Why if I double click on my page, without ever drawing out an item, do I automatically get my curser for HTML text?
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This allows you to create an inline layout. It’s a shortcut for the old way of doing this, which was to draw an HTML box the same dimensions as your page, and then double-click inside that.
You would want to do this if you were building a page where the height of the content was potentially variable, and you wanted to be sure that nothing at the top of the page overlapped the elements below it.
Walter
On Oct 25, 2011, at 10:11 AM, Roxane Abbate wrote:
Why if I double click on my page, without ever drawing out an item, do I automatically get my curser for HTML text?
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thanks. never noticed it until now.
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The problem with this method, is that you can’t select it, and it doesn’t show up as an item in the Site panel. Users can also accidentally click inside it, making the rest of their page items disappear, and they don’t know what happened. Any way of turning this off?
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No. But clicking on the pasteboard is the universal “select none” in Freeway. That’s how you remove your cursor focus from any object or text in the whole application.
Walter
On Oct 25, 2011, at 11:01 AM, Roxane Abbate wrote:
The problem with this method, is that you can’t select it, and it doesn’t show up as an item in the Site panel. Users can also accidentally click inside it, making the rest of their page items disappear, and they don’t know what happened. Any way of turning this off?
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Walter, I. too am confused. Would you PLEASE be so kind as to clarify further?
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There is no reference to “inline layouts” in the Freeway reference manual. Is there another name for this?
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You are correct. If I use this mystery “invisible box” “layout item” on either the master page or a body page… as I insert any Independent html or graphic Item, it makes them serve “double duty.” These sketched independent items still maintain their relative positions to the page, but act like “reverse” inflow items – making the “invisible, mystery box” content “jump” over their “fixed” positions.
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This is ONLY true when the manually inserted, independent, sketched items are NON CSS items (Blue). If the aforementioned items are sketched as (green) CSS items, the boxes IGNORE the “mystery box” content… Which makes perfect sense/corresponds to how CSS/non CSS item work.
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The problems / limitations, as I see it are 3-fold:
A. Since I get the “mystery item box” automatically – and cannot find any way to either DELETE or NOT USE THEM (i.e. alter a preference or page property… they become not only annoying, but can be down right confusing. IS THERE ANY WAY TO GET RID OF THEM???
B. Further, the “mystery item” itself as an item
(1) is NOT selectable – only it contents can be manipulated;
(2) does NOT appear in the Inspector Palette, therefore limiting attributes that can be changed (i.e. background color and much more)
(3) does NOT appear in the Site Panel as an item-- even when viewing / filtering the panel to SHOW ITEMS
(4) is omnipresent-- can be discovered quite inadvertently and manifests itself as a “bug” – since if it (although empty gets clicked on accidentally, it seemingly makes end-users feel that their existing page layout has “disappeared.”
C. What the “h-e- dbl hockey sticks” is the PRACTICAL APPLICATION for this ??
Maybe the “old way” of doing things (on purpose) is better. It is reminiscent of MS Word automatically creating indented, numbered lists, graphic lines, etc. for you-- when that’s not what you wanted in the first place. At least with Word, you can go in and turn OFF auto-correct features!
I truly look forward to your reply. Thanks very much. I seek “purpose.”
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There is no reason for a normal user to enter this mode, and no practical reason why you would double-click the page in the first place. Freeway is a page layout application, and it requires that you create container objects for your text and graphic objects within the page. You would double-click those drawn elements to enter their content mode, or single-click them to move them around or resize them. But the page itself is a non-space – a meta-container for your layout elements, and you don’t enter content into it directly.
As long as you stick to the normal method of working within Freeway (as described in the manual), you will never see this particular mode.
But when the day comes that you decide to integrate a Content Management System (CMS) into your layout, or you start experimenting with complex Ajax-driven layouts where elements appear and disappear within the page in reaction to clicks and form submissions, then you WILL need this, and I guarantee, by that point you will understand the problem well enough to use this feature in anger.
The basic working model of an inline layout is that the individual box elements that you insert inline within the page itself or another HTML element are like those tiles in the sliding puzzle game. They repel one another, one has to move to allow the next to have a chance at making the picture of the kitten or whatever look less Picasso-like.
This repulsion is the major feature, because if a dynamic element (or more usually, its content) grows larger than its reserved space, the other elements surrounding it will scoot out of the way and allow it to expand. In a normal Freeway (CSS-positioned) layout, the “growing” element would simply appear to over- or under-lap the surrounding elements, because each new layer you draw on the page exists like a sheet of glass in a stack – nothing else can touch it, and its contents can slide and grow without ever touching anything else.
The problem you describe is more along the lines of a mixed layout. Part of it is inline within the page (let’s call that the zeroth layer) and other elements are drawn above it on those invisible planes of the z-index: layers 1, 2, 3, etc. Any two or more things you place inline within the page will naturally “know” about one another, and make room for one another according to their dimensions and layout model. But any layers you draw above that will be entirely isolated from the zeroth layer AND each other. They are each alone on an infinite geometric plane, with nothing else to see are bump into.
Walter
On Oct 25, 2011, at 12:31 PM, JJ wrote:
I truly look forward to your reply. Thanks very much. I seek “purpose.”
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The “What’s New In Freeway 5.5” manual starting on page 28 has a basic explanation regarding inline layouts also as they relate to using the new RPL action.
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You’d be surprised how, especially a newer user, simply by trying to select other items on their page, can end up in this mode, and not realize how they got there.
We’re not new users, and it happened to us, in that very way. I get calls all the time from users who say their layout disappeared all of a sudden, and they don’t know why.
This is probably the reason.
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Walter, Thanks very much for your explanation. Truly appreciated. After experimenting with this a bit (not with Ajax, or CMS)… I found this feature to be an interesting “beginner” interface. It reminds me of Dreamweaver, FrontPage, etc. in which one starts off in more of a word processing-like environment. One could just dbl click on the page to start typing text and then Insert inline html / graphic items and even benefit from inserting “island/fixed position” tables-based HTML / graphics items into the layout which remain stationary, as other items reposition themselves in the main flow.
Then by adding padding and/or background color to the Page properties… you could end up with a “fairly nice / straight forward” web page.
I wouldn’t recommend it, as it is a paradigm shift, leaning more towards a legacy interface approach… but it does work.
Finally, it reminds me of QuarkXPress’ Auto Text Box feature. Although the preferred method of XPress (and Freeway) was to use the “box container method,” (sketching boxes to insert content) if one chose to, they could start a document in the the Auto Text Box mode… they never had to create text boxes… they could just begin by clicking on the page and typing text.
This may be blasphemy to use the inline layout feature in such an unworthy fashion, but it works.
Thanks again for all your efforts!
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