iweb, rapidweaver, freeway....

I'm just learning Freeway Pro. It's not as intuitive as iWeb, but so many things that in iWeb must be done post-publishing are built into the software. I'm still working on it, but here's what I have so far: Phelps Sculpture

Susan,

In iWeb, drop down menus, for one have to be coded post production, and it was very difficult to get a global menu to work. With Freeway Pro it's all built in, you make one menu, and it appears on all your pages. You just have to make one change (to add a page link to the menu) and it updates on all your pages. There is no coding, it's WYSIWYG. It's basically a graphic design program that does all the coding for you.

I did say it's not as intuitive, however, that is partly that I'm just learning how to use it. Like iWeb, there is an active, helpful user group as well as lots of video tutorials.

Here's another page I did with Freeway Pro with no coding, it's all built into the program.SKETCHES

I don't know code, I'm just reading the owners manual, looking at tutorials and getting help from the user forum.

David

The problem with Freeway is that it is years out of date and needs to be completely rebuilt. It is really a giant step backward and is a waste of money.

Your Photo grid, for example, uses a table layout which produces a huge amount of code. Table layouts like this are only seen in designs that haven't had a rebuild in the past five years!

What little CSS there is should be in a separate stylesheet.

The content doesn't center itself in the browser window. It needs to be wrapped and centered.

Hi Roddy,

do you know of any WYSIWYG's that don't use tables like this? Or that allow a tidy, easy to learn method of tweaking CSS image handling code with buttons (like Dreamweaver) but aren't as bloated as Dreamweaver? Just wondering what you would recommend to the post-iWeb crowd.

Have a look at Flux...

http://www.theescapers.com/flux/

Its a kind of crossover app which allows you to manipulate code and drag and drop.

Old Toad uses it and can answer any questions you may have about it.

I just wanted to add my opinion on this as I am also someone who knows nothing about code and as a designer, I can only work in a very visual way so WYSIWYG is best for me too. I chose Freeway but the lite version from the App Store and it's been great. So long as my site is up and running correctly, that's all that mattered to me at the time.

Hi –

Sorry susan-kelly but I took my Freeway site down a while ago for various reasons save to say although it is definitely different to iWeb and the learning curve is slightly steeper (anything will be steeper compared to iWeb), it's a great program for non-coders. Flux wasn't at version 4 when I chose Freeway so I can't comment on that unfortunately. Is iWeb definitely out of the question for your needs? Have you thought of using WorPress? There are many customisable templates available and it would mean you could update your photo content any time easily.

Try this

And these look really nice, responsive too.

Hi Roddy

Have a look at Flux...

http://www.theescapers.com/flux/

Its a kind of crossover app which allows you to manipulate code and drag and drop.

Old Toad uses it and can answer any questions you may have about it.

I got the impression from this review that if I'm going to use Flux, I may as well go all the way and start learning HTML5 and CSS right now. Would that be a good summary of it? That then defeats the purpose of a WYSIWYG. If I really learned both of those I could easily become a 'front end' web designer and turn my hand to free stuff like Joomla and Wordpress and just go on forums if I needed help with php or JS. Does that about sum it up?

Keep in mind that I already own Dreamweaver (from CS4, part of that package when I thought I might go into web design in one incarnation of my many lives...)

That's what I did. I create my own stylesheets use Rage WebDesign app to put it all together.

HTML is so much simpler now that most of it has been made redundant by CSS and you can learn the basics in a couple of hours. HTML5 is even simpler.

CSS is where anybody interested in web design should apply some learning. You can't build modern websites without a good working knowledge of it. To get started, there are thousands of free stylesheets available which ou can modify.

Responsive websites are here now and are making traditional ones redundant. You really need to get your head around media queries and how they work if you want to build viable websites.

I wouldn't waste your time on Wordpress or any other CMS unless you really need to build a site for someone else to add the content.

I've been using stylesheets (external, internal, in-line, depending on the needs) for the past 16 years.

Where's the novelty?

http://www.google.com/search?q=webpage+structure+and+presentation

Here's the doc :

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1/

I don't really think anybody cares that you have been using CSS for 16 years and its interesting that you are referencing CSS1.

There are actually quite a number of new and upcoming features in CSS3 - transitions, transforms and animations for example - which are changing the way in which we design websites.

Back on topic, keep it clean.

😀