Recreate that little box to match what you see on my web page but using only CSS POSITIONING. Do not use tables. Count the clicks and let us know what hacks (HTML Markup, Actions, etc.) are used. Don’t get the vertical and horizontal centering wrong, and make sure the spacing is correct. Then let’s talk.
Please do it.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
–James Borg Wages
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Recreate that little box to match what you see on my web page but using only CSS POSITIONING. Do not use tables. Count the clicks and let us know what hacks (HTML Markup, Actions, etc.) are used. Don’t get the vertical and horizontal centering wrong, and make sure the spacing is correct. Then let’s talk.
Here are two examples of CSS positioning you may have missed while you were out assimilating outdated table-layout technology:
James, I bow to Ernie’s tremendous explaining skills, but I want to pitch in one aphorism for you: A table-based layout is the correct approach for a very small subset of possible content + viewer combinations. It is similar to a broken watch (which is fantastically correct twice a day). An inline CSS layout is more like a quantum view of the universe: correct and true in a way that relies on the point of view of the observer. I won’t sugar-coat it – it is tremendously more work and more thinking required, but in some ways, it can be easier. You put the content on the page once, and then you adjust the conditions of the universe (the CSS) a number of times. You can reproduce any table-based layout with CSS. Full stop. But then you don’t have to stop there, and you don’t have to accept that one way of looking at the page as the only truth.
Walter
On May 21, 2016, at 1:47 AM, The Big Erns email@hidden wrote:
Recreate that little box to match what you see on my web page but using only CSS POSITIONING. Do not use tables. Count the clicks and let us know what hacks (HTML Markup, Actions, etc.) are used. Don’t get the vertical and horizontal centering wrong, and make sure the spacing is correct. Then let’s talk.
Here are two examples of CSS positioning you may have missed while you were out assimilating outdated table-layout technology:
As always, Walter is most inspirational… he is ever the Dr. Marvin to my Bob Wiley.
I just realized (well, not “just”) that the point of CSS styling is to liberate content so that it can be leveraged into more meaningful forms. In the challenge example, I should have made the non-tabular table data into something like an unordered list. The result would have been visually the same, but would have allowed more relevant comparisons to other, similar data.
Such a result has, admittedly, more of an impact on accessibility and non-human users… results which we can’t measure visually but are every bit as important. However, even I find my own attitudes changing in the post-IE world. I have such a different (and liberating) view of what I think of my responsibilities as a designer than I did even a few years back. If I was stuck in that alternate universe where IE still rules, I might just table-layout the shit out of everything and not worry about consequence. When in Rome, right?
Anyway, I normally don’t get involved in these threads, but I loves me a good CSS challenge!
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Sorry to be robotic and persistently BORG-like on this, Thomas, but eventually, you will be assimilated…
FWIW, I’ll add my tuppence to the debate.
I’m probably a typical FW user : I’m not a web-designer, but I want to build my own (simple) site.
I’ve been using FW for a loooong time, but only periodically, maybe as little as once a year some years, or less even and only when I wanted to update something. When the iPhone arrived, it started to change everything and I noticed I was getting an increasing number of hits from mobiles. So I had to design another site, because a mobile is not like a desktop. So now I had twice as much work. Then the iPad came out. This isn’t the same as a mobile or a desktop, so … I got by and was about to completely change my site and go with a template site, when FW7 was announced and I waited to see how it could work.
It took me about 4 days to understand the principles (FW is a bit complex) and then about 3 weeks to make something work, however most of this 3 weeks was spent with me trying things out, then asking questions here and waiting for the ton of help I got from Dave, Thomas, Ernie, Walter etc. In other words, I wasn’t sitting working away at my Mac for all that time, but rather I would try to do something … fail … ask for help … wait … get help … say ‘eureka’ … try something else … rinse and repeat. In the end it was about 2 months by the time I was happy and stopped fiddling (is that an oxymoron when it comes to web-design?) Actually, even now I’m wanting to switch to Exhibeo as my media platform, if the boys and girls at Softpress produce something that’ll work for me. So web-design is an endless road down which we hope to progress.
I’m sorry to say it, but when I look at your site James, it looks really dated. I’m not really concerned about whether it is made with a table or if some element is precisely positioned where you want it … what does it matter? It looks awful on a mobile and dated on a desktop.
It seems to me that when designing a site these days, we are inevitably designing for 3 media, and arguably more. The desktop is not the mobile and the mobile is not the tablet. They are different and need to be handled differently. Responsive does this with a smooth fluidity that is rather lovely and which saves a gigantic amount of work, by magically working across all media … but you still have to adjust it to fit those different media, if the content of your site and the layout you’ve chosen results in elements needing to be adjusted individually to fit different viewports. I guess you could compare it to designing an A4 book, with a pocket edition to go with it. You have a basic design, but you’d have to adjust it to make it work for the pocket edition right? Modern websites are exactly the same.
Mobiles are all about scrolling but you seem to want to stick with a static page. I can certainly understand that you are reluctant to do a redesign, because yours is a large site and it will mean a lot of work, but don’t insist that the reason you are reluctant is because the web, or the modern solution to varied media (responsive) is somehow a misguided waste of time. That’s not the case. The issue is that your site doesn’t work any more and you are well aware of that fact and also that it’s time to change it and that is why you’re here.
This is a grab from you FAQ page as it appears on an iPhone 6s. How useful is this and what message does it send your clients?
Thank you for your feedback, and special thanks to Ernie for your effort on that amazing Freeway document. I would never have been able to intuitively figure out such a complex layout on my own.
At this point, I must say that despite all the merits, the fact remains that Freeway needs serious improvement for it to inspire my creativity. Have a look at what Ernie put together within Freeway (think like a “right brain” creative visual designer when you ponder it):
Note that I have the top object named “css-table” selected.
At a glance, your right brain immediately tells you, “this is about the furthest thing from WYSIWYG I’ve ever seen!” And to my brain, it’s like using a DOS or CP/M word processor rather than MacWrite on a Mac. It’s a night and day difference, and that is no fault of Ernie or any of you Responsive proponents. It is a fault of Freeway insofar as Freeway was design to be a DTP tool with significantly more WYSIWYG appeal than what a Responsive site demands.
Now have a look at my existing site (the page that contains the item which Ernie so kindly rebuilt entirely with CSS positioning) within Freeway:
It looks in Freeway almost exactly how it will appear in Preview or the browser. That method of design frees my mind to focus on how I want the page to look, regardless of how “dated” some feel that website is.
And with regard to my site being “dated,” yes indeed it is. I designed the basic layout several years ago. And except for Retina optimizing it in the last several months, the basic layout remains the same. And yet, despite being dated, it is still usable. I view it on my iPad all the time in both portrait and landscape views and never have a problem. That doesn’t mean I seek to retain the existing design forever, but it does mean that unless I have a more INTUITIVE, right-brained means of moving the layout to Responsive, I will, as I have been, stick to the existing design.
Regarding the claim that my FAQ page doesn’t show up on mobile, that’s note true. Here is a screenshot from the iOS simulator of an iPhone 6S:
My wife has an iPhone and so do people in our office, and we have confirmed long ago that the content appears just fine. Furthermore, I have people in our office check our site with Android devices too, and the content does display. So perhaps something was wrong with your test or I was upload the site at the time you tried to access it. (I did work on that FAQ page very recently.) Here’s the URL of that FAQ page:
Some of you have lost hope that Freeway will ever evolve into something more modern, so do you do best with the existing tools. And I must say, I am very impressed with your skills. But please remember that not everyone is Walter. Not everyone is Ernie. Not every one is Thomas. And, even though you feel yourself inferior in some respect to those gentlemen, grantsymon, the fact is you were able to follow in their path, study up, and achieve some of the success they have achieved. I am humbled by the brilliance of the 4 of you. I have every respect for you. Indeed, I pay homage to each of you. But that does not mean I can or will be like you.
I remember years ago when I was in high school and college getting frustrated with my parents for not having the same knowledge or design to study up on technology as I did at the time. As the years went by, I acquired more patience with them, and as more years went by, I came to understand them.
When you have a young and “genki” (as we say in Japanese) brain given to analytical thought, you can with a little study become a master of the existing “Responsive design” in Freeway. But what brought me to Freeway back in 1999 was the opposite of that. I was captivated by the SoftPress catch phrase, “For those who don’t see the world as code.” Take note of all the Extended hacks one must perform on my rather simple page element (within Ernie’s design) to hold that object together, and then take note of the fact it looks like a horrible nightmare in Freeway’s PAGE view. It looks nothing like it appears in the browser.
The same is true when writing code. You write code that will never be seen by the average user. Some people have the mind to be a coder, while most people do not. Most people simply rely on the skills of the coder to present the digital in a more analog and human way. The CSS Positing in Ernie’s design is Digital whereas my dated design approach is Analog.
To those of you who have mastered Responsive, Freeway’s Page view is not scary at all. It’s normal to you. In fact, you may even like it now. Maybe you even want to marry it. But I have not come to that point in my life, and honestly I doubt I ever will. I want to see, by and large, something in the Page (design) view that will appear very close to that in Preview. The closer to WYSIWYG I get, the faster my creative juices flow. The more I am forced to focus on a design that looks nothing like the final output, the less enthusiastic I am about continuing the design.
Perhaps some of you would like to mock me or slap me in the face at this point, and that’s fine. But I am not criticizing any of you. Again, I am humbled by your ability to work with Freeway’s toolset – a toolset that really wasn’t designed to accomplish Responsive layout. But I still feel that if Freeway could evolve the tools to make Responsive design SIGNIFICANTLY easier for stupid people like me, that would appeal to a very broad audience of people indeed. For truly, most people are not as mentally adept as the 4 of you gentlemen.
Thank you for your time and kind assistance.
Sincerely,
James Wages
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I certainly agree that FW is not in any way simple and adding snippets of code is a long way from WYSIWYG … but is there anything better?
I’d love to know, because like you James, I find it extremely complex and would never achieve anything without the help of the kind folks here. (I’ve looked at RapidWeaver a number of times in the past and each time I’ve arrived at the same conclusions as you).
(I’ve checked the FAQ again on my iPhone and it does indeed show up, so there must be an issue with the simulation in Safari … never seen that before. That said, it’s hard to read because the type is so small when ‘squeezed’ to fit into a small screen)
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I actually just downloaded the latest version of RapidWeaver and Stacks a couple hours ago. This is my 5th look at RapidWeaver over the years, and my first look at Stacks. I must say, I am somewhat impressed with Stacks, because without it, RapidWeaver is rather useless (in my humble opinion). HOWEVER, man alive! You certainly have to have a LOT of stacks to gain even a small amount of flexibility that Freeway affords you. And many of those stacks are going to nickel-and-dime you. Plus, you need to manage all those stacks, which is somewhat of a mess if you’ve got 25 or more, which is likely in my case seeing all the tweaking I prefer to do on my sites.
If Stacks were at the heart of RapidWeaver from the beginning, it probably would be much easier to manage and use, and that’s really what I’d love to see Freeway become with regard to Responsive design. No, not a RapidWeaver clone. Just a better app that takes competitors like RapidWeaver into consideration while creating a UI that is vastly superior to this competitors and to what we have in Freeway 7 Pro right now.
I really do think that the closer SoftPress can get to true WYSIWYG in PAGE VIEW, the closer they will come to design perfection. Those who love the existing way of doing things in Freeway may disagree with me, especially if they are left-brain coders to begin with; but FOR THE REST OF US, such is essential to Responsive Web design that is right-brain “intuitive.” Make it so easy that the user doesn’t really need to resort to looking at the Freeway manual. That’s pretty much how Freeway 2 was to me back in 1999 when I first tried it out. It was almost like a flashback to MacPaint on my Mac 128k. Who needed to consult a manual to use MacPaint?! So perhaps now you can understand my way of thinking.
At this point I need to mention that I love the good folks in Oxford, and I have for years. I don’t want anyone from SoftPress to feel I’m picking on them or being overly negative. I am just passionate about being constructive with my criticism because I still love Freeway. That’s why we all need to take a look at this page, and please read it slowly so it sinks in…
That page pitches Freeway as a product that does 2 things:
Handles Responsive Web Design.
Does it “Code free.”
Of course, if any of you can show me how to design a fully Responsive web site in Freeway without resorting to the Extended dialog (which is defined as “code”) or the HTML Markup dialog (which too is “code”), then I am all ears. In other words, can any of you consider how to redesign all the content in both my big websites in Freeway WITHOUT resorting to code of any kind? My guess is “no.” And therein lies my problem. Again, I became a believer in Freeway back in 1999 because at that time it was pitched as “For those who don’t see the world as code.” That’s me. Man, that’s still me! And that’s still how SoftPress pitches Freeway today. But Freeway really cannot honestly say that about Responsive Web Design (unless the page is stupidly simple). It can only (perhaps) say that about traditional table-based design.
When I can design a large Responsive website in Freeway without being forced to dive into code via Extended dialogs or HTML Markup or using a dozen Actions here and there, AND when I have a WYSIWYG view of the design in PAGE VIEW, that will be the day I enter paradise and never turn back to the old way of doing things. And that will probably be the day those RapidWeaver users start ditching that app for Freeway.
–James Wages
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We’ve got a WYSIWYG view a click away ~ in a browser that’s where the truth lies
But seriously. Responsive apps like Blocs that use a browser view tend to be limited for the basic user adding cookie cutter template sections but with the payoff of built in design polish. Sites will start looking alike.
At least Freeway you can build whatever you fancy presuming you’re willing to put the time in to discover the techniques. And yes making a responsive site does take longer in Freeway compared with the above because you’re generally building everything from scratch.
A benefit for to this extra work is to configure a page that makes sense for the search engines not least to the user. But problems lie for the unwary.
Can you see a page is not all about visual representation. It also about information structure. CSS helps you cross these two divides.
You can also see this by turning off CSS in a browser. Compare your pages with for example your competitor pages they might be getting better SEO listings because of a good information structure.
David, thank you for your opinion. And I don’t argue against the merits of CSS Positioning and a Responsive site. Not at all. We are agreed about that. But in terms of DESIGN, you are pitching a DOS text editor to a guy who prefers MacWrite.
I still feel that SoftPress engineers could retain extreme control we’ve all come to love in Freeway while at the same time make Responsive design easier and “code free” as their website advertises. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
–James Wages
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After releasing Version 7, I had a pretty strange phone conversation with a Freeway-user. It sounded something like:
" Tomorrow, I’ll write a letter to Softpress! They have to STOP immediately this annoying, confusing and redundant “Responsive Stuff” at all". I was so open-mouthed (which is pretty rare) - stunned as never in my web-designer’s life before.
From time to time I look into my crystal ball and if I would be Softpress’ counselor, I’d say the following:
“Do an entirely new application. Make it the way, that position: relative is the default. Ensure that both ways of frame working is possible. From inner (content) to outer wrapper and vice versa. Don’t create an inspector with typography available. And please call it Professional with whatever Name appended. Preferably say, that knowledge doesn’t hinder and a good idea of position, float, clear, padding and margin is necessary as well.”
It’s very vague and obscured in my crystal-ball - but there is something telling me: “Be prepared and wakeful”.
And an honest word to all Softpress’ engineers:
“You did an incredible good job so far. Believe it, cause I started Responsive Design with Freeway 5.5 back in 2012. The result is still alive: http://www.kimmich-dm.de/templates/liquid/index.html
I’m proud being part of a pretty cool community - at least this part thinking progressive enhanced - whether with or without code”
All the rest I wish good luck!
Cheers
Thomas
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Yawn, this is all becoming very tiresome and repetitive.
Now not only do we have Thomas telling all of us “his way is the only way to create websites” he’s trying to sell memberships to his “Lounge” off the back of it as well. And insulting many forum members on a regular basis in the process.
With every comment it becomes clearer that Thomas has no time for beginners or enthusiastic amateurs, the very people who are the lifeblood to Softpress and potential purchasers of their software. Neither does he have time for any methods other than his own which tend to go against the whole ethos of the ‘Freeway-way’.
Sadly with every utterance potential purchasers are being put off buying the very software that has been designed with them in mind thus hitting Softpress in the pocket.
Now he has the arrogance to start telling Softpress how to write their software to make it work the way he wants. Well, Thomas, if you think there is a market for your type of software, and since you are such an expert, why don’t you go off and write it and sell it yourself? Is that why you are trying so hard to put people off using Freeway?
Meanwhile hopefully the rest of us can carry on experimenting, designing and discussing things in a friendly and helpful manner on this forum without this “pay me and I’ll show you how” sales pitch. I, and hopefully many others here, look forward to more successful products from Softpress that meet the needs of their target audience and not just the wishes of one individual.
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Gordon, this is unnecessarily mean shit to say about someone who has been more helpful to the community than almost anyone I know. It is wrong and completely uncalled for.
I recognize that there has been some recent criticism of those of us who have been pushing everyone in the only direction that can achieve better results in Freeway. It is frustrating, to try and find ways to teach people the things you’ve learned, only to be treated this way.
So, I think I’ll take a holiday from the likes of you, and give you all a holiday from the likes of me. Perhaps it’s time we all should consider taking some time off and see how that affects the local mood. I’ve shuttered my blog, my workbench files… we’ve all paid our debts to karma and what not, I don’t see any reason to hang around and take this kind of shit.
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I’m a bit shocked by your comments Gordon. I’m one of the people you’re talking about as Softpress’s target customers and yet I agree very much with what Thomas said in his last post. Not only that, I’ve had some fairly selfless help from Thomas in the past. So I think you have misjudged his post and should apologise.
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Look, Thomas is a big boy and can take it. Believe me, I’ve taken a lot in forums where no one stood up for me at all, and I chinned up and moved on.
People are highly opinionated and passionate about this subject. And being somewhat of a libertarian-leaning individual myself, I say LET FREEDOM REIGN. Sometimes the tough and insensitive comments make us think a little harder. Steve Jobs did that. People hated him for it. But look what his insensitivity accomplished.
I myself like Thomas and when through his videos. I understand and appreciate his GridMeister approach to Responsive sites in Freeway. And thank you, Thomas, for taking the time to make those videos. It doesn’t matter to me if you sell access to them or not. You did the work, why not reap the rewards?
BUT…
And here the crux…
IT SHOULD BE EASIER.
That is no fault of Ernie, Thomas, Walter or anyone else here in these forums. Okay, yes, it is somewhat the fault of SoftPress (and being a lover of Freeway since 1999 and a lover of the good people at SoftPress, I’m allowed to boldly say that). But the great thing about FAULTS is that they can, given time and personal drive, be CORRECTED.
SoftPress must transform Freeway back into “The App for the Rest of Us.” You know, “For those who don’t see the world as code.”
In other words, I want the ease of table-based design, affording me, in Page view, a rather close WYSIWYG approximation of the final output, yet producing a fully Responsive Site (if I so choose) and with CSS Positioning only. All the HACKS, CODE, ACTIONS, etc. we use now must be used by the Freeway AI. It’s 2016, folks. Software should be smart enough now to do these basic things. It’s not like we’re asking it to solve global poverty or make each person on earth rich. We’re talking about a few simple objects on a silly web page, for goodness sake.
Yes, yes, yes. I know. “It takes a lot more CODE than you think to put an app like that together.” Sure it does. But do accomplish that is to put a dent in the universe. To do that is to achieve GREATNESS. Why not try?
I’m going to say it again, I don’t condemn Ernie, Thomas, Walter, Richard, Grant or any other of you good people who are, in my humble opinion, TRUE GENIUSES when it comes to making Responsive Design work in Freeway 7 Pro. It’s simply amazing. To me, it’s like painting the Mona Lisa in a pitch black room filled with toxic gas. You’ve achieved what I myself can only dream of doing. Bravo, and congratulations to all of you.
But that sincere praise from my heart in no way, shape, or form says “Freeway has come a long way and now makes it rather easy to create a full Responsive website with CSS Positioning.” No. Again, I’ve been a Freeway user since 1999 who also was a Mac 128k user in 1984. I know the difference between a DOS word processor and MacWrite. I know how easy it is to create table-based layouts in Freeway versus the totally non-WYSIWYG approach to Responsive.
Even those of you who rather enjoy using Freeway right now to create Responsive websites shouldn’t beat on me too hard for wanting something better. Imagine if there had been no Steve Jobs or people like him who demanded something better. Where would we be today in terms of personal computing?
Like I said earlier, RapidWeaver with Stacks is rather impressive to me. But it’s a cluttered interface when you add all the basic stacks necessary to accomplish what you can do in Freeway out of the box. It’s just that RW + Stacks makes it easier in some ways than Freeway. And yet, RW + Stacks fails because its overly complex to the end user. You have to sit for hours figuring out what new stacks you need to add (and pay for), then install them, then fail, then try another stack, and so on. I want the SoftPress team to consider that in their own NEXT GEN edition of Freeway and make it better.
Again, I want to design a website in Freeway like I do when I approach a table-based design. WYSIWYG. But I want the option to make the output Responsive. And I want the option to make content CSS Positioned if I so choose.
This may be hard for SoftPress to code, but I doubt any of you would say “it is IMPOSSIBLE.”
Where there’s a will there’s a way. And I am desperately trying to stimulate that will in everyone.
Best wishes,
James Wages
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I am one of those freeway users who is wrong footed by code and caught off ballance with responsive websites. Nevertheless I build them and, although doubtless full of semantic errors and what have you, they do work. They also look WYSIWIG in design view. The FW screen shots in below are two recent sites. (Text is missing in the boxes because they are all WebYeped.) I have not had to resort to HTML markup except for Google fonts nor extended dialogue except for Font styles and Background cover. But since James uses Times and Arial and has no background images these need not be employed.
So yes James I think it possible to build a responsive site which is good looking, easy to navigate and does the job of communication with the software as given.
Yes I have had to ask questions on this forum and I have read through and saved many of the threads.
This one for example was really helpful in setting up a page so you will see I am saddened to see Ernie has left the building as his examples have been beautifully built and clearly explained.
Perhaps we can have a campaign to bring him back in ? You do seem to enjoy your work bench Ernie so maybe once the dust has settled the bear might come out of hiding ?
Back to my sites. One advantage I perhaps have - one shared with Tim Plumb and Grant Symon amongst others - is that I went to Art School in the UK. Apart from the study of art& design it encouraged an attitude of enquiry which serves me well - even now at 69 years old. And gives a tolerance and even joy of mixing, if only virtually, with characters such as Ernie and Thomas. They not only add piquancy to life and this forum but together with Delta Dave, David of Ineedwebhosting, Walter, Tim, and all of you who either ask questions or give answers have got me a long way.
I would say to James, as I once counselled my students, don’t keep looking for reasons to say something is impossible.
honestly, haven’t had the best night ever, not sure what happens and what to answer - so I’m deeply grateful for your words. Sometimes I do hard playing the:
<main id="proFreeway" role="badass">
I still am not a hundred percent sure what you mean by “it should be easier”, James.
My understanding of it is, that we have in total two “gestures” available.
Insert → whatever Element available in the context menu
or double-click into the workspace (or any other already placed element) so you see the flashing cursor and choosing then:
Insert → whatever Element available in the context menu, tables included.
I instantly hope, that you agree that this has nothing to do with any further knowledge - except of knowing that both gestures are available in your app and that they are even combinable.
So far so good: Without knowing anything more, you’ll recognize some differences in behavior of them both and you furthermore recognize different settings within inspector. The one element can be placed on whatever position within your black rectangle while the other behaves kind of unreachable and undraggable. Even more - it is tacked to the top left.
Obviously, it is gesture number one which does make much more sense. Because you can now arrange it whatever you like - up to overlapping it with other items placed the same way. This is excellent. You can even make them fixed in position.
The other one is weird. You can’t drag it around - and there is no chance to position it from top, left, right or bottom. This element must be broken somehow. All I can do is set a width and height. And there even appears a funny, not understandable expression called margin within the inspector.
Interestingly enough - the other funny expression called padding is available for both. So far so good (or bad depending on the point of view).
Let’s have a look into other applications available:
All of them somehow don’t give you a real choice. By default you’d place your item by gesture method number two. So you place them somehow static. As far as I understood “Stacks” in RW are ready prepared (pre-combined) elements - covering specific need. A gallery element, a 3-Column grid, a Table-Element, Cards …
Back to Freeway, Backdraft is the most comparable product to this approach. It has those basic elements (1-grid, 2-grid …). It is still the most used Framework for some good reasons. It’s not as static as a template. It allows decisions. Decisions which requires only two things:
Using the required gesture - and a plan.
The plan is the biggest difference between yesterday and now:
If you choose the 3-grid module, you decided to wrap existing content into three parts. The decision doesn’t happen in Freeway, it already happened before. So it is (to my understanding) the design ruling the framework.
But whatever it is:
Both gestures are reachable, reasonable and doable without knowing any line of code. It is just knowing your application. And this is making me still sure, that you can create content without knowing any line of code - such as our manufacturer promises.
Point is, that WYSIWYG is coming from “static”. DTP is static, cause you create a leaflet where you place text and images straight to the point. And it won’t change because Input (QXP, InDesign …) won’t differ to Output (the leaflet). An image placed 5mm from top and 5mm from left with a specific dimension will be reproduced exactly the same way. So for many years we tried to transfer this 1:1 to a webpage.
But this transfer required a lot of assumptions. We assumed the width of devices. We even assumed heights. We assumed that 12px is the best readable FONT-size - or we assumed that it is the “nicest” design. We assumed, that even graphic-text is the better choice - because it’s the best match to clients CI. Short said: We transferred a leaflet to the web. I remember our all-time discussion about ideal page-widths.
Today we know that there are masses of different devices out there, and masses of different user-expectations and behavior. Our leaflet should be presented an all of them. One thing helped me a lot to understand this issue:
Say, there is a medium that can be pulled and pushed however you want. It would be clever to print it as small as possible, and if it is in need to have a bigger one - simply stitch it to the required size. One problem left: Making things bigger can blur its content - and it can even break design. So a leaflet is rarely useable as a poster. And there we are - we have to make decisions. It will be a dynamic decision.
In Freeway terms spoken:
All the things we defined in absolute values - we have in a very first step to define in relative values. Content wrapped in an item of 100% width will fit on every device available on this planet - no matter how tiny or big it is. More complicated is the situation of a 3-grid. Each single width is 33.33%. Keeping this up down to the smallest device-width may break your design. So we would re-arrange the columns to 100% width - one below the other. This is a design decision - perfectly supported by Freeway - because you can discuss design.
Take all the discussions around the theme: “ScriptyAccordion” and “ScriptyCarousel” - how do I create the things in Freeway? Book filling stuff. Mystery for years. The one requires some inflow-construction (Huh - EVIL), the other kind of. Years of discussions because things get suddenly more complicated? No - things are as they are.
My personal summary:
I used two terms so far: Gesture and Design. Placing items and arranging them is not a matter of application in use - it’s a matter of what your Media requires. The media is Web - and its requirements rules the way our app behaves.
Before I follow Ernie in holiday let me quick give you note what I basically planned:
My plan was, to prepare this and make it available for the community. It’s a huge bunch of work and it is based on the idea, to create all content and basic prettifying within Freeway. All the resources are placed somewhere CDN like - available for everyone and free. If you need a special function, it’s just one class away. Even actionable to some degree. Only one real requirement left: Gesture. All you see on this page is NATIVELY created - no markup, no source code snooping or other scary stuff. PURELY gesture. And I even currently using it for live projects. And it works (mostly).
Furthermore, I prepared a huge screencast showing you guys how I develop things. Just for fun and for your interest. It’s 60% done (35 minutes long so far). Cool plan meets no interest - so I have indeed to review my strategy.
Not to explain you the world - just to show you, that Freeway can be used in a highly professional way. Even without taking away the basic idea: Having fun creating content for web.
That’s where I’m coming from and that’s the things I’ve learned since entering this audience in 2009.
Well - my longest list ever. And enough stuff for minding on. Wish you all the best.
Cheers
Thomas
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