Is anyone interested in FlexBox actions?

It’s been ages since I’ve dabbled with Freeway, but last week, fate had other plans. As I dusted off the cobwebs, and cracked up mohave… I realised I needed flexbox. Rather than wrestling with CSS input via extended, I whipped up a set of actions. So, the million-dollar question: does anyone find this useful? If yes, I’ll happily upload it to ActionsForge. Let me know before my brain turns back into HTML spaghetti! and I forget I wrote the stuff

all the best max

Wow. Blast from the past. I wish I still had a Mac that could run Freeway, just to try this out. You also remind me that I need to spend some quality time updating the ActionsForge Rails app.

Walter

Hi Walter, like a phoenix I rise from the dung heap. Luckily, I had Mojave as an old operating system on my Mac Pro, so I booted straight back up. It took me about an hour to remember anything, but it was nice to see the old application running fine :slight_smile:

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Hah. I still have my Trash Can Edition Pro sitting in a corner of my photo studio. I should boot that back up!

Cheers!

snap- its a trash can :slight_smile:

It was such a great machine, for so long, and then I got an M1 Max laptop, and the scales fell from my eyes.

I know we’ve got the Mac Studio M2, and it’s like a ballistic rocket in comparison to an asthmatic ant!! and thats no exagiration

just letting everyone know they are up and available on: https://actionsforge.com

fill your boots!!

Hi,

I think it will be great, that sounds incredibly useful! Flexbox can be a game-changer for layout design in Freeway. I’d love to see your set of actions uploaded to Actions Forge. Please do share it before your brain turns back into HTML spaghetti.

Thanks

Max this sounds great. Can you please explain what a flexbox is? I’ve avoided responsive layouts in Freeway (I had a lot of problems with them and couldn’t quite make them work), opting instead to make a second mobile-specific site with a mobile redirect. Not ideal for search optimization but it works (here’s one: mobilysis.com, unfortunately an old business that didn’t go anywhere…). I’d love to know more about flexbox and how I might use it for responsive layouts. Thanks!

Hi Richard rather than me explain in words ive done a quick video… playing around with the action within freeway: Vimeo

this should help get a handle of flexbox :slight_smile:

Flexbox is a very useful way of creating flexible CSS layouts, and has been directly supported by Xway for some time now.

For anyone who is still using Freeway, having a set of flexbox Actions should be easier than entering properties via Freeway’s Extended dialog.

CSS Tricks have a useful flexbox guide.

In retrospect, I don’t think that Freeway’s support for responsive layouts (using multiple breakpoints) is particularly helpful. It also doesn’t help that Freeway struggles with inflow layouts, which are pretty well essential for creating flexible layouts (with or without flexbox).

I agree with you. Normally I wouldn’t dream of stepping back into writing actions but this project needed to be adjusted and an old project updated in freeway was quicker than starting from scratch. In reality Freeway is an application that’s stuck in 2015. However, for anyone still using it, it’s nice to think it’s still capable of creating sites. And writing the actions was actually quit a bit of fun!!!

One area that was a game changer in Freeway was the ability to expand its functionality via actions. This is something that would be incredibly useful in Xway. I realise it’s probably a long way off, but it would open up the floodgates to development.

Hi Max,

We recognise that Freeway was (and continues to be) enhanced by the existence of third-party Freeway Actions.

Xway Actions are quite high up on our to-do list.