[Pro] why can't I apply p tag (and style) to text?

Freeway
1

I have an html box on a page, and I’ve pasted some text into the box. The text initially gets displayed with some odd formatting — looks like maybe Times 14pt. I want it to be my normal paragraph text. In BBEdit, I’d simply enclose the text between p tags and the formatting would then be done by my stylesheet. But in Freeway Pro 5.5 if I select the text and then click on the p tag in the Styles palette, I get an error response telling me “This style can’t be applied to text”. Huh?

I’ve tried to read the pages in the reference guide about CSS text formatting. I’m afraid I’m still lost. I know I’m missing something. But I’m unable to figure out what.

Will

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2

The p tag is applied by default to all paragraphs. Edit the .p style and all default text in your document will change.

It is not assignable because it is already assigned.

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3

On 14 Nov 2010, at 19:08, William Porter wrote:

I have an html box on a page, and I’ve pasted some text into the box. The text initially gets displayed with some odd formatting — looks like maybe Times 14pt. I want it to be my normal paragraph text. In BBEdit, I’d simply enclose the text between p tags and the formatting would then be done by my stylesheet. But in Freeway Pro 5.5 if I select the text and then click on the p tag in the Styles palette, I get an error response telling me “This style can’t be applied to text”. Huh?

Confusing, ain’t it? If you edit the p tag using the Styles editor, then you’ll automatically get what you edited it to be, without applying it at all!

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

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4

Except that somehow my text got some OTHER style attached to it.

Gosh, this all strikes me as counterintuitive. If I want to remove a style, I’m still not sure when I should use the Text palette and when I should use the Styles palette. And if clicking into a paragraph and then clicking h4 in the Styles palette applies the h4 style to that paragraph, I’m a tad mystified why clicking p refuses to apply the p style.

Thanks for the replies, though. Live and learn.

Will

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5

Nothing about Styles in Freeway is intuitive. You can define a number of tag based styles that can not be applied.

Moreover FW will create a number of temp styles under circumstances where it just plain shouldn’t.

Ideally, define your base paragraph style by modifying .p. I would also suggest you create all styles via the Styles palette, otherwise you will end up with countless temporary styles with meaningless names that could be deleted at will should the object they are assigned to be removed or changed.

Try to apply your styles to containers when possible. Applying them to selected text can send FW off into the weeds creating a myriad of temp span styles by operations as simple as just editing text in your document.

The current behavior needs a lot of rethinking IMHO and hopefully Softpress will get around to it on of these days. Until then it is best to adapt your workflow to fit the current idiosyncrasies otherwise you will spend half your editing time just deleting and reapplying styles.

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On 14 Nov 2010, 7:14 pm, Solutions Etcetera wrote:
Ideally, define your base paragraph style by modifying .p. I would also suggest you create all styles via the Styles palette, otherwise you will end up with countless temporary styles with meaningless names that could be deleted at will should the object they are assigned to be removed or changed.

Ah, thank you for this followup! This confirms and clarifies what I was just starting to intuit.

It’s getting clearer and clearer to me that the right way to start a Freeway site is NOT to open up the program and start plopping in text and pictures. The best way is to give careful thought to shared elements of structure, design and formatting. That means, thinking really hard about master pages. It means defining the style sheet and then using it without fail.

Try to apply your styles to containers when possible.

I read it in the reference guide, as well. But I am having difficulty making this work.

I’ve created a style “.sidebartext”. This is the style’s NAME, to use the term found in the new style definition dialog in Freeway. It is tied to no tag. So in normal CSS, I think this would be a class, that is, I’d apply it with this code:

<p.sidebartext>Some text here

My problem is, I can’t apply it to an item. I have a text box on my master page; the item is named “sidebar.” I select the item in the site listing (left side of the screen) and then in the styles inspector, I click on “.sidebartext.” So far, so good. But the formatting associated with the style doesn’t in fact get applied. The style is supposed to turn the text yellow (say). But it doesn’t.

It works if I click into the html item, select all the text, and apply the style. THAT works.

Will

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On 14 Nov 2010, 7:47 pm, William Porter wrote:

It’s getting clearer and clearer to me that the right way to start a Freeway site is NOT to open up the program and start plopping in text and pictures. The best way is to give careful thought to shared elements of structure, design and formatting. That means, thinking really hard about master pages. It means defining the style sheet and then using it without fail.

I think that goes without saying with any tool. It is just as easy to paint yourself into a corner with FW as any other, and far more mouse clicks to back track than just a search and replace you could do in a tool that keeps its source as text.

I’ve created a style “.sidebartext”. This is the style’s NAME, to use the term found in the new style definition dialog in Freeway. It is tied to no tag. So in normal CSS, I think this would be a class, that is, I’d apply it with this code:

If you have defined an attribute such as color to .p, a color applied to the container using another style will not override it… you would need to apply it to text or paragraph. This is why I mentioned setting up only base attributes for the .p style, and applying any additional style info with other styles (and to containers when possible).

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On 14 Nov 2010, 8:25 pm, Solutions Etcetera wrote:
If you have defined an attribute such as color to .p, a color applied to the container using another style will not override it… you would need to apply it to text or paragraph. This is why I mentioned setting up only base attributes for the .p style, and applying any additional style info with other styles (and to containers when possible).

Thanks. Not sure I fully grasp this but I will meditate on it. Sounds like valuable advice.

Will

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9

One cool way to manage different base styles (on a per page basis) in FW is to use multiple style sheets. You can create as many as you wish, and apply them on a per page basis.

What is cool is that FW is smart enough to copy any assigned styles from sheet 1 to sheet 2 when you apply sheet 2. Then you can redefine any attributes you like and they will only apply to that specific page (or any other page you assign that style sheet to).

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One cool way to manage different base styles (on a per page basis) in FW is to use multiple style sheets. You can create as many as you wish, and apply them on a per page basis.

Not quite sure how this would be useful, especially in a relatively simple site. Sounds like something I perhaps should ignore at the moment, since I’m still trying to get my sea-legs in Freeway. But it sounds like an intriguing idea and I’ll keep it in mind for the future. Thanks for the suggestion.

Will

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11

I have a text box on my master page; the item is named “sidebar.”

If you have an item on your page like that then you want to create a Tag style.

Go into the styles editor and create a new style. In the Tag box (top left) type #sidebar. Then tab across to the Name box and delete anything that FW has stuck in there for you.

Assign the various attributes that you want ‘sidebar’ to have and then Click on OK down the bottom right. Before you do that final OK just check that FW hasn’t sneaked anything back in to the Name box.

Now any item on your page(s) called ‘sidebar’ will have the attributes you created for it.

David

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You might want to meander through this thread:

http://www.freewaytalk.net/thread/view/58190#m_69720

Welcome to Freeway!

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13

On 15 Nov 2010, 12:16 am, DeltaDave wrote:

I have a text box on my master page; the item is named “sidebar.”

If you have an item on your page like that then you want to create a Tag style.

Thanks, Dave, for this suggestion. I will give it a try tomorrow!

Will

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