Hello all…you may have seen that a comparison of a few WYSIWYG apps was done in this month’s MacFormat magazine…must say I think they were a little harsh about Freeway!! (but they were right about the lack of decent templates)
They made a few claims that were just garbage: Freeway doesn’t support drag and drop with images, and that the upload tool is very confusing.
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Hi Fergus, have not seen it… just going off your words. I would hope Freeway gets a 0 for templates. If you want templates then there are billions, what a ridiculous category. Anyway I will look out for the mag. Last thing Mac format said was " Freeway, Best in it’s Class" Rating: 5/5 Not sure what category that was?
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Well, it was a review based on complete beginners but I would have still had thought Freeway to do a little better…it’s not that hard to get to grips with (I managed…many years ago!)
Here’s a summary of how Freeway (express) performed:
Ease of Use: 1/5
Templates: 2/5 (seems a little high!)
Adding Images: 1/5
Blogs and media: 1/5
Felxibility: 4/5
Publishing: 3/5
The winner was Rapidweaver…though we all know what it should have been!!..
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OK, Maybe Freeway needs something that Walter was talking about just recently ( paid templates ) it would up the anti.
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Is there a link to the online article, or is it just in the magazine version?
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Pete: yes, your absolutely right…I’m planning on opening a store later in the year for templates (www.freewayforest.com - nothing there yet though!)
Dan: Sorry, just searched their website and it appears it’s only in the magazine.
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Sometime around 25/4/09 (at 09:52 -0400) Fergus T said:
They made a few claims that were just garbage:
Freeway doesn’t support drag and drop with
images, and that the upload tool is very
confusing.
Those points, particularly the first, deserve a printed apology and correction.
The ‘upload tool’, or rather feature, manages
things for the user very elegantly; it is
extremely simple to use. Unless of course you
don’t actually know what the upload details are
for your web space, in which case you’re screwed
no matter what software you use.
Drag and drop for image import has been Freeway’s
forté since version 1.0. If the ‘reviewer’ (and I
use the word loosely) had actually tried this
then they would have seen that it works. As
opposed to doesn’t work. Did they just flip a
coin rather than testing when filling out the
list of features?
It would be pointless for me to complain,
obviously, because of my connection with one of
MacFormat’s big rivals, but I do hope that y’all
will do the honourable thing. Calmly but firmly,
of course.
k
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I agree…made me a little angry too!
Especially since they praised the upload tool of rapidweaver, which is by no means as simple as the Freeway one (well, it wasn’t last time I used it a few versions ago)
Yes, doesn’t make sense that they said that. Unless they were referring to the lack of being able to drag and drop .psd files (it was Express they compared) but I highly doubt that a beginner would use psd files anyway…I didn’t when I began.
What’s you connection with the rival? (if you don’t mind me asking!)
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Sometime around 26/4/09 (at 12:12 -0400) Fergus T said:
Unless they were referring to the lack of being able to drag and
drop .psd files (it was Express they compared)
In which case I’d want to know how the other tools fared with this.
Unfortunately, many times journalists just don’t ‘get it’ when it
comes to tools that work in unexpected ways, even though those ways
may be far more intelligent than the traditional methods. The ideal
reviewer is someone who is involved in the relevant disciplines, has
a decent amount of real experience under their belt and is
open-minded and actively interested in learning fresh viewpoints.
Sadly, this combination is the exception rather than the rule.
What’s you connection with the rival? (if you don’t mind me asking!)
I’m MacUser magazine’s Technical Editor. I used to be full-time there
for a very (very) long time but I’m freelance now and spend the
majority of my days teaching at university. However, I still write
features, reviews and so on and give what help I can. I don’t write
for anyone else as it wouldn’t help my ongoing relationship with “the
Mighty 'User”… and as I don’t exactly have spare time either! 
I teach at London College of Communication (was LCP), which is part
of the University of the Arts London. I cover publishing (print,
digital and cross-media), design, typography, specialist photography
and a few other related things. I prefer talking about ideas and
concepts at least as much as teaching practicalities. I do a certain
amount of practical software instruction, although mostly in
conjunction with ‘bigger picture’ projects and lectures.
One of the most enjoyable hands-on lessons is teaching Freeway to
design students. Last Thursday I gave an intro session to a group of
BA Design students, introducing Freeway and encouraging them to see
it as an extension of their design thinking. Part-way through the
morning one of them shouted “I LOVE this program!”, and apparently
half of them ditched their afternoon schedule so they could keep
playing with Freeway. Kudos to the tool.
Freeway Express does have some limitations compared to Pro; because
of this I’d almost always recommend that people go straight to Pro.
But both versions are a breath of fresh air for anyone who wants to
strike out on their own rather than just push content into a
predefined template. Which is why the reported magazine verdict seems
so petty and ignorant.
k
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I agree!
Interesting background too. Must be fun teaching Freeway in design, especially when you compare it to those who teach code and technical (boring!) stuff!
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Does MacFormat come on rolls? Scented? In decorator colors?
Dave
On Apr 26, 2009, at 10:53 AM, Fergus T wrote:
I agree!
Interesting background too. Must be fun teaching Freeway in design,
especially when you compare it to those who teach code and technical
(boring!) stuff!
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:-)…not quite, but they have just had a redesign!
Just realised I made a mistake…they didn’t actually say that you can’t drag and drop images, they said you can’t drag and drop html code (that’s what I get for not reading it thoughroughly!!) With regards to images they just said that it isn’t too photographer friendly…
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they didn’t actually say that you can’t drag and drop images, they
said you can’t drag and drop html code
Aha. True, although rather missing the point.
With regards to images they just said that it isn’t too photographer
friendly…
A nebulous statement. Did they expand on this, perhaps say what they meant?
k
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I agree that this is a somewhat odd comment out of context but it
would be nice if Freeway could make more use of the meta data inherent
in a lot of digital files; photographic or otherwise. Automatically
extracting the copyright information from an EXIF block in a JPG and
using this for the alt, title or caption would certainly make life a
lot easier.
Regards,
Tim.
With regards to images they just said that it isn’t too
photographer friendly…
A nebulous statement. Did they expand on this, perhaps say what they
meant?
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Must be fun teaching Freeway in design, especially when you compare
it to those who teach code and technical (boring!) stuff!
Amen. Teaching Freeway in design contexts is seriously good fun and
rewarding.
I’m working with some BA Digital Media Production students this
afternoon. I’ve just uploaded a reference document that I’ll be
handing out…
It is a work in progress. Also, this is more of a ‘conversational
backgrounder’ than a step-by-step guide as it is meant for them to
read and refer to in conjunction with what I take them through in the
lessons. But you might find it interesting on its own.
k
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They didn’t expand on it a great deal…just said that the likes of iweb and another one (can’t remember off the top of my head) were more ‘photographer friendly’…pretty much because they are really simple and easy to create galleries with.
Looks interesting…will have to have a read (check there’s nothing I don’t know!!
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pretty much because they are really simple and easy to create galleries with.
Now that is, in fact, quite true. Galleries are things that are quite
well suited to template-based design approaches, but Freeway is far
more open-ended than those sorts of tools.
It isn’t a serious problem (not for me anyway), but I do hope that
explicit gallery support of some kind will be in Freeway’s future.
k
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ok, hoping nobody will pull my head of afther this. But i don’t think FW is such an nice program for beginners any more.
I started on fw3 to and yes i learned a lot. But working and trying to learn, the english is stil a big issue for me ( and a lot of others )
The wonderfull support here, is as i say WONDERFULL, but i realy am not so crazy about the support i got over the years from the ‘hq’.
Afther questions i did not always ( read hardly ever) get a good answer on, i always turned to you guy’s to get a good direction, that got me in the good way!
I did a lot of nice sites in the last years, more on my talent for visual things, than my knowledge of html or webdesign and a lot of help from the die hards here on the list.
Yes it did change over the years, but i still find it hard to manage CSS. Still don’t understand it like i would like to. And not just the Css.
Most of you have schooled into webdesign, are teachers, graphic designers, developpers or in some way known to programs like dreamweaver or others.
Freeway Pro is becoming more and more a Pro program and less a W.y.s.i.w.y.g.
The drop and drag? come on… its a mac thing!
Why can’t we have a history in what we do?
Why can’t we have a real secure login without having to go to php and my sql ? ( without a 3th party action to be made (please!!))
And yes, Softpress is in every newsletter saying they have such great templates, i asume for the beginners, but they are still the same templates they had a 2 years ago.
I know this does not sound nice, but its not like i want to burn my beloved programm off. I love Freeway pro. Update every time. Buy every update i have to when it has to be bought.
I do buy the actions i need, and wil keep on buying because i believe in Freeway. I just don’t think it is very ‘beginners’ friendly anymore. And i mean not just the designer students, but also the butcher on the corner who wants to make his own website, that he could in the fw3 period, when it was a ‘what you see, is what you get’ program.
Freeway Pro and Freeway Express are very beautifull webdesign programm, that let you design a website without having to handle to much html or encoding.
sorry i’m not trying to be a pain.
Eugenie
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On Apr 27, 2009, at 2:23 PM, eus wrote:
I just don’t think it is very ‘beginners’ friendly anymore. And i mean
not just the designer students, but also the butcher on the corner who
wants to make his own website, that he could in the fw3 period, when
it was a ‘what you see, is what you get’ program.
Eugenie, this statement caught me eye. I still use FW Pro 3.5, and I
know nothing about FW4 or 5. Since I find that FW3 easily gives me
everything I want, I’m grateful for such terrific and useful software.
It has that great feeling of being a tool in my hand that I’m nearly
unaware of, allowing me to focus on the work itself. If only every Mac
app was like this!
Richard
Richard Houston
Architectural Art
http://www.richardhoustonart.com
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Just a quick single comment:
Why can’t we have a real secure login without having to go to […]
Because proper secure logins are actually nothing to do with HTML,
they’re server-specific things.
k
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