Upgrading to FW7 questions

Freeway
21

that’s top Todd!
Op 26 nov. 2014 19:16 schreef “Todd” email@hidden:

I agree. Which is why I’m currently building a community tutorial site for
that reason, among others.

Todd
http://xiiro.com http://xiiro.com/

one big solution could be just a couple of (softpress?)video tuts just
for
a basic responsve site in steps with most common elements. Fluid, box or
fixed size. As a reference. Seeing is believing and pictures say more
then…

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22

I understand that not everyone has that need but for many of us our roles continue to evolve beyond what we once thought.

That’s the gist - and I’m targeting those making turnover.

The videos are already there - covering more aspects than just the basics - so no need to produce them.

Cheers

Thomas

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23

On 26 Nov 2014, 5:16 pm, Todd wrote:

I agree. Which is why I’m currently building a community tutorial site for that reason, among others.

Todd
http://xiiro.com

Great idea. Looking forward to seeing them.

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24

where can I find all those FW7 tuts Thomas?
Op 26 nov. 2014 20:00 schreef “Thomas Kimmich” email@hidden:

I understand that not everyone has that need but for many of us our roles
continue to evolve beyond what we once thought.

That’s the gist - and I’m targeting those making turnover.

The videos are already there - covering more aspects than just the basics

  • so no need to produce them.

Cheers

Thomas

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25

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 6:28 AM, email@hidden wrote:

where can I find all those FW7 tuts Thomas?

Don’t be thick - learning a technique like inflow/box-model is mostly
independent of which Freeway version is used.

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26

I use FW7, but Thomas wrote as an answer on my videotuts request:
"The videos are already there - covering more aspects than just the basics

  • so no need to produce them."

I only saw one video from Softpress, and further a written addon to their
excellent manual.
I like to see more specific FW7 videos, just like other vendors do. So that
tweaky handling becomes automatic part of my basic workflow. I now to often
ask myself: “Am I doing the right thing to get the [best] result I want?”
Its like feeling ‘floating left or right’ all the time and gettin’ dizzy
afterwards :wink:

2014-11-27 13:31 GMT+01:00 Ernie Simpson email@hidden:

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 6:28 AM, email@hidden wrote:

where can I find all those FW7 tuts Thomas?

Don’t be thick - learning a technique like inflow/box-model is mostly
independent of which Freeway version is used.

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27

We are all outside the castle here.

Thomas and Ernie and nearly everyone else on this mailing list are all just regular users of Freeway, not employees of Softpress. While we may speak with authority (born of experience and intuition), and in Thomas’s case, may have produced a body of work that could qualify as official training materials, we are right there along with you asking Softpress to make something that is truly official. We can’t do that any more than you can.

Walter

On Nov 27, 2014, at 8:16 AM, email@hidden wrote:

I use FW7, but Thomas wrote as an answer on my videotuts request:
"The videos are already there - covering more aspects than just the basics

  • so no need to produce them."

I only saw one video from Softpress, and further a written addon to their
excellent manual.
I like to see more specific FW7 videos, just like other vendors do. So that
tweaky handling becomes automatic part of my basic workflow. I now to often
ask myself: “Am I doing the right thing to get the [best] result I want?”
Its like feeling ‘floating left or right’ all the time and gettin’ dizzy
afterwards :wink:

2014-11-27 13:31 GMT+01:00 Ernie Simpson email@hidden:

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 6:28 AM, email@hidden wrote:

where can I find all those FW7 tuts Thomas?

Don’t be thick - learning a technique like inflow/box-model is mostly
independent of which Freeway version is used.

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28

I totally understand Walter, no offence. But I know that Joe or Keith
reading our Freewaytalks on a regularly base and should be aware of what
our culprits are. I seldom noticed a community so helpfull to each other,
a little more help from our Softpress friends would be nice. Wouldn’t it?

Besides great support and not all in line of this thread, Webydo uses for
instance a vote-forum. You can publish suggestions, ideas, changes online
to make their software better. Other users can give their votes (1-3) to an
idea and if there are enough votes the Webydo team picks it up and, if
possible, will implement it in their software. Give users what they mostly
need and ask for. I think its great.
Op 27 nov. 2014 16:31 schreef “Walter Lee Davis” email@hidden:

We are all outside the castle here.

Thomas and Ernie and nearly everyone else on this mailing list are all
just regular users of Freeway, not employees of Softpress. While we may
speak with authority (born of experience and intuition), and in Thomas’s
case, may have produced a body of work that could qualify as official
training materials, we are right there along with you asking Softpress to
make something that is truly official. We can’t do that any more than you
can.

Walter

On Nov 27, 2014, at 8:16 AM, email@hidden wrote:

I use FW7, but Thomas wrote as an answer on my videotuts request:
"The videos are already there - covering more aspects than just the
basics

  • so no need to produce them."

I only saw one video from Softpress, and further a written addon to their
excellent manual.
I like to see more specific FW7 videos, just like other vendors do. So
that
tweaky handling becomes automatic part of my basic workflow. I now to
often
ask myself: “Am I doing the right thing to get the [best] result I want?”
Its like feeling ‘floating left or right’ all the time and gettin’ dizzy
afterwards :wink:

2014-11-27 13:31 GMT+01:00 Ernie Simpson email@hidden:

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 6:28 AM, email@hidden wrote:

where can I find all those FW7 tuts Thomas?

Don’t be thick - learning a technique like inflow/box-model is mostly
independent of which Freeway version is used.

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29

We can’t do that any more than you can.

Except for the fact that we do. Then we turn around and show you how we did
it. We lay out breadcrumbs and map-markers, we forge paths and blaze
trails… we build effin bridges. We make it easier for people to get from A
to Z, and for most people, that’s enough.

But not for everybody. This is the lesson I’m hoping Softpress is learning
– that the people who are the most ignorant of the process can be the
least appreciative of your efforts. It’s like World Peace – not a feature
that you can achieve with the push of a button… more of a goal you can work
towards with some helpful tools.

Which, of course, get shot down for not being push-buttony enough.

The Freeway World that I envision moving forward is one where everyone
needs to accept some responsibility in educating themselves – or each
other, like we do here. Not necessarily in code, though I think that’s
unavoidable – but in terms of how to get the results we want from Freeway,
and the steps needed to do that. For many of us, it’s been the
inflow/box-model construction method. Not the easiest to grasp right away,
but again… breadcrumbs, map-markers, bridges.

Softpress also needs to get on board by seeing Freeway as a learning tool
and developing it’s ability to assist web development, not mask it.

Even this forum needs to evolve a little… I’ve sat here and read some of
the stupidest threads recently about simple stuff - aligning things mostly

  • where the best advices are rejected for dumb reasons. This won’t lead to
    more discussion and sharing, trust me on that.

Let’s try and put our heads together, see where cooperation takes us.

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30
  • where the best advices are rejected for dumb reasons.

I’ll second that!

D

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31

On 27 Nov 2014, 6:47 pm, DeltaDave wrote:

  • where the best advices are rejected for dumb reasons.

I’ll second that!

D

Yep!

I got sick and tired (and still am) by ever and ever repeating myself (or my good talk mates here). So I decided to change my strategy. Writing posts take me often enough more than half an hour - and I wrote about 2000 of them the last 5 years.

So I decided to screencast stuff - starting with 5.5. My english is as is - quirky. But you see what you get - even if sound is switched off. My baby is Box-in-Box Model, and the techniques are off any version number.

There are two different screencast sections on my page:

Free and paid.

The free ones are playing two roles: Showing some essential things in order to understand the work we are living in and naturally what’s to expect if you subscribe. Those can be found on:

http://www.kimmich-digitalmedia.com/videos

The paid is NOT an adaption of the manual. I made my thoughts trying to develop a special model as a bedrock. This is MY technique I’m sharing here.

This is the teaser of the paid series (which is and ever was for free) introducing the concept:

http://www.kimmich-digitalmedia.com/bib-v6/freeway-box-box-modelpro-v6-x-001-introducing-concept

Near future plan:

I haven’t started casting version 7 yet, but will do. Recently I wrote a lil theme - the first one using FW7. It is worth to share the “How to - a look behind the scenes” - even share the file with the subscribers (who knows).

But Model V6 is the essential - the need to know first.

http://backstage.kimmich-digitalmedia.com/templates/walk-through-the-park/index.html

This is the reason why I said the (necessary) videos are already there - it’s simply up to you to judge if 20$ a year (8$ 3 months) is way too much, but consider how long you’re willed to work for 20$.

A word to community:

I even developed an agreement with Caleb - so every BackDraft client gets a voucher for one week free - just to have a look behind the scenes. No extra costs for him or his clients - just because of the honor to support committed Freeway users.

Ernie shares a rich and high valued “knowledge pool” called workbench.

Tim is sharing lots of free stuff (actions, examples, code)

Todd is building up a user-to-user knowledge base - collecting all the good stuff (a thing I thought about some time ago as well).

And without Walter we’d still live in the stone-age of FrontEnd development.

So there is enough stuff to do and support - but not only for the 10-12 people who already spent a good amount of their life-time helping others - it’s a good time to review the own strategy.

And Softpress?

The only thing I really expect is going on with the current work - doing progressive enhancement (or even enrichment), which will mean to create a product which is worth fighting for - and enough work to do. But this can also end up in a slightly changing audience - one which expects even more than the current.

Cheers

Thomas

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32

Thanks for all of the replies.

I have decided to go ahead with FW7 to jump in and get some experience. I came dangerously close to buying Rapidweaver and the Tesla Pro template, but I don’t want to throw away my Freeway experience. I was very impressed with RW but finding a template that does everything you want was not an easy process. ALso you often don’t know everything you want unter later in the life of a web site and that is where the concept of RW might fall down.

It is clear from the many replies here that FW7 is not “simple” as advertised and that a great deal of under the hood learning is required. Even though I have created about a dozen web sites with FW over the years I couldn’t even understand some of the replies here, so I will revisit this thread and very likely ask more questions.

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33

It is clear from the many replies here that FW7 is not “simple” as advertised and that a great deal of under the hood learning is required.

I believe (philosophically) that this may be why Express stops at 6. There comes a time in the life-cycle of a tool where it becomes less beginner-friendly, or actually, just prefers a more engaged beginner, with a different starting skill-set.

For someone who has only ever done print design, Freeway 7 will work as advertised, but will never rise much above what you could do with 6 and below. For someone with a little working knowledge of HTML and CSS, there will be an equal and opposite frustration at the labeling of some elements in the interface, and a bit of un-learning to do with respect to how you get the thing to do what you want. But once you’ve crossed that bridge, the time savings and ability to zoom in and pixel-nudge things will win them over, and they’ll never look back.

Walter

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34

Just wanted to thanks everyone here for the help. There was encouraging support from those who have worked through the pain barrier but a tone that you had to learn your FW stuff the correct way or you will trip up.

I tried Caleb’s Backdraft and that was the the direction that I think that FW should have taken. However, it still left you at the peril of needing to spend ages get the page to look right.

I have now abandoned FW7 and after a week using Foundation with Rapidweaver, I just could not go back. I must say that Foundation using Rapidweaver is what I had dreamed that FW would become one day.

The transition was very easy with the wealth of support documentation and videos, particularly from Joe Workman. So if you’re struggling with FW7 you will enjoy RW. One thing to bear in mind, is that you will need RW6, Foundation Starter Pack and Stacks 2 to open up the full power of the package. You also really need the Jack stack, so the price is about twice that of FW7. It is a hugely powerful, intuitive suite of web development software that gives you total flexibility without the conventional constraint of a pre-configured template approach.

I would say that I find RW6 to be an incomplete tool, in just the same way that I find FW7 to be. However, it is the Stacks environment addition and then the Foundation framework that make RW a great tool. FW7 doesn’t have a Stacks type addition and I feel that’s a shame.

For anyone not familiar with Foundation with Rapidweaver, have a look at this guide to building the Foundation home page:

http://vimeo.com/95562793

If someone could create an implementation of Foundation on FW7 then that would be a powerful thing. Too late for me though.

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