I see it the way as Hanna
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
Softpress said:
New products and updates will appear here someday soon…
“and updates”!!!
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
You never know for sure what the future will bring but they say;
“New products and updates will appear here someday soon…”
Let’s hope the best of it.
On 1 Feb 2017, 10:54 am, sonjanna wrote:
Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t share your enthusiasm.
As far as I understand the message at http://www.softpress.com, there will be NO Update of Freeway7 coming.
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options
My guess would be a minor update to Freeway may be marketed as Freeway7.5 or even Freeway8 and be chargeable (full price or maybe upgrade price) as the new company may want a fresh start . I for one would be willing to reinvest in the software to support the “new” Softpress. I just hope it isn’t the oft-rumoured slimmed down new web design software with many Freeway features removed.
Gordon
http://www.gordonlow.net/
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
On 1 Feb 2017, 10:54 am, sonjanna wrote:
Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t share your enthusiasm.
As far as I understand the message at http://www.softpress.com, there will be NO Update of Freeway7 coming.
I certainly hope not, although I hope Freeway (or how it’s going to be called) will finally be a completely rewritten app, that embraces all what’s new and be tomorrow’s app … and no longer yesterday’s news.
As for now; Softpress’ new software has to be one awesome motherfucker will I even consider moving back from the Coffeecup software I’m using now, which has all that’s been asked (and more) for when I was still on Freeway.
However it’s great Softpress is (coming) back; hopefully packed with good stuff.
– Richard
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options
Tremendous news.
Very very happy to see this.
I’ve always upgraded with each FW update. It’s one of the apps I’ve always felt was worth upgrading and I shall continue to do so. I have for some time though, felt that Softpress needed to rethink their price strategy. I’ve felt that the price of entry was far too high and the price of upgrade, less so, but still too high. A good comparison I feel, is the price strategy employed by Serif for their new Affinity series of apps, which they’ve launched to compete with Adobe. $49, with frequent sales at $39, for a serious competitor to Photoshop. They have had huge success and are hiring at the moment. I think that FW selling at $39 could be the sweet spot it needs to get some cash coming in, although punters will have to believe that the company is back on a sound footing, before investing the time as much as the money.
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
I am so happy to know that I can stick to Freeway for the further.
Taking this opportunity, I thank all who are keenly support us through
this Freewaytalk.
In other word, your enthusiasm affect Softpress in proper position.
Thank you all again.
Haruki_______
On 2017/02/01 22:03, “freewaytalk on behalf of grantsymon”
<email@hidden on behalf of
email@hidden> wrote:
Tremendous news.
Very very happy to see this.
I’ve always upgraded with each FW update. It’s one of the apps I’ve
always felt was worth upgrading and I shall continue to do so. I have
for some time though, felt that Softpress needed to rethink their price
strategy. I’ve felt that the price of entry was far too high and the
price of upgrade, less so, but still too high. A good comparison I feel,
is the price strategy employed by Serif for their new Affinity series of
apps, which they’ve launched to compete with Adobe. $49, with frequent
sales at $39, for a serious competitor to Photoshop. They have had huge
success and are hiring at the moment. I think that FW selling at $39
could be the sweet spot it needs to get some cash coming in, although
punters will have to believe that the company is back on a sound footing,
before investing the time as much as the money.
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
Information for existing FreewayTalk / Groups.io users - Site Feedback - Softpress Talk
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options
Oooh - interesting. I wonder what they have in mind?
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
i’m wondering and waiting to… patience isn’t my best part
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
Great news.
There are many of us that hadn’t given up on SP instead biding our time and dipping toes in uncharted software water.
I haven’t been compelled to dive headlong into any of the alternatives even though I have bought many of them.
I suppose having quite a few legacy FW sites and not relishing their rebuild has probably held me back.
But I do hope that SP’s return will bring us a New FW version quite quickly that can make up some of the ground lost to other apps.
It is FW8 that I want to see.
My cash is waiting!
David
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
TOTALLY agree with Delta Dave. I tried out Coffee Cup and as Richard Van Heukelum says, it’s fantastic. Thing is, I haven’t had the time to learn it properly as doing alot of print based work last few months, but it did make me appreciate how far behind I had got relying on Freeway (Pro 7). I really hope Freeway 8 or whatever it will be called, will allow for more modern approaches while still giving us that amazing FREEWAY flexibility within the design of each element. I appreciate that going down the responsive route creates limitations that may not have existed, but it’s a case of accepting and going forward. I had a quick look at SP site and already it looks like they are modernising BIG TIME. I will ALWAYS support SP, they have been so good to me and felt guilty going elsewhere (well, had no choice!) My real name is David Streeten btw
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
This is exciting news indeed!!! I have purchased several alternative apps, but I have not settled on any of them yet. I’ve appreciated learning how to do things outside of Freeway, but I love the familiarity I feel every time I launch FW. I can’t wait to hear more! I’m happy to see some dust kicking in these halls!
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
OK, some digging was done on the Companies House website yesterday. This is where companies in the UK have to be registered.
There are two Softpresses that are salient to our interest.
Softpress Systems Ltd. SOFTPRESS SYSTEMS LIMITED overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK
This is the Softpress that made Freeway. It is currently being liquidated.
Softpress Ltd
This is, I expect (given that Richard Logan’s name is there), the new Softpress that is now active.
Some deep speculation follows:
Softpress Ltd was set up to take on assets and IP of Softpress Systems Ltd. So development and maintenance of Freeway could carry on without all this information being lost. No doubt there is a hard drive with all the source code somewhere in Oxford, and not in Manchester.
The problems with Freeway won’t go away, and these are now compounded by the fact that Softpress of old has ceased trading for some time. All the folk who worked there are likely moved on to other jobs, so any chance of development being just picked up from where it last stood is slim.
Freeway was also written on a very, very old framework - MacApp - and this I expect has been kept going more by sheer belligerence than anything else. This has been discussed here before. TL:DR - It‘s a big job to move from away MacApp. I doubt it will happen.
So Freeway 8? 7.5? I dunno. Maybe we’ll get a sound Sierra update, but whatever Apple calls its next OS (Capri, Escort, Cortina, Orion?)*, it may be that Freeway will start to fail in ways that we can not predict. Maybe we’ll get patches to 7, but unless a team of crack engineers can be assembled to build such a future-proof beast, Freeway 8 will be a pipedream, not a reality.
Anything we see from Softpress v2.0 will more than likely be a 1.0 product. What it will be is anyone’s guess - software, online services, maybe things we’ll never see because they are more esoteric and focussed on a certain business sector. Maybe there will be a successor to Freeway - a brand spanking new DTP-like web design app that will work for the 21st century, and will bring us multiple undo.
My thoughts: keep looking for Freeway replacements, but we maybe be able to breathe a little easier knowing that there are small signs of life.
Good luck, Softpress 2 - bring us good things.
*Sniggers.
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
Hi Paul,
The problems with Freeway won’t go away, and these are now compounded by the fact that Softpress of old has ceased trading for some time. All the folk who worked there are likely moved on to other jobs, so any chance of development being just picked up from where it last stood is slim.
I haven’t moved on.
I worked on Freeway since it started, and I’ve been responsible for much of its core functionality, including HTML/CSS output, during that time. I’ve also been responsible for most of Freeway’s development in the past ten years - since Alan left.
Freeway was also written on a very, very old framework - MacApp - and this I expect has been kept going more by sheer belligerence than anything else. This has been discussed here before. TL:DR - It‘s a big job to move from away MacApp.
That’s true. Freeway also uses Apple’s Carbon framework, which was a framework for programs that moved to OS X from previous versions of Mac OS. Carbon is now deprecated, and Freeway needs to be rewritten in Cocoa. There were some previous attempts to do this, which I was not involved in, and they failed.
What I did after Softpress went into liquidation was to start learning Swift. Swift is Apple’s new programming language. It replaces Objective-C as the language in which future Mac and IOS applications will be written. As part of the learning process, I also started using Swift to write a program which is now almost completed. It’s not a web-design program, but it has given me the language and framework skills I need in order to write a modern web-design program.
Freeway is written in C++ using Apple’s Carbon framework and MacApp. I learned Cocoa and Objective-C by writing Chroma, which we released shortly before Softpress folded. I then learned Swift (and more Cocoa) by writing the program that I’m currently finishing. When this is finished, I plan to start rewriting Freeway in Cocoa and Swift. Freeway needs to be rewritten from the ground up, so the current version is going to be around for a while. We’re planning to release a minor upgrade soon, with some bug fixes.
Swift is great, by the way! C++ was the industry-standard language when Freeway started, and is probably the most widely used programming language outside of Mac/IOS development today - but I haven’t missed it since I started using Swift.
Jeremy
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options
This is excellent news and thank you very much for taking the time to share some of the future plans.
All the best
Gordon
http://www.gordonlow.net/
On 2 Feb 2017, at 12:15pm, Jeremy Hughes email@hidden wrote:
Hi Paul,
The problems with Freeway won’t go away, and these are now compounded by the fact that Softpress of old has ceased trading for some time. All the folk who worked there are likely moved on to other jobs, so any chance of development being just picked up from where it last stood is slim.
I haven’t moved on.
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options
Jeremy - thanks for the clarification - it’s good to know that Freeway is still being cared for, and that someone I know from my time at Softpress is on the case, and that there will be updates. This makes me happy, and maybe I can scale back my search for an alternative now.
I’ve looked at Swift myself - and I find it to be more appealing to use than when I tried Objective C. I even managed to get a small phone app written a year or so ago with some guidance for a friend. I’d use it more, but I know that there are some deep API stuff that go beyond what I can comprehend(or there was a when I was looking at it -maybe that’s changed in the interim).
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
Hi Paul,
I’ve looked at Swift myself - and I find it to be more appealing to use than when I tried Objective C. I even managed to get a small phone app written a year or so ago with some guidance for a friend. I’d use it more, but I know that there are some deep API stuff that go beyond what I can comprehend(or there was a when I was looking at it -maybe that’s changed in the interim).
Swift isn’t easy, but it has stuff that isn’t built into other languages (such as support for optionals) that makes it easier to write good code.
Jeremy
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options
I know someone who might be able to beta test this some evenings 
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
On 2 Feb 2017, 12:15 pm, Jeremy Hughes wrote:
I haven’t moved on.
Jeremy,
this is an extremely valuable post and I’m certain that it will encourage many of us to hold out for good things to come. To be honest … it is pretty much exactly what we would all be hoping to hear.
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options
Hi James,
On 2 Feb 2017, at 13:15, James Davies email@hidden wrote:
I know someone who might be able to beta test this some evenings
Cheers!
For those who don’t know, James (like Paul) was part of the Softpress team in the past. We worked together at various Softpress locations over the years.
Jeremy
freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options