Along with Responsive Site Designer (RSD) and the similar Responsive Foundation Framer Beta (RFFB), Pinegrow Web Designer (PWD) is so far looking like the most appropriate Freeway replacement that meets my needs.
There seems to be a trade off between speed of execution and flexibility. There are plenty of good applications out there that will get you a site up and running very quickly, and indeed several now have their own topics on here. The three alternatives mentioned above fall into the very flexible category, giving you more work to do to get a finished result, but with a far better chance of getting precisely what you require.
PWD does require some adjustment to thinking. I’m now thinking in terms of getting my CSS classes and their naming sorted out very early on, but where PWD scores over Dreamweaver for example, is that you can get the structure of a page done without delving into CSS if you prefer to leave it until later. Dreamweaver makes doing this awkward. I just find Dreamweaver horribly clunky.
I can see the benefits of getting my CSS worked out earlier rather than later though, as it helps me focus on the areas of design that need that focus. Like I say, it is possible to create the framework of an entire page without doing any CSS, and some will prefer this. You can’t avoid it altogether however, and it will eventually need doing. The process is straightforward.
There is a learning curve, but from a pure web design point of view it makes sense. You are just looking from a different angle.
One big advantage is the ability to import the contents of an entire Freeway html output folder, as Thomas Kimmich has shown in one of his videos. I can verify that it imported correctly anything I threw at it. Sites employing a CMS such as WebYep look as odd as they do in Freeway, but you can get the php code snippets to either display or not. Given that PWD integrates really well with the Atom code editor, it’s now possible to see the WebYep code snippets in context, and re-use them as a site is built.
It could be that using a combination of something like Sparkle to quickly get a framework developed with some styling to adapt later, and then importing the html into PWD for a ‘power make-over’ could be the quickest method to get the job done.
I’ll add that I am usually code averse, but that PWD has made a few things ‘click’. You can avoid code pretty much, but it gives you glimpses as to what it’s doing and why it’s there. Knowledge is good.
I’ll give a more thorough appraisal if I decide to test-build a replica of an existing Freeway site. I should have time, so I’ll bring the results when I have them. I’ll also try to give an appraisal of RSD and RFFB when time allows.
Given that I’m also learning to use a bow and sight-read with a five string double bass at the moment, how hard can all this be?
Ian
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