to the wider user community for keeping Freeway going for so long. There are still many of you active here whom I met online when I was more active in web development, and this community was my water cooler for those years, before the rise of social media.

Best wishes to you all. May your futures continue to be bright.

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34

On 5 Jul 2016, at 11:06, Leif Halvard Silli email@hidden wrote:

Hence I am suspicious that Freeway may not work in Sierra.

Not an official Softpress response, but Freeway works fine in the developer preview of Sierra.

Jeremy

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35

I’m so sad to hear the news. Yes, for us non developers there is a bit of a learning curve but I found the product to be worth the effort because the support was so good. I was hoping this summer to clean up my personal site which I still will do. However, I’m not sure what I will use in the future. Times are a changing and not always for the best. Thank you to the Freeway crew and good luck with your future.

Hugh Sakols
www.yosemitecollection.com

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36

On 5 Jul 2016, at 15:28, Jeremy Hughes wrote:

On 5 Jul 2016, at 11:06, Leif Halvard Silli email@hidden
wrote:

Hence I am suspicious that Freeway may not work in Sierra.

Not an official Softpress response, but Freeway works fine in the
developer preview of Sierra.

Well that’s good. So «Who knows what comes next?» Hope the can be a
way to «restructure» …

leif halvard silli

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37

Truly saddened to see this. Been out for the US holidays. A big Thank You to all of the Freeway team.
Where to turn.
This program was my right hand man for all my web work. Would be curious as to what the other Pro’s are going to do with this loss. Never been a big fan of WP but it looks like that is the route I may have to go.
I will use Freeway until I can’t but it looks like it’s back to school again.
Thanks to everyone for there support over the years.
John

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38

On 4 Jul 2016, 3:16 pm, PixelsArts wrote:

Hasta la vista amigo!

A blow over the years have used this tool as one of the supports of my design studio I have clients and projects in development. But best of all was the team of Softpress that was always present in support. Thank you

SAME HERE / I agree !!!

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39

Very sad news.

Being an ex-employee of Softpress, Freeway was a very big part of my life for quite a while. I remember seeing alphas of Freeway 1 from afar and then became involved more directly with Freeway 2 onwards as part of the testing team. Also worked on the Softpress website for a while. I think I left Softpress after 8 years in 2006.

Since 2006 I have not really kept up with Softpress and Freeway so this comes as a surprise to me.

I would love to see somebody write a history of Freeway and Softpress, as I expect there’s enough for a book.
I also genuinely think Softpress has a small place in Apple history. I read one of the many books about Apple history some years ago and remember thinking that Softpress should really get a mention, in particular when talking about Freeway’s ancestor, Uniqorn and it’s font technology.

Softpress also sent me all over the place demoing Freeway at trade shows like MacWorld. I visited San Francisco 5-6 times over the years, Japan once (hello James Wages), Stockholm, New York and Paris.

I have some amazing memories with Softpress. Highlights include:

• Demoing Freeway to Mac OS X engineers at Cupertino.
This was in the very early days of Mac OS X. During the demo, one of the engineers joked about how Mac OS X had loads less features than Mac OS 9 despite all the time and money they’d spent on it.

• Demoing to an Apple executive “behind the scenes” at MacWorld Paris. Apple iWeb appeared not too long afterwards.

• Demoing to some high-up Microsoft exec and spending half the time criticising MS software without realising who I was demoing to.

• Japan! I’ll never forget it. We were in a city some 4-5 hours outside Tokyo. Loved every minute and I still want to go back.

• For a while, Softpress was based at Richard’s house. That was weird! I expect it was very hard for the family too.

There are so many other memories that…er…I can’t remember right now.

Oh yes – the crunch periods before Freeway release dates. Working from 9am till 11pm or later to meat deadlines. I’m not sure customers ever got to see this side of things. They would sometimes last for months at a time.

I must thank Richard and Softpress for the opportunity I was given. I travelled the world. Learnt so much. Met amazing friends who are still friends today. Slingshot me into another job (that’s a story by itself) in Central London that I’ll also never forget.

Adiós!

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40

James Davies,

You and I became friends at that Macworld. Thank you for remaining a friend all these years.

I still remember using PowerGlot to translate the Freeway 3 UI into Japanese, and working hard with my associate here in Japan to translate all the documentation. The really knock-em-dead feature at those old Macworlds was the fact Freeway could switch languages on the fly, which was no small task for OS 9 (pre OS X MacOS), and as far as I know, only Quark Xpress had it at the time. (Today we take such for granted in OS X.) You can still read on article on that at Tidbits (scroll down to “Smooth Operators” — indicates I actually did something right at that show!):

Here are a few ancient Macworld Tokyo photos (you’ll need QT Player 7 to view the VR *.mov file):

Macworld Tokyo 2000 (outside, with Freeway Actions author Alan Shouls and me in leather):
http://cl.ly/3I2z2g1t3o3P/James-Alan-Amaki-MacworldTokyo2000.jpg

Macworld Tokyo 2001 (QTVR download):
http://cl.ly/2J0M3f3L3j0y/download/MacworldTokyo2001_FreewayBooth_QTVR.mov

Here’s a still of the VR, for those without QT7 (me at left, James Davies sitting at center, and my business associates at right):

http://cl.ly/180v2H0o2R3k/MacworldTokyo2001_QTVR-Still.jpg

I was also blessed with the opportunity to visit Oxford and SoftPress a couple times back in those days. I’ll never forgot the lunch conversation we had. We were having sandwiches at SoftPress and Richard Logan asks me which part of the bread I want. Me being an American said, “the heel.” Everyone at the table lifted their voices almost to a scream saying, “Oooooooh! The Heeeeeeel!” Followed by Trash vs. Rubbish, and so forth. My those were good times!

My love affair with Freeway began in 1999 and I’ve been captivated by her and her designers since. I must say I didn’t sleep well last night. I really am brokenhearted knowing SoftPress is signing off. May the SoftPress team be blessed with even greener pastures henceforth.

Best wishes,

James Wages

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