Duncan, my humble thanks for your kindness is explaining in great detail the matter of Responsive layouts and all the caveats. But in terms of Freeway being “almost impossible to understand,” it actually is drop dead intuitive to me when it comes to legacy table-based layouts. Freeway is the old DTP model of design. My first home computer was a Mac 128k back in 1984 at the age of 13, so I grew up understanding what DTP was all about, and so when I saw Freeway for the first time back in 1999, I learned how to use it right away, without consulting the manual. But for Responsive sites, Freeway is difficult for me (not for everyone, just for me). And now that Freeway won’t be developed anymore, wisdom dictates every Freeway user find something else. For now, my focus is on Sparkle.
Caleb, you are a well known Freeway master of Responsive layouts. Any further thoughts on this?
Andries, I would be happy to educate you on Illustrator, but that does go beyond the scope of this thread. 
But since I don’t mind bending the rules, here it goes:
- Launch Illustrator CC.
- New document.
- Sketch a box on the page.
- Window > Align (or use whatever method you like)
- Within the Align palette, point your eyes to the bottom right where it says “Align To:” and click that pop-down menu.
- Select “Align to Artboard” so a checkmark appears by it.
- Now with your box selected, click “Horizontal Align Center” — BAM! Your box is now centered with respect to the page, and you only have a single object selected!
So to ensure this gets back on topic, I would like to see this in Sparkle. Align icons should be contextual and allow aligning of not only multiple selected objects, but also allow aligning with respect to the page.
And there you have it.
Andries & Duncan, regarding TITLE text, my point is that it would be nice if the app empowered me to add TITLE text wherever I want it. TITLE text is like a tooltip. There are simply times when you want to add it. It’s by no means a showstopper. It was just an observation with respect to Freeway. Freeway let’s me add TITLE text. Sparkle doesn’t in many cases.
Andries (and everyone else reading),
“Freeway isn’t Freeway anymore” insofar as we all want Responsive websites now and to accomplish that in Freeway is not intuitive like legacy table-based layouts are. Believe me, I’ve consulted documentation, folks at SoftPress, I’ve reviewed Caleb’s excellent BackDraft and Thomas K’s GridMeister videos, and I’ve listened to Mr. E. Simpson too. I’ve even had a lot of talk with folks off list. But I never created a full featured Responsive (with %-widths and all) website in Freeway. I just didn’t have the time required to do that in Freeway.
With Sparkle, you don’t have %-widths style Responsive, for reasons Duncan has already specified. But we all must admit that if Sparkle can accomplish what the designer intends to do, it will accomplish that more intuitively than Freeway — and keep in mind I speak of RESPONSIVE design here. It’s just that I am viewing Sparkle through a veteran Freeway user’s eyes. My 21-point list is by no means comprehensive. I challenge all you Freeway users, (you too, Paul Dunning), to go through your must-have Freeway features and write them down, then open the Sparkle 2 trial app and see which of those exist and which don’t, then note which would be showstoppers, then post back here.
If we have a good idea of what Sparkle can do for us know, and if we know where the next version is headed, we can better decide if Sparkle is the app to choose or not. It really is that simple.
Best,
James Wages
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