WHAT IS FREEWAY?

Product Information from Softpress Systems

Overview

Freeway Pro has been created to offer experienced designers a powerful and easy-to-use tool. Freeway differs from other Web design applications in allowing users to focus on the important issues of design, usability and functionality without having to worry about the underlying code. At the same time, Freeway provides ample tools to ease the management of coded and scripted back-end functionality. Freeway takes the pain out of Web-site creation, without limiting the user's ability to create highly functional sites.

Additionally, Freeway's unique feature set provides tremendous productivity gains for even the most experienced Web developers. Freeway Pro 3.5 runs natively in Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.

Intuitive control of layout and typography

Freeway has a familiar design environment and rich set of layout tools and typographic controls. If you use DTP applications like QuarkXPress, PageMaker or InDesign, you'll feel immediately comfortable with Freeway. Free-form layout is a breeze, with a wealth of layout tools including transformation, zoom, guide and ruler features--with both graphical and numeric controls for accurate positioning. Content can be placed in overlapping boxes, text on graphic, text on text, graphic on graphic, even text on animated GIFs! You can drag and drop directly into Freeway from other applications such as iPhoto, iTunes, Extensis Portfolio, iView, etc.

HTML 4.0 layout

Freeway allows you to use standard table-based layouts along with CSS2 layers, which are supported by most recent browsers. This feature gives designers greater range of layout design, including the ability to overlay HTML text on graphic objects and to move, show, or hide page elements interactively.

Multiple master pages

Designing a Web site using master pages is one of the keys to the amazing level of productivity that can be achieved with Freeway. Master pages are used for repeating features such as layout, navigation bars, page backgrounds and graphic elements.

Templates

New documents can be created from templates, which are similar to stationery but also are also used to set up an organized system of working folders. Freeway Pro 3.5 is supplied with a range of pre-built templates, which can be selected from the New Document dialog.

Productivity

Freeway's integrated approach to Web design has always offered major productivity advantages over other Web programs. In Freeway Pro 3.5, these advantages have been boosted through speed enhancements and basic scripting capabilities. And because all elements of your design are readily editable in Freeway, there can no better tool for prototyping in front of clients.

Link checking

Links within a Freeway site are automatically tracked and are impossible to break accidentally. If you change the name or location of a page, Freeway will automatically remake the hyperlink pointing to that page.

Flexible layout

You can define flexible page elements that stretch to take up unused room in the browser window. The combination of automatic page centering and right alignment with these flexible items means that you can easily create Web pages that truly take advantage of any browser environment.

Fine typographic design and high-end word processing

You can create typographic elements in any font for headlines, banners and captions. Text on the Web page can be designated for conversion to anti-aliased GIF bitmaps, and it always remains editable! Fine typography is assured with Freeway's extensive set of typographic controls that are comparable to any professional DTP package. Styled type elements can be overlapped with each other or with graphics to easily produce stunning layouts.

Cascading Style Sheets

Freeway gives you simple access to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which provide extensive typographic control over HTML text. You can precisely control letter and word spacing, indents, leading, type size and justification, and exploit new text effects for greater interactivity.

Optimize graphics without using another application

In Freeway you can dynamically reduce the number of colors in GIF images and control JPEG compression levels - all with a real-time WYSIWYG view of image quality and numerical feedback of the image size in bytes. If you use other "visual" Web design programs, you have to perform this task in a separate image-processing application. Freeway can also import TIFF, Photoshop, Illustrator, PDF, PICT, BMP, JPEG, GIF, and PNG images - which are automatically down-sampled and converted to the appropriate Web format or left as pass-throughs if you choose. Freeway can also take advantage of transparency in PNG files. This allows for easy compositing of images within Freeway.

Graphics, QuickTime and Flash content

Adobe Illustrator (including versions 9 and 10) and Photoshop files (even layered images) can be imported directly into Freeway, where they are automatically converted into Web-ready formats. Freeway can also use Photoshop plug-ins to import (and export) a wide range of non-native graphic formats, and with Photoshop scanner plug-ins images can be scanned directly onto a Freeway document!

Freeway allows you to edit hyperlinks within your Flash movie and then track them in the same way as normal HTML hyperlinks. In addition to this unique ability, Freeway allows you to change the background color of the Flash movie so your clients can change their minds as often as they like without causing a major headache.

Freeway Actions technology

With customizable Actions, it's easy to integrate complex scripting and back-end functionality into Freeway and to simplify the creation and management of dynamic and interactive Web sites. There is a growing library of Actions that contain pre-programmed scripts and coding. Freeway Pro 3.5 is supplied with a starter pack of Actions to provide a useful range of pre-packaged functions. Softpress constantly adds new Actions to a library that is freely available from the Softpress Web site. Actions offer the same benefits for the development and maintenance of scripting as master pages do for layout--the developer only needs to maintain one instance of the code in the Freeway Action text file instead of managing code fragments across every page. Any changes to a Freeway Action are automatically incorporated when documents are opened and published.

Built-in JavaScript interpreter

Freeway Actions can be written in JavaScript, which allows the development of complex and sophisticated scripts. The standard rollover Action allows JavaScript rollovers to be created easily and intuitively. Rollovers can be created directly within a page, without the user having to prepare and import separate images for each rollover state.

FAST (Freeway Advanced Site Tools)

Freeway Pro 3.5 introduces FAST Actions. This is a new Actions technology that has been built into Freeway Pro 3.5. FAST Actions are sophisticated Actions that are closely integrated with Freeway and are used to extend core functionality. The Buttons FAST pack, which is part of the default installation, allows users to create attractive 3D-styled buttons with highlights and shadows in a large number of different configurations. Other add-on packs offer sophisticated site-navigation systems and graphics processing.

Site management and FTP upload

Freeway makes quality Web page design more accessible and easier than with any other package, and publishing your site to the Web using Freeway's FTP upload facility is a good example of just how easy it is. Proof your site using a local folder, then upload to your Web space with one command - Freeway always knows which files are to be updated.

Multilingual site production

Freeway Pro 3.5 offers significant capabilities in multilingual Web-site production. Users can select from a wide range of language encodings for individual pages in a site. Text can be rendered in HTML or as bitmapped graphics for languages as diverse as Japanese (including vertical text), Chinese and Russian. Localization of the Pro 3.5 version will be completed at the beginning of June.

Freeway™ is a trademark of Softpress Systems Limited. Softpress® is a trademark of Softpress Systems Limited which is registered in some countries. All other company and product names are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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