Freeway Actions and templates

Freeway
1

Although I still use Freeway for the odd job I’ve been moving more towards hand coding sites over the last few years. Over the 18 years I’ve been using the application I’ve created literally hundreds of Actions and templates for various projects with many of these having never been released. I’m considering digging them out, testing them all again with the latest version of Freeway, writing some documentation and getting them shared online either for a single ‘super bundle’ price or individually.

Are people here still interested in Actions or templates for Freeway Pro? If so what are you looking for? I’ve a whole load of Actions that I created for my own projects that I’ve never released that I think people would be interested in.
Regards,
Tim.

Experienced Freeway designer for hire - http://www.freewayactions.com http://www.freewayactions.com/

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2

Returning to this platform, in fact to any web page design I was very disappointed that Freeway was less active than 10 years ago. I remember you and Walter and a few others being very supportive and knowledgable.

If your actions come with your backing I would certainly purchase in the hopes of feeling less hopeless in this responsive page realm!

Thank you!

Frank Harshbarger
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On Jul 24, 2017, at 4:46 AM, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:

Although I still use Freeway for the odd job I’ve been moving more towards hand coding sites over the last few years. Over the 18 years I’ve been using the application I’ve created literally hundreds of Actions and templates for various projects with many of these having never been released. I’m considering digging them out, testing them all again with the latest version of Freeway, writing some documentation and getting them shared online either for a single ‘super bundle’ price or individually.

Are people here still interested in Actions or templates for Freeway Pro? If so what are you looking for? I’ve a whole load of Actions that I created for my own projects that I’ve never released that I think people would be interested in.
Regards,
Tim.

Experienced Freeway designer for hire - http://www.freewayactions.com http://www.freewayactions.com/

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3

I’m interested Tim.

I’ve looked at alternatives, but have to decided that I’m sticking with FW and waiting, with baited breath, for the fleet swifts to arrive and impress us all.

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4

Interest?

Anything that can tie in a database. (MySql with a php admin on my server).

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5

It depends on what’s happening over at Softpress and if they are indeed getting on with a relaunch of Freeway. I had a look at their site the other day but there doesn’t appear to be anything happening. Do you know if/when they will update anything?

Elizabeth

On 24 Jul 2017, at 9:46 PM, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:

Although I still use Freeway for the odd job I’ve been moving more towards hand coding sites over the last few years. Over the 18 years I’ve been using the application I’ve created literally hundreds of Actions and templates for various projects with many of these having never been released. I’m considering digging them out, testing them all again with the latest version of Freeway, writing some documentation and getting them shared online either for a single ‘super bundle’ price or individually.

Are people here still interested in Actions or templates for Freeway Pro? If so what are you looking for? I’ve a whole load of Actions that I created for my own projects that I’ve never released that I think people would be interested in.
Regards,
Tim.

Experienced Freeway designer for hire - http://www.freewayactions.com http://www.freewayactions.com/

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6

Do you know if/when they will update anything?

I think that any and all efforts are working on FW behind the scenes. I am not privy to any timelines but know that there is plenty going on unseen.

As far as Tim’s Actions are concerned - Actions, no matter who created them, are a core feature in FW and anything that you can share Tim will be greatly appreciated by the FW community.

I have no doubt that your efforts will get the reward they deserve. I for one will be happy to stick my hand in my pocket.

Anything that can tie in a database. (MySql with a php admin on my server).

As far as DB/PHP actions - there are quite a few out there. Do you have a particular request that you don’t think has been addressed?

David

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7

As a previous purchaser I too would be interested in looking at buying more of your actions.

With regard to the ‘new’ Freeway, does anyone know if it will be a rewritten version of the app we are all familiar with or something radically different and possibly scaled back?

Gordon
http://www.gordonlow.net/

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8

OK thanks for the positive feedback everyone.

I think what I’ll do is compile a list of the Actions & templates I have and let you all vote on what you think will be most useful to you. I can then spend some time cleaning up, testing and documenting the items you most need.
Regards,
Tim.

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9

This is all based on public statements made by Softpress, no inside information is being spilled here (as if I had any – they leak less than Apple over in Oxford).

The entire application – soup to nuts, as they say – is being re-written in Swift (Apple’s modern application programming language) using the Cocoa application framework and all the latest technologies therein. This is a bottom-up re-write, since the keel of the original application was first laid down in the early 90s, and has been incrementally improved in that time. The first major changes were in the 3 → 3.5 transition, where the Carbon toolkit was used to change it from a “classic” Mac app to a native Mac OS X app. This was also the end of the road for the QuickDraw GX typography and imaging technologies that made the original Freeway so groundbreaking. But under the hood, 3.5 was still using the MacApp framework, which was discontinued by Apple in 2001. In the years since then, they have converted many of the interface elements from Carbon (classic MacOS) to modern InterfaceBuilder controls, while the core of the application did not change fundamentally.(The fact that Softpress have been able to keep MacApp alive nearly 20 years past the sell-by date is nothing short of miraculous.)

I’m personally very excited about this move, and hope that they can sustain the cost of a re-write (often more expensive than new development, in my own experience). The core ideas of Freeway need to exist in the world, and having them available to modern Mac owners is a really worthy goal. I would hate for Freeway to end up like Aldus FreeHand – used only by a dwindling few enthusiasts, who maintain samizdat elderly Macs with floppy drives and built-in modems for the sole purpose of using that interface to draw their art.

Walter

On Jul 24, 2017, at 7:46 AM, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:

Although I still use Freeway for the odd job I’ve been moving more towards hand coding sites over the last few years. Over the 18 years I’ve been using the application I’ve created literally hundreds of Actions and templates for various projects with many of these having never been released. I’m considering digging them out, testing them all again with the latest version of Freeway, writing some documentation and getting them shared online either for a single ‘super bundle’ price or individually.

Are people here still interested in Actions or templates for Freeway Pro? If so what are you looking for? I’ve a whole load of Actions that I created for my own projects that I’ve never released that I think people would be interested in.
Regards,
Tim.

Experienced Freeway designer for hire - http://www.freewayactions.com http://www.freewayactions.com/

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10

On 25 Jul 2017, 12:30 am, DeltaDave wrote:

As far as DB/PHP actions - there are quite a few out there. Do you have a particular request that you don’t think has been addressed?

David

Dave,

you probably have a fair idea of my abilities, ‘muddle through’ being the operative words. That said, I have a project where I’d like to tie in a database. My host has php 5.6 and MySql 5.5. I have some understanding of databases, having made my own Filemaker ones since the mid nineties. It may all be over my head, but having actions would certainly bring it much closer to my abilities. I have seen that there are a fair number of actions, but none recent and many very old and I have no way of knowing if they will work reliably or not. Tim doing a clean up to any he may have would put me on a solid footing to start with.

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11

Hi, Walter… I agree… I’m excited as well. It’s potentially a great leap forward, but it’s also hugely costly and time-consuming undertaking… I am not sure how many people understand what’s involved!
Let’s hope the general public are patient and realise this could take YEARS not months… Although I will happily wait
Max

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12

On 25 Jul 2017, 12:28 pm, waltd wrote:

I’m personally very excited about this move, and hope that they can sustain the cost of a re-write (often >more expensive than new development, in my own experience).

I have agree. I’m very excited to see what they can produce as well. I think with the absolute most modern code out there (Swift) and aiming only at the Mac, hopefully they can produce something really slick and modern.

As the web grows at an unbelievable rate and Apple are one of the world’s largest companies (unlike the old days when Softpress started up) there is definitely a big and expanding market for web-software that can produce non-template based sites, without code knowledge. There’s clearly money to be made, so it’s a question of having the right product and hitting the right market with the best message. I will say again, that I think Softpress have to rethink their pricing model and should think more like Serif with its Affinity range and pricing, rather than the old days of Adobe pricing. Affinity are drawing users away from Adobe at an impressive rate, with their modern apps and excellent user forum. They drew in a lot of users with free betas pre-launch as well and got great feedback and bug hunting too. That was a very very smart move. (The betas are still free). I realise they have good resources, but the way they have made it work is very impressive.

I would hate for Freeway to end up like Aldus FreeHand – used only by a dwindling few enthusiasts, who >maintain samizdat elderly Macs with floppy drives and built-in modems for the sole purpose of using that >interface to draw their art.

Ha!

You know, sometimes old software has never been matched. I still use an ancient imaging app, which runs under Classic on an old QuadG5, although I’m gradually moving away from it now.

The thing is, this app was near impossible to make (requiring mind bending maths) and has never been replicated. It is called Live Picture (remember?) and is an entirely vector based app. It understands nothing of pixels. As an example of how it is unmatched even today, with much much more powerful computers … I can take a brush of say an equivalent of 20,000 pixels and swipe it back and forth across my image, using distortion … in real-time!! It is instantaneous. If I try that in Photoshop or even in AffinityPhoto, my Mac will grind to an unusable crawl for at least 2 minutes. :slight_smile: The app itself is about 2Mb (yes you read that right) and it requires around 20Mb of RAM to run. Working from an SSD, which were years from existing when it was last produced, it is a genuine wizz kid. Ironically, it’s weakness is that it is not a pixel editor … so all that cloning etc., has to be done in another app. They were working on building a pixel editor into it, when the company went too far away from it’s core and lots its way and funds. That distraction was the web! Ironic really.

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13

I remember it well! I have both shipping versions in original boxes in my basement. Fun fact – the source code was written long-hand by a French ascetic, who holed up in a cabin in the woods, wrote the code by candle-light, and weekly a messenger would take it in to town, where someone would type it in, compile it, and it usually worked.

Walter

On Jul 25, 2017, at 9:41 AM, grantsymon email@hidden wrote:

he thing is, this app was near impossible to make (requiring mind bending maths) and has never been replicated. It is called Live Picture (remember?) and is an entirely vector based app.

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14

It is called Live Picture (remember?)

I remember being at Mac Expo (or whatever it was called then) way back in the mid nineties? when it was debuted and being blown away by the infinite zooming demo.

D

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15

The news about the re-write is extremely positive. One thing that has come out of the demise and rebirth of Softpress is that the application is pretty unique with little or no competition. My only worry is how they generate income in the meantime to keep the project alive. Maybe we need a crowd-funding appeal or some other small useful apps to sell in the interim?

Gordon
http://www.gordonlow.net/

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16

On 25 Jul 2017, 2:59 pm, waltd wrote:

I remember it well! I have both shipping versions in original boxes in my basement. Fun fact – the source code was written long-hand by a French ascetic, who holed up in a cabin in the woods, wrote the code by candle-light, and weekly a messenger would take it in to town, where someone would type it in, compile it, and it usually worked.

Walter

Close!

Remember PEI mag? They did this interview with Live Picture’s originator in '94. Amazing really that an app like this could have had a single person so profoundly behind it and without whom, for technical reasons, it would never have been made. Adobe tried to buy them

" BD: I retreated to my grandmother’s studio in the Pyrenees
mountains in the small country of Andorra. From her apartment, I
could look out over a large ski resort and watch the falling snow.
It didn’t occur to me at the time, but snowflakes are resolution
independent because of their fractile nature. I had the most
beautiful example of resolution independence falling at my
doorstep.

 I worked completely undisturbed-writing the code or mathematical
 core to Live Picture in longhand. I wrote the bulk of the software
 mathematics in about a year-and-a-half without a computer. At this
 point nothing was tested or visualized other than in my mind. I'm
 not able to visualize complex solutions while sitting in front of
 a computer. In fact, it was several years before I actually saw an
 image on the computer screen. The basis of Live Picture is about
 60 pages of mathematics. During this time, I lived off my savings.
 Thankfully, living was cheap there."

I popped the article online for you if you want to read the whole thing.

http://www.grantsymon.com/Share/BrunoDeleanPEI-Interview.txt

Early on Kodak made a big investment and many others were around it like bees and a honey pot. Adobe tried more than once to buy it (doubtless to kill it). There were so many possibilities of having the vector description file (Fits) separate from the pixel data, that in the end they kind of ran around in circles investing in everything but the app itself. They were convinced that resolution independence on the web would be huge … they were kind of right, but not in the way they thought.

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17

Oops! Got some weird formatting there. Well … you’ll work it out. The quote is in-between the inverted commas, as it should be :slight_smile:

Apart from that and re other post weirdness … I should read before I post. :slight_smile:

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18

Hey Tim
You know I am in where you are concerned, and I am staying with FW. I too, am looking forward to learning the new application. Thx all

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19

Hopefully ‘Freeway’ would perhaps try a go-fund me type option before throwing in the towel!

Frank Harshbarger
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On Jul 25, 2017, at 5:28 AM, Walter Lee Davis email@hidden wrote:

This is all based on public statements made by Softpress, no inside information is being spilled here (as if I had any – they leak less than Apple over in Oxford).

The entire application – soup to nuts, as they say – is being re-written in Swift (Apple’s modern application programming language) using the Cocoa application framework and all the latest technologies therein. This is a bottom-up re-write, since the keel of the original application was first laid down in the early 90s, and has been incrementally improved in that time. The first major changes were in the 3 → 3.5 transition, where the Carbon toolkit was used to change it from a “classic” Mac app to a native Mac OS X app. This was also the end of the road for the QuickDraw GX typography and imaging technologies that made the original Freeway so groundbreaking. But under the hood, 3.5 was still using the MacApp framework, which was discontinued by Apple in 2001. In the years since then, they have converted many of the interface elements from Carbon (classic MacOS) to modern InterfaceBuilder controls, while the core of the application did not change fundamentally.(The fact that Softpress have been able to keep MacApp alive nearly 20 years past the sell-by date is nothing short of miraculous.)

I’m personally very excited about this move, and hope that they can sustain the cost of a re-write (often more expensive than new development, in my own experience). The core ideas of Freeway need to exist in the world, and having them available to modern Mac owners is a really worthy goal. I would hate for Freeway to end up like Aldus FreeHand – used only by a dwindling few enthusiasts, who maintain samizdat elderly Macs with floppy drives and built-in modems for the sole purpose of using that interface to draw their art.

Walter

On Jul 24, 2017, at 7:46 AM, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:

Although I still use Freeway for the odd job I’ve been moving more towards hand coding sites over the last few years. Over the 18 years I’ve been using the application I’ve created literally hundreds of Actions and templates for various projects with many of these having never been released. I’m considering digging them out, testing them all again with the latest version of Freeway, writing some documentation and getting them shared online either for a single ‘super bundle’ price or individually.

Are people here still interested in Actions or templates for Freeway Pro? If so what are you looking for? I’ve a whole load of Actions that I created for my own projects that I’ve never released that I think people would be interested in.
Regards,
Tim.

Experienced Freeway designer for hire - http://www.freewayactions.com http://www.freewayactions.com/

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20

I remember Live Picture also and just found this link. Live Picture – Software that was way ahead of its time | LensGarden

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