I have started a new site in Freeway 7 and created a footer graphic jpg in photoshop. I set the page depth to 800 pixels and dropped it in at the very bottom of the page. However, when previewed white extends past my set page size. I have checked throughout the Inspector and my Page background is set to None . I am really perplexed as I have created many sites before and not experienced this issue. I even closed Freeway and relaunched to see if that would help but it did not. Does anyone have a clue?
Clark, you are treating your web page like it was the same as desktop publishing, where you can set the “page” size. There is no page in web design.
To see what I mean, make your browser window less tall than your “page”. You will have to scroll to reveal the “footer” and you will see that it scrolls no further than that. The “white” only shows when the dimensions of the browser window exceed the dimensions of your content.
Now, imagine all the people in the world who will visit your page… how tall or wide will their browser windows be? Today? On Saturday? In the mornings or afternoons?
Once upon a time this whole “desktop publishing” approach to web design was helpful and comforting in a way, but for a long time now it has been broken and useless, inhibiting overall development by keeping people ignorant.
The solution is to look at your page the way a web designer would ( and don’t tell me you’re not a web designer, because here you are… designing web pages ). There is only Content. The window to see that content can be as large as any device screen it is viewed on, or as small as any user might make. Wow. Now that’s a design challenge.
This is too advanced for you right now, but I want you to see how I see page content…
This type of construction with Freeway is sometimes called Inflow Layout, and basically uses containers within containers (HTML items) to rig how content “flows” within the browser window so that no matter what size a user has their browser window set to (or what size screen their device allows) the content tries its hardest to flexibly “fit” the situation.
My example uses the same layout to show how it can be styled ( with background colors and such ) to give the desired appearance of a static “page”, while all the time functioning as web content. It is just visual decoration because, remember, there is no page. It is unfortunate that Freeway makes it harder instead of easier to transition from print design to web design by making you translate many things like “page” (#PageDiv or Parent div) or “leading” ( line-height ) and so on.
Your example also tells me that you have the Table Layout button enabled. This means that Freeway is not using the best methods for constructing your page. I would recommend starting your file over but with the button set to CSS Layout mode. Also, you are ending up with a lot of graphic type instead of selectable, searchable words. You should explore more basic Times and Helvetica text for now-- later when you’ve gained more experience you can experiment with webfonts.
There are resources for people who want to learn a better, more meaningful way to use Freeway. Mostly, there is a lot of help from this forum. But pretending that what you are doing is the web version of desktop publishing is just not going to be as helpful as advertised. I came from a print background, as a lot of us have… so the transition is not just possible, but I would say, it is inevitable. If you are open to it.
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