My current site was built in Dreamweaver. I’m new to Freeway so have some teething issues. Just playing about with it has taught me some great things to make my site better so I plan to do a redesign.
BUT, the header and footer thing is driving me mad!! I gather using master pages gives you site wide edit-ability but when I add content to pages longer than it’s currently set, the text boxes ride over the footer I’ve set up causing overflow issues and all sorts.
Do I have to manually change every page length to avoid this?
In dreamweaver the header and footer are separate html files and I use PHP to render them into one page in the browser. Can this be achieved in freeway or is there a way for the footer and page length to push down automatically during the design phase?
By using a box-model to build your site by using nested (aka in-flow) HTML items you can have the desired effect. The idea is a box within a box within a box. So to get a header and footer plus content you’d double click in the blank page, goto ‘Insert’ ‘HTML Item’ and then double click inside that box and create 3 more HTML items so you’d have a header, body, and footer. By doing things this way you don’t have to adjust the page length. By simply dragging and dropping HTML items in a non-box-pattern Freeway won’t auto size the page vertically for you.
The box model with inline HTML items is highly recommended, but Freeway Master pages don’t work very well with it. Here’s what happens:
You make a Master page using inline HTML items.
You make the site pages from the Master page.
You change the content on each page but leave the headers and footers the same.
So far, so good. But now you decide you wish to make a change in the footers: maybe a different colour, different text, whatever. You make the change on the Master page but find that the footers have not changed on the site pages. The inline items have all become detached from the Master page and there is no way to re-attach them: for an inline item you will not find the “Use Master Content” and “Use Master Settings” check boxes for inline items.
So with inline items the Master pages are only useful for setting up the site: you lose the convenience of making a change on the Master page and seeing it reflected on other pages.
Oh, I was about to begin working that way but if that is an issue I’d better try a different solution. My site contains over 40 pages and can’t be doing with going to each page to adjust them.
Maybe I’m better sticking to dreamweaver after all!
Sometime around 9/7/08 (at 17:03 -0400) Lee Foster said:
Oh, I was about to begin working that way but if that is an issue
I’d better try a different solution.
Why not work in a similar way to how you’ve been doing it up to now?
Use PHP includes to stick the footers (etc.) into your pages at
runtime on the server?
Rather than do the box model dance, which has some interesting
advantages but takes some definite getting used to, find the Freeway
equivalent on your existing workflow.
You can slip your PHP include code into the page output immediately
before the end of the body tag by going to Page > HTML Markup and
choosing ‘Before ’.
Careful with that – using Page > HTML Markup will put the header and
footer outside of the PageDiv, which means that any pages that are
shorter than the browser window will have a vertical scroll bar. The
PageDiv is 100% min-height, and then you add the height of the header
and / or footer.
If you use the CrowBar Action, you can slip a header and footer
inside the PageDiv in Freeway 5.
Double-click the page to open up the PageDiv, then Insert > Action >
CrowBar. If you want header and footer, then do it twice with a
return between them. You don’t need to have anything else inserted as
an inline in the page.
With one of the CrowBar instances selected, click on the Code button
and add your markup: <?php include('header.php'); ?> or whatever.
Select Beginning or End, and you’re all set.
Walter
On Jul 9, 2008, at 6:29 PM, Keith Martin wrote:
You can slip your PHP include code into the page output immediately
before the end of the body tag by going to Page > HTML Markup and
choosing ‘Before ’.
So far, so good. But now you decide you wish to make a change in
the footers: maybe a different colour, different text, whatever.
You make the change on the Master page but find that the footers
have not changed on the site pages. The inline items have all
become detached from the Master page and there is no way to re-
attach them: for an inline item you will not find the “Use Master
Content” and “Use Master Settings” check boxes for inline items.
That’s my experience too. I take a different approach: I give the
outer wrapper item a large bottom padding (say 100px) and then sketch
a footer in the padding space. If you attach the footer to the bottom
of the wrapper item (bottom 0px, left 0px, right 0px, height 90px),
the footer should then stay under the text - and it remains a Master
Page item, so you can update it later on if you want to.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work properly in Freeway 5: if you type
into the wrapper item, the footer stays put instead of moving down.
You can correct this by selecting the footer and turning Use Master
Settings off and on again, which makes the footer jump to the right
place. (This is a bug in my view.) However you still have to be
vigilant, because there is always the outside chance that you will
miss a footer that has crept out of position.
That’s about the best I can come up with at the moment, I’m afraid.
Sometime around 9/7/08 (at 21:46 -0400) Walter Lee Davis said:
With one of the CrowBar instances selected, click on the Code button
and add your markup: <?php include('header.php'); ?> or whatever.
Select Beginning or End, and you’re all set.
Thanks for the warning and the rock-solid suggestion!
This has been a great response guys, but to save me banging my head against the wall for too much longer please can someone direct me to, or write a simple direction for this to work. Can’t seem to get it and spent all morning on a bloody footer instead of getting on with the rest of the work!.
This is so simple to do in Dreamweaver that I can’t understand why it is such a nightmare in Freeway. Surely Softpress can create a footer action that will automatically treat all info in a designated area (eg html box) as a footer based on a few preferences like placement, size, static or fluid etc.
I’m persevering in Freeway for now as there are so many other things I want to do that are simpler in Freeway than Dreamweaver - but in the end the quickest solution will have to take priority one way or the other.
See http://www.hauntedland.co.uk for my current incarnation done in dreamweaver. The header and footer is the same throughout the whole site - all that changes is the white section in the middle. I want the simplicity of that in freeway!
So please help, the wall has a big dint in it now!!!
download Simple Include Pro – a free Action to create and include
“includes” such as you describe. This is all done in Freeway, the
resulting code does not require PHP or any form of server-side
includes. I have not tried this in Freeway 5, but it should work.
Walter
On Jul 10, 2008, at 9:37 AM, Lee Foster wrote:
This has been a great response guys, but to save me banging my head
against the wall for too much longer please can someone direct me
to, or write a simple direction for this to work. Can’t seem to get
it and spent all morning on a bloody footer instead of getting on
with the rest of the work!.
This is so simple to do in Dreamweaver that I can’t understand why
it is such a nightmare in Freeway. Surely Softpress can create a
footer action that will automatically treat all info in a
designated area (eg html box) as a footer based on a few
preferences like placement, size, static or fluid etc.
I’m persevering in Freeway for now as there are so many other
things I want to do that are simpler in Freeway than Dreamweaver -
but in the end the quickest solution will have to take priority one
way or the other.
See http://www.hauntedland.co.uk for my current incarnation done in
dreamweaver. The header and footer is the same throughout the whole
site - all that changes is the white section in the middle. I want
the simplicity of that in freeway!
So please help, the wall has a big dint in it now!!!
Sometime around 10/7/08 (at 09:37 -0400) Lee Foster said:
Surely Softpress can create a footer action that will automatically
treat all info in a designated area (eg html box) as a footer based
on a few preferences like placement, size, static or fluid etc.
This is actually a nice idea. I wish I was an Actions writer.
