I have this long-time annoying quirk with Freeway Pro that I know is answered by either “you’re using it wrong” or “that’s just the way it is so grin and bear it”. I’m hoping, however, for some fresh ideas.
Every document I make with Freeway Pro, I want some base control of text which I do by creating a body tag style. FWP however also creates its own body style which then either mirrors mine or most of mine.
Bottom-line is that I end up with two body rules in my document CSS, which I find very annoying at times. This being one of them. Anybody have a decent workaround (beyond editing the document post-Freeway)??
It would be trivial to create an Action that could find the one-and-only body style and either add or modify existing attributes within it. Note that this would break if you used External Stylesheets in Freeway, since there’s no way to interrogate the external stylesheets from within an Action during publish – they seem to be written out after the page is closed for business.
You might just want to put up with this, and use the cascade to do your dirty work.
Walter
On Jan 6, 2013, at 11:33 AM, The Big Erns wrote:
I have this long-time annoying quirk with Freeway Pro that I know is answered by either “you’re using it wrong” or “that’s just the way it is so grin and bear it”. I’m hoping, however, for some fresh ideas.
Every document I make with Freeway Pro, I want some base control of text which I do by creating a body tag style. FWP however also creates its own body style which then either mirrors mine or most of mine.
Bottom-line is that I end up with two body rules in my document CSS, which I find very annoying at times. This being one of them. Anybody have a decent workaround (beyond editing the document post-Freeway)??
Thanks Walter - but I do not want an action. I have too many actions now,
and can’t always keep them straight. I’ve had to make a reference sheet
just to know which to use. (laugh/cry)
I would like for Freeway to quit fighting my will, especially over such
small things like this. I guess my ability to focus as of late has been
compromised and it’s showing.
–
Ernie Simpson
On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 11:42 AM, Walter Lee Davis email@hiddenwrote:
It would be trivial to create an Action that could find the one-and-only
body style and either add or modify existing attributes within it. Note
that this would break if you used External Stylesheets in Freeway, since
there’s no way to interrogate the external stylesheets from within an
Action during publish – they seem to be written out after the page is
closed for business.
You might just want to put up with this, and use the cascade to do your
dirty work.
Walter
On Jan 6, 2013, at 11:33 AM, The Big Erns wrote:
I have this long-time annoying quirk with Freeway Pro that I know is
answered by either “you’re using it wrong” or “that’s just the way it is so
grin and bear it”. I’m hoping, however, for some fresh ideas.
Every document I make with Freeway Pro, I want some base control of text
which I do by creating a body tag style. FWP however also creates its
own body style which then either mirrors mine or most of mine.
Bottom-line is that I end up with two body rules in my document CSS,
which I find very annoying at times. This being one of them. Anybody have a
decent workaround (beyond editing the document post-Freeway)??
One thing you might try is to use the Page / Extended dialog, and set a style tag there. Anything you do to the body tag at that level will override anything that Freeway has already added. I think that Freeway should do a better job of handling page styles in general, I’m not disagreeing with your basic premise. If you really need to shove things one way or another, that would be the point at which you could do so without an Action.
Walter
On Jan 6, 2013, at 12:10 PM, Ernie Simpson wrote:
Thanks Walter - but I do not want an action. I have too many actions now,
and can’t always keep them straight. I’ve had to make a reference sheet
just to know which to use. (laugh/cry)
I would like for Freeway to quit fighting my will, especially over such
small things like this. I guess my ability to focus as of late has been
compromised and it’s showing.
I know what you mean when you say that you end up fighting with Freeway to try and get it to what you want. There are a number of things that Freeway does (either in error like the duplicate body styles or to simplify the user experience like hard wiring the name of the Resources folder) that I find restrictive and even annoying. I must admit that I’m a lot more inclined to turn to an Action to paper over the cracks but I can see your reluctance to rely on an Action to correct something so small.
A few Freeway users who have come to me in the past to create ‘Über-Actions’ that correct all of these sorts of issues in a single folder Action that they can apply to the site and forget about. They work well as they set the site up to work in exactly the way they want as well as adding a bedrock of functionality to the sites which they can then build on.
Regards,
Tim.
On 6 Jan 2013, at 17:10, Ernie Simpson wrote:
Thanks Walter - but I do not want an action. I have too many actions now,
and can’t always keep them straight. I’ve had to make a reference sheet
just to know which to use. (laugh/cry)
I would like for Freeway to quit fighting my will, especially over such
small things like this. I guess my ability to focus as of late has been
compromised and it’s showing.
Well, actually I do–in the website, but not in my FWP styles list. Why is that?
That was my original and longtime complaint, Raven - that Freeway Pro would duplicate body styles in the output code. Not a huge complaint obviously (I hope it’s obvious) just unnecessary. I would question any human doing that on purpose.
And, no - the body tag is not part of Freeway Pro’s normal stylesheet, though it obviously writes some code to the body tag - which it should. The body tag is a good way to style basic appearance of page items. I use it to set the overall appearance of websafe text on a page, then use specific tags to set specific font variances. That way, I’m not using sloppy, globby code all over to set text appearance - just h1, h2, p, blockquote, etc. Besides, the body tag is further up the cascade order so it’s like saying “do this until told otherwise”.
Read up on the body element, start looking to see how others might be using it. Read up on the Cascade order in CSS and experiment. I use it for about 90% text styling, which is handy - though there are other uses.
Wow, I thought I was doing something wrong all this time! (Well, I do lots of things incorrectly, but maybe this one’s not on me!)
On my last few projects I’ve been bound and determined not to have extra styles accumulating. To this end, I’ve taken to leaving the styles and colors window open all the time (to the styles view). This way, I notice much more quickly when extraneous styles have been created. Most times, it is a strange add on to my .body style like you mentioned. When I delete it (and select “no style” as a replacement) everything looks as it should. Very strange indeed.
Ernie, is it this way in FW6 as well? Do you know? I haven’t upgraded yet — too many open projects!