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 
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
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
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.
Hi, sorry for the question, I’m newbie here, what is Actions? Is it an add-on externally built and reusable in different Xway projects?
ADD : oops sorry I’ve just realized that it’s a freeway topic.
Actions are a kind of plug-in. They can be used to extend functionality in Freeway, and Max created one that converts Freeway layouts into flexbox layouts on output.
We’re planning to support Xway Actions in a future version of Xway, but flexbox is already supported directly by Xway.
We don’t have Actions for Xway yet, but I hope to start porting some of my many over from Freeway as soon as there is an API to work against and a general plan for how they will integrate into the Xway publishing process.
Yes, Actions were Freeway’s first and third-party plugins. They extended the publishing process by allowing additional code to be generated along with the HTML, CSS and JS that Freeway natively created. They were one of my favorite things about Freeway, because they allowed a rich ecosystem of additional functionality to blossom all around the core of clean, understandable HTML and CSS that Freeway was best known for. It meant that Softpress didn’t have to think of everything themselves. And sometimes, the “itches” that Action developers “scratched” became new features in Freeway. (Thinking here of Tim Plumb’s and my PHP Feedback Form, which showed the way to what became the official Send Form handler in Freeway 7.)
Walter
The idea of porting WebYep actions over… yea gods, that’s a task and a half! Unless the future Xway API turns out to be a beacon of simplicity, which would be lovely!!! But let’s be honest, I’ll probably end up crumbling into bits like an old soggy biscuit in a particularly massive dunk into a strong browning motion (for all you non-Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy enthusiasts, that’s a cuppa tea). 