Freeway v. Adobe's new Muse

Freeway
21

Nope. I’m that petty.

:slight_smile:

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22

Okay, Todd… I’m not really that petty. I was just grouchy (and mildly petulant) when I posted my previous message. :slight_smile:

But to let you know that I am not a total ignoramus about MUSE, here’s my thoughts on it…

Adobe MUSE CC 6.0 Likes & Dislikes

LIKES

  1. Clean UI devoid of unnecessary color. Icons look nice – very modern.

  2. Basic feel of the UI resembles other Adobe apps, which is a modest plus for me because I use Photoshop and Illustrator and InDesign.

  3. The Font popup menu (“Text” tab) is somewhat of a refreshing change in that it doesn’t limit me to a select few fonts by default, but instead it lists all my fonts and then categorizes them so I know which one’s are Web Safe. Moreover, it has a Web Fonts option too, which is nice.

  4. MUSE allows me to Preview right away, without bothering me about creating a Site Folder. And although it can be argued that Freeway offers the user more flexibility by requiring they choose a Site Folder first, I still like the productivity enhancement that MUSE offers in that regard.

  5. Zooming. My goodness, YES! Pleasure indescribable. MUSE zooms 25% on the first click, then another 25% on the second click, but then it jumps 50% on the third click, and then 100% at a time on the subsequent 2 clicks, and then 200% thereafter, when zooming in. But if you are already zoomed it at say 800%, then when you click once to zoom out, it will jump 200% at a time. This is pure joy compared with Freeway, which has each click locked to 25% increments. My god, SoftPress, you have GOT to match this functionality!

Furthermore, MUSE doesn’t add stupid anti-aliasing when you zoom in on graphics, as does Freeway. SoftPress needs to fix that. Cudos to MUSE on eliminating anti-aliasing. The pixels in MUSE look great when zoomed in.

  1. Having grown accustomed to the Layers palette in Photoshop and Illustrator (and liking it), I find the Layers palette in MUSE to be nice as well. And although Freeway can basically do the same, it is a bit more non-standard. So without knocking Freeway, I will just give a “GOOD” on this point to MUSE.

  2. “Insert Slideshow” is interesting insofar as it seems to be a splattering of Exhibio functionality that is built right inside of MUSE. But since I don’t use such functionality much at all myself, this is only a minor “LIKE.”

  3. Form Templates. Wow. Rather than force me to make every little bit of the form myself, as Freeway does, I can choose a ready-made contact form and dump it on the page. I like the control that Freeway gives me, but I like the productivity enhancement this feature of MUSE gives the user too. Even so, I don’t have a Form on every page in my site, so this is a minor “Like.”

  4. Being able to insert a pre-made Tabbed Panel is interesting. Not sure if I would use it. But it caught my eye.

  5. When I style some text in a text box and then switch to another program to copy some text, when I switch back to MUSE and Paste, it matches the existing text style by default. Freeway offers this through the Paste and Match Style command, but for newbies, I think it should be so by default like MUSE.

DISLIKES

  1. Having used Freeway since 1999, I’ve grown accustomed to its method of DTP web design. The Adobe MUSE UI is totally foreign to me, so there will be a needed period of learning to understand it even as half as well as I understand Freeway. Simply put, unlike MacPaint in 1984, Adobe MUSE isn’t something you just dive into and immediately design a great thing without looking at the manual.

  2. Palettes that site at right on the screen don’t snap to the rightmost edge of the main window like they do in other apps. I can’t complain about this too much because Freeway doesn’t liberate me this way either; but for the record, I have submitted a request to SoftPress to add this needed feature.

  3. I’m baffled regarding how to quickly and easily convert HTML text to GIF text. Freeway makes such frequently used actions a snap. (Some of you MUSE veterans who know how may mock me, but I rebut your mocking with this — I could not intuitively figure it out on my own without looking at a manual, but with Freeway, it is intuitive so you don’t need a manual for that one function.) I even selected the entire text box and brought up the Contextual Menu, but to no avail. However, when I changed fonts I noticed that MUSE would automatically make “Web Safe Fonts” to be HTML and then it automatically makes GIF text on all other fonts. But again, I don’t see clearly where I can control that in detail like I can do in Freeway.

  4. Took me a while to figure out even how to import a freaking graphic. Okay… File/Place… Well, how do I chose if I want it to be a JPG or GIF or PNG, and then choose my level of compression? Again, I don’t want to read a manual to know how to do things that should be obvious in the UI. Yes, I am accustomed to Freeway. True. But I also use another Adobe apps, among a host of other Mac apps. So when I say something is not intuitive, it is not merely my fondness or familiarity with Freeway that is giving me a Brain Cloud. The MUSE IU is not intuitive relative to other apps that I commonly use.

  5. The Preview in MUSE seems very basic relative to Freeway. Freeway offers me the ability to Reload and Turn off IMAGES (which sadly doesn’t show the ALT text – another feature I’ve requested that SoftPress add).

  6. Subscription fee model. When I stop paying that fee, I lose the ability to even open my MUSE documents. Not so with Freeway.

  7. I can add spice to my web pages via HTML Markup (e.g., adding curves to menu corners or add a shadow to menus) in Freeway, but it’s not clear how I do that in MUSE.

  8. Although the Actions palette UI leaves much to be desired, the fact is that there are many very useful and very powerful Actions available for Freeway. I searched for “extensions” and “add ons” in the MUSE help menu, but nothing appeared. So if there are some powerful add-ons akin to Freeway Actions, the UI of MUSE doesn’t make it clear and intuitive on how to find them! If “Widgets” are what one considers the equivalent of “Actions,” then there aren’t many to choose from. And how does one add more?

  9. MUSE seems to have fewer typographical controls for HTML text than Freeway. Freeway also makes it easy to create bulleted lists, but it’s not clear to me how to do that in MUSE.

  10. It’s not clear to me how I add shadow to text in MUSE, or how I can control the color of text links, or add a background Hover color. In Freeway, the controls are all in the Inspector. You don’t have to dig around to find them.

  11. It was pretty easy for me to add a gradient background to the page in MUSE, but I couldn’t figure out of that gradient was CSS3 or a graphic or something else. (No, I didn’t check the HTML output because I’m a lazy bum.) But I don’t see any way to easily add a graphic background, unlike Freeway, which makes such very easy from the same place in the Inspector.

  12. I can see how to “Insert Link Anchor” in MUSE, but I don’t see how I can select a word inside a text box and then make that word an Anchor, like I can easily do in Freeway.

  13. In the Page Properties, I would expect to have all the same functionality Freeway gives me for a given page, but alas, I don’t see that level of detail in MUSE. For example, where the heck is Page Encoding? It’s not found even in MUSE’s Site Properties dialog! In Freeway, it’s right there in the Inspector, and I can change the page’s encoding individually for every single page in my site if I want.

  14. It’s not clear how I add even a basic web page element like a Table in MUSE. In Freeway, you don’t need a manual to know how to do that.

  15. Although I must admit that I use CSS Layout (layers) exclusively these days in my sites, the fact is that Freeway gives me the option to use a Table Layout if I want. I don’t see I have such a choice in MUSE.

  16. I can add Extended Attributes to various objects on the page in Freeway, but it’s not clear how to accomplish such in MUSE.

  17. I know how the Crop Tool works in other Adobe apps, but it’s not intuitive as to how the MUSE Crop Tool works. It doesn’t seem to crop anything on the page when I tried it.

  18. What is the equivalent of Freeway’s “Edit URLs” dialog in MUSE? I can’t seem to find it.

  19. It doesn’t appear that I can create or edit “Font Sets” as I can in Freeway. Since I use Japanese in my web design work, that feature is critically important to me.

  20. Where are “Pass Through” images in MUSE? And how can I easily jump to the linked graphic’s location in the Finder? (Both of those I can do in Freeway.)

I could have gone on, but I think a 10 to 20 comparison of Likes vs. Dislikes sums up my feelings on Adobe’s attempt at a graphical web design tool. It does not aMUSE me.

I am actually not so quick to criticize the options of others when it comes to them exploring other web design tools. I just get grouchy when they don’t give me an itemized list of Likes and Dislikes, so as to convey more clearly why they like or dislike something versus Freeway. And so as to encourage my friends here on this list to do the same from now on, I have given you my list above. Furthermore, I’ve been a member of this list a long time, and I cannot tell you the number of times people have said, “If SoftPress doesn’t add my pet peave feature soon, I’m gonna ditch Freeway for such-and-such an app, which is far better.” That, to me, is an example of “spout off.”

To my eye, as a veteran Freeway user since 1999, Adobe MUSE CC 6.0 does NOT look like a threat to Freeway at all, even if viewed from the standpoint of a know-nothing newbie. A know-nothing newbie would be rather intimidated by MUSE, at least until they read the manual to figure out how it works. And although that could be said a little bit of Freeway too, I’ve just described how Freeway is more intuitive than MUSE. And yes, I still remember how I thought about Freeway back in 1999 when I used Freeway 2.0 for the very first time, having used all other developer’s competitive web design tools prior to that. I was just floored when I saw how intuitive Freeway was. I was immediately projected back to MacPaint in 1984. With no manual, I was able to figure out how to use it. That’s not true of MUSE.

–James Wages

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