Hi, everyone – Quick question. How do I design a page in Freeway, then grab the raw HTML code from that design so I can drop it into another site?
There have been two times that I’ve needed to do this. Once was when I needed to design a simple landing page and send it to the company that was going to host the landing page. The second was when I wanted to design an email template and then upload it to ConstantContact so that they could send it out.
Is there an easy way to design something in Freeway, then grab the HTML code so it can be sent to another entity?
If you set up TextWrangler or BBEdit or TextMate or any other code-
friendly text editor as a browser in Freeway’s Preview Setup dialog,
you can do this as quickly as selecting File / Preview in Browser from
the main menu, then sliding out the submenu and choosing your text
editor. Freeway will publish the latest version into a new window in
your editor, and you can copy and paste from there. Note that any
resources (images, scripts, stylesheets) will still be separate files.
If you need to send out those as well, you can simply open up the
folder where you have set your document to publish (it’s in the
Document Setup dialog, output pane) and copy the relevant files from
there.
Walter
On Jan 8, 2009, at 11:31 AM, Jamie Turner wrote:
Hi, everyone – Quick question. How do I design a page in Freeway,
then grab the raw HTML code from that design so I can drop it into
another site?
I’m trying to do this but the resources have to be either uploaded to your website or individually to contantcontacts image database. They you have to go into the html code and relink all the resource addresses to where you put them. This is a pain.
So the question is, is there a better way to do this?
Use Freeway for what it’s designed to do – create entire Web sites
(or pages, if your ambitions run a little lower).
If you want to add a page made in Freeway to an existing site, simply
point Freeway’s Upload dialog at that server and let it upload the
page or pages, and Resources folder and published resources. As long
as you have changed the filename of the first page in your Freeway
document from index.html to something else, this will have zero impact
on your existing site, and the Freeway document will never lose track
of anything it created or uploaded. Links (to other pages or to images
and other resources) will always work.
Walter
On May 28, 2009, at 10:09 AM, Dannyg2 wrote:
I’m trying to do this but the resources have to be either uploaded
to your website or individually to contantcontacts image database.
They you have to go into the html code and relink all the resource
addresses to where you put them. This is a pain.
So the question is, is there a better way to do this?
Walter, thanks for the reply but the issue is in ConstantContact and the way it works. (Are you familiar with CC?) I’m pasting the html code as you described above in Constant Contact but the FW code doesn’t know where the Resources folder exists. I have solved this problem by doing a find/replace and replacing any reference to “resources” with “http://websitename.com/foldername/resources”. This is done in TextWrangler before pasting into CC. This seems to solve the problem but now I have another…
CC adds a footer to their email and when using the Freeway code, the CC footer floats in the browser window. If I reduce the window size the footer slides behind the Freeway document. This doesn’t happen if I create the email in Photoshop and export it as html. Any thoughts?
For that, you need to use the Remote Resources Action from Tim Plumb (http://freewayactions.com
). That will let you create a Freeway document that publishes absolute
references to its images and other resources, so you upload those
files to your Web server and just put the HTML into the CC system.
Behind the scenes, all instances of
You didn’t ask, but it’s been my experience (as someone on the
receiving end of CC mail from two organizations I belong to) that
their HTML mail (and their plain-text mail) templates are
extraordinarily badly done. This is not your fault, but rather theirs.
I recommend and use MyEmma and MailChimp, both “designer-friendly”
list-mail services that serve the same niche as CC, but do so at a
completely other level of competence and configurability.
Walter
On May 28, 2009, at 12:03 PM, Dannyg2 wrote:
Walter, thanks for the reply but the issue is in ConstantContact and
the way it works. (Are you familiar with CC?) I’m pasting the html
code as you described above in Constant Contact but the FW code
doesn’t know where the Resources folder exists. I have solved this
problem by doing a find/replace and replacing any reference to
“resources” with “http://websitename.com/foldername/resources”. This
is done in TextWrangler before pasting into CC. This seems to solve
the problem but now I have another…
CC adds a footer to their email and when using the Freeway code, the
CC footer floats in the browser window. If I reduce the window size
the footer slides behind the Freeway document. This doesn’t happen
if I create the email in Photoshop and export it as html. Any
thoughts?
I agree with Walter about the CC templates. It’s as if they were designed by software engineers at microsoft. That said, I’ve found CC very easy to use. But, yes, their templates are horrible. I’m going to check out MailChimp and/or MyEmma.
Walter, as always, thanks for being so involved in the Forum. Your ongoing shared expertise is one of the things that makes Freeway such a powerful tool.
Hmm, I don’t see my last reply…
Walter,
The Remote Resources Action solved the first problem.
I’ll check out the other mail servers, but right now I’m almost there with CC. It’s this silly floating footer that I can’t solve. I’m not and html expert so I really don’t know where to look. I could send you my test email if you are interested in seeing my issue. Let me know and thanks again.
Dan
Totally stumped. I am 99% there in doing what I want to do– using Freeway in combination with CC. My only issue is the floating CC footer that moves with the browser window size. Unfortunately, this makes it unusable for my purposes. If anyone ever finds a solution please let me know.
Thanks.
Dan