I tried replying to this post yesterday, but it somehow got eaten by the system after I clicked the Send button.
The gist of the message was this: I spent some kore time with a local business helping this with responsive sites using Freeway (read: the UX is such a mess that they need someone to get their design working).
These people are no slouches - they are the target audience for Freeway - they work mainly in print, they use Quark Xpress, and they also take on website work. Their clients want responsive sites, so the accommodate those wishes. The problem is that working towards creating a responsive site, for them (and I suspect many, many others) is horrible when compared with the rest of Freeway’s methodology.
Some background. Freeway has always made building sites easy. Back in the mid/late 1990s, we were making websites by eye - typing code, possibly with something like Adobe’s Page Mill, but mostly trying to get a layout to work in various browsers that would not agree on how HTML worked. Graph paper was employed, and, yes, tables were used. Freeway appeared and took all that effort away. Boxes were drawn in a window, and a nice, cross browser friendly site was produced. We worked like that for years.
Using tables for layout became less and less favourable, and we ran into a problem: it was just not seen to be doing it any more. After all, tables were for tabulated data, not for layout. We should be using relative positioning. It was a problem. We could use inline elements in Freeway for this, but it’s horrible to sue, not intuitive to people who are used to sketching and dragging boxes around a page. Guess what? Softpress made it easy. They created the Relative Positioning Action, which did the layout work using relative positioning instead of using tables.
It worked well, and still does. And for folk like myself who pour database content into Freeway generated layout, our work could continue with little modification. The layout reacted nicely to content of indeterminate size (when working with database content, you never know how much text there will be - your layout has to respond to that too).
So where are we now?> Well, responsive is the buzz word, and, again, Softpress attacked the problem. How did they do? Not too well. If you are happy doing non complex sites with a little responsiveness, then you’ll probably be fine. But if you want a layout that does the job properly, then you are stuck.
If you follow the video tutorial on the Softpress site, you’ll probably think that that’s it. The problem is that it isn’t. You’re using layered objects with absolute positioning. If you get things wrong, you’ll start to find items overlapping as to reduce the window width. You’ll need a number of breakpoints to ensure that this doesn’t happen. That’s a lot of work - breakpoints*page count = the true size of your site, and the work needed to maintain it. Received wisdom is to have as few breakpoints as possible. Possibly one, maybe two.
Also, if, like me, you are working on sites that get their content from databases, you need not just a site that responds to the width of the viewport, but ALSO to the vertical space that the content will occupy. You can“t use absolute positioning for this. It will fail in a spectacular fashion.
So, what are we to do? Well, abandon any freedoms you are used to in dragging content around the page. You HAVE to use Freeway’s inline model. And this is where it all falls down. I say this because inline working is a mess. You can’t see the cursor when it’s butted up against inline items like images for HTML boxes. You can’t drag stuff around easily either - again, the target location is very hard to determine. You have no “preview” to see how things flow as you drag. And that single undo is a pain.
Now, people are working around this. It’s great that some people are, but the argument of “knowing the material” doesn’t hold water. There are many obstacles to overcome - but in this instance, Freeway isn’t even attempting to help get the user up and running. It’s just dropped a load of partly complete tools on the workshop floor with the hope that you’ll do something with them. Remember: Freeway has in the past always held hands for those who have not the time to get up to speed.
So, we’re working inline. We’re finding out that in order to make a responsive image, you don“t import the image into an image box, but as a background to an HTML image, or as a passthrough. There’s a few restrictions right there - and remember that Freeway can produce retina images from a regular graphic box. So I’m not sure why that limitation is there. This trips the guy I help out every time. It’s an image. Use the image tool. Makes sense, right?
We can’t shift the order of elements around between breakpoints. Let’s say that a client wants elements in the browser to display like this:
2,1,3
Item 1 is important - it’s front and centre on the page. It’s not unreasonable to expect that on a phone, it’s the first thing you see, so the order would be
1
2
3
BUT if you are working inline (and remember that working inline gives you the most robust responsive experience that Freeway can produce), you can not change the flow of items. You are stuck with:
2
1
3
and the fun of explaining to a client why this is.
Now all this makes sense - I understand this stuff. BUT, and this is important, I feel that Softpress has applied artificial barriers to this way of working for reasons that are not consistent with Freeway‘s history of making designing for the web easy.
And I say this because there are apps out there that approach this problem and handle it far, far better. I am keeping my eye on Sparkle - that handles breakpoints, much like Freeway, BUT it can re-order elements. My 2,1,3 problem? It can reorder elements for the phone, so the order is 1,2,3. There are others out there too which are working in a similar fashion, and they are making Freeway look like it’s being left behind.
Really, Freeway needs to be doing this far, far better. I should be able to create responsive, dynamic content friendly without the restrictions/headaches/limitations of working. We know it’s possible. We know it can be done. There are 1.0 and 2.0 applications out there that are approaching the point where I can look at them and build the sites I want to make in the way I want without cracking Freeway open.
Freeway needs to change radically to address this problem. It needs to restore confidence in the user by making the UX consistent. It needs to remove artificial layout restrictions that are imposed by working in inline mode. For those with Stockholm Syndrome: it needs to improve the UX of inline working considerably.
AND there appears to be another Dunning in this thread! No relation (as far as I’m aware) but who knows?
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