Dreamweaver et al., while they can be used for green-field design
projects, are most often used as a mechanic’s toolbox – for
repairing or modifying existing HTML code.
I suspect that anyone using that toolset to design something from
the blank sheet of paper/pixels would be starting in an application
like Illustrator or Photoshop, and then taking that design apart and
creating a framework to hold the parts in Dreamweaver. And from that
point on, they would be using that (phenomenally expensive)
application as if it were a $79 iApp, working from the template that
was designed elsewhere.
While you can use Freeway to cut apart and lay out a Photoshop or
Illustrator layout, what that does is force you to skip the “what if”
steps that you would get by drawing your layout from the start in
Freeway. If you’ve ever used a desktop publishing application, then
you know that often the best way to design a page is to put all the
pieces on the pasteboard and start “messing them around” until
something pops out at you.
Walter
PS: I think it would be an excellent exercise to take a bunch of the
top-ranking templates in the Open Source Web Design site into Freeway
as simple screen-grabs, chop them apart and provide text boxes and
graphics containers to reconstruct the layout. The resulting
“templates” could be quite popular.
On Mar 20, 2008, at 12:03 PM, John-Paul Kernot wrote:
People who design, rather than people who… no, there’s no verb
for ‘template’.
I suspect that your interpretation of design is similar to a
mechanic who fixes a car as opposed to the ‘designer’ who creates
the spectacular body?
Which brings me to the point I guess, which is should I be
designing pages with a fixed height with any text flowing into a
new linked page, or not?
That sounds like an appalling idea!
It is surprising that (cough) the competition seems to have the
ability to fix a footer (don’t shout at me it is only a cursory
glance) but FW struggles.
Have a look at http://www.harkenconsulting.com/, a site I designed
recently. It has a footer that sticks to the bottom of the page
whatever the size of the page; it was relatively easy to do. Is that
the sort of thing you’re after?
The idea of it is that it is always in view, regardless of the height
of the window OR the page.
On Mar 20, 2008, at 12:50 PM, Paul Bradforth wrote:
Have a look at http://www.harkenconsulting.com/, a site I designed
recently. It has a footer that sticks to the bottom of the page
whatever the size of the page; it was relatively easy to do. Is that
the sort of thing you’re after?
Nice site Paul and like Walter I admire your use of the Link map. One
thing I noticed - when I hit the links button the whole page moves
(in Firefox). It takes a jump to the left (as i wrote this the Rocky
Horror Time Warp song came into my head, the bit that goes “you take
a jump to the left…” and now I can’t get it out of my head!).
cheers
Pete
On 20 Mar 2008, at 16:50, Paul Bradforth wrote:
On 20 Mar 2008, at 11:57, John-Paul Kernot wrote:
Which brings me to the point I guess, which is should I be
designing pages with a fixed height with any text flowing into a
new linked page, or not?
That sounds like an appalling idea!
It is surprising that (cough) the competition seems to have the
ability to fix a footer (don’t shout at me it is only a cursory
glance) but FW struggles.
Have a look at http://www.harkenconsulting.com/, a site I designed
recently. It has a footer that sticks to the bottom of the page
whatever the size of the page; it was relatively easy to do. Is that
the sort of thing you’re after?
Doh! Course it is. Funny how one becomes oblivious of them out there
on the edge of the browser. Must clean my glasses. Wouldn’t it be
nice if it didn’t budge the page over though (not your fault
obviously) when pages are centred.
Doh! Course it is. Funny how one becomes oblivious of them out there
on the edge of the browser. Must clean my glasses. Wouldn’t it be
nice if it didn’t budge the page over though (not your fault
obviously) when pages are centred.
Over the years, I’ve got used to it. In fact, I’m quite fond of it
now; it reminds me that amongst all our technical perfection, some
things still jar a bit …
A slightly steeper learning curve if you’re new to such things. You
could still use FW to create the layout (templates) and hook it into
a database using some commercial actions from Joe M. It’s definitely
a viable option.
Todd
On Mar 20, 2008, at 2:26 PM, John-Paul Kernot wrote:
Is there any drawback to using a CMS (content management system) to
create a site rather than fussing with the code in FWY?
I would use templatize to describe what I do to turn a specific
design into a reusable template or fragment. But I’m wearing my
developer glasses when I say that.
Hello,
New Freeway Express user here from the Philippines. I downloaded the trial version of FW in 2007 and decided to purchase Express in Feb 08. I liked what I tried because of the wysiwyg aspect, being a long-time Photoshop user, among others.
I was looking into trying my hand at some downloaded Wordpress themes as some kind of practice platform but only saw a thread about FW being compatible with Blogger because the former is html-driven (whereas WP is based on .php). I have two inquiries the answers of which I hope to learn from as I go along.
[1] RE:
On 20 Mar. 2008, 5:01 pm, waltd wrote:
…PS: I think the OP was looking for the “sticky footer” such as you might find on this site:
The idea of it is that it is always in view, regardless of the height of the window OR the page.
On Mar 20, 2008, at 12:50 PM, Paul Bradforth wrote:
I may have missed the reply to the post above. I, too have been looking at this kind of footer which I hope to implement. Is this something that is supported by FW Express?
[2] Anent the initial WP matter above, does this mean that WP themes and their corresponding .css contents are not at all compatible with FW Express through the available menu functions? I’m more a newbie to CSS than hard-coded html and find that the ability of FW to generate CSS automatically is a big help, although I know that I have a lot to do with regards understanding the whole CSS syntax.
Thank you and to whoever may have the time to respond, I will highly appreciate it.
