Product Reviews

Web design is an exciting area, but most tools tend to be highly technical. SoftPress Freeway is different: it provides a familiar DTP-style design environment, specifically developed for serious Web site design and production. It doesn't demand that users learn mind-numbing technical details in order to work, yet it's as powerful as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive.

Previous versions tended to get sluggish when handling very large sites, but now Freeway works much faster, even in this beta version, so large sites no longer have to be broken up into sections to improve performance.

The interface is based on QuarkXPress (although with some improvements), right down to keyboard shortcuts, so designers will find their skills naturally apply. Text and images are placed in boxes on the page in a similar way to XPress. Unlike other Web design packages, text boxes can be linked, and images can be cropped and moved around within their frames. Freeway 3 reads native Photoshop and Illustrator files, as well as TIFF and EPS images, rasterising them to the preferred Web format on output. Fine-tuning image output is achieved by simply picking JPEG compression or GIF colour depth settings from a palette, and a Graphic Preview display option shows the results in the layout.

Graphic type is created on the page via the GIF Type setting. A full range of typographic controls lets users pick any typeface and apply true kerning and leading. If the font allows, it can be fine-tuned with ranging numerals and small caps, automatic swashes, common and rare ligatures, dipthongs and character alternates. Graphics are created automatically on output, so text remains editable at all times. QuickTime and Flash movies can now be shown on the page, and various parameters define whether to show or hide the playback controller and automatically play when shown.

The Actions feature was introduced into Freeway 2.0 to simplify adding custom code to Freeway layouts. This is a form of plug-in, but it's far more open than traditional plug-ins. Basic Actions can be written in a form of XML with just a little understanding of HTML structure, and HTML-like custom tags define everything from user interface elements to where the generated code is to be placed.

Now Freeway 3.0 has dramatically extended the scope of Actions. It contains a full JavaScript interpreter, so more

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savvy users can write Actions in JavaScript, including highly sophisticated conditional 'if-then' statements and data parsing. It can even run AppleScripts. Coders can customise the program to their heart's content, and the product of their labour can be used by anyone by dropping the Actions file into the Freeway Actions folder.

Freeway 3.0 gives Actions direct access to the 'tag stream', the HTML code generated when a document is previewed or published. Tags can be amended on the fly as they are generated, for instance, to add custom database parameters without the user having to do this on a link-by-link basis. This means that those who want to control a page's HTML code are well catered for; Actions provide full code access wherever it's necessary, but in a user-friendly, robust and repeatable way. Some Actions ship with Freeway itself, but new Actions, written by SoftPress and end-users, can be found on the SoftPress Web site.

Whole sites can be shown in a new Link Map view, which makes checking complex link structures surprisingly easy. Link Map shows pages as icons, with every link in the page branching off to a target page thumbnail, or showing the URL if it's an external link. The number of steps shown at once can be adjusted with a single click for each page, and clicking on an item moves it to the centre of focus. External links can also be verified within Freeway.

Rollovers are generated by applying a rollover Action to items. Previously, the extra graphics in a rollover had to be held externally, which could easily lead to items getting lost. With Freeway 3, these can be handled completely internally by placing the different rollover graphics in a stack on the page and letting the rollover Action hide and show things in the final Web page.

By generating HTML code and graphics at the last minute, Freeway's output is always as efficient as possible. The HTML-generation engine in the application is extremely well constructed - Web professionals often comment on the clarity and compactness of Freeway-generated pages. The result is that users produce the best code possible for their designs by default. Sites can be uploaded via file transfer or FTP, and Freeway will only upload changed items, reducing the overall transfer time.

The one drawback of not working with HTML during the layout process is that importing existing HTML sites doesn't work as well as it should. If you have sites to maintain, you should either use another tool to do so or remake the site in Freeway. The HTML import feature does a passable job, however, so remaking pages isn't always that difficult.

If you're used to a more technical Web tool, you may find Freeway's approach almost confusingly simple, but once you've grasped the concept you may not want to go back. If you're a designer, the differences should be clear. There's no easier Web design and production tool, yet Freeway is as powerful and capable as any of the competition.