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Web designer Freeway 5.5 adds slideshows, image galleries

updated 04:55 pm EDT, Mon August 23, 2010

Version 5.5 gets Site Mapper, Amazon support, more


Softpress Systems has launched an upgrade to its web design software, Freeway 5.5. The application offers fast layout and design, with support for embedded images and other content. It publishes in HTML with intelligent editing -- it only uploads changes to the site to make editing more time efficient. It supports media like QuickTime, Flash and You Tube and is E-commerce capable. Freeway ships with actions and templates for automation and has more options available for download.

Showcase is new in version 5.5, allowing users to create customizable galleries and slideshows, with drag-and-drop support for adding images. Showcase offers layout options such as borders, shadows and reflections, and supports .TIFF and native Photoshop files, alongside standard web image types like .JPG and .GIF.

Version 5.5 has HTML e-mail generation to make web pages more e-mail friendly once published, and the new Site Mapper keeps search engines updated, alerting Google and Yahoo when the site is updated. Amazon affiliation support is new for the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan. Secure upload via SFTP and FTP is also new.

The Pro version of Freeway adds Relative Page Layout, creating complex CSS layouts that change with new content. The feature does not require CSS knowledge. The Pro version also adds a Site Search with support for all sites including those hosted on MobileMe.

Freeway 5.5 requires Mac OS X 10.5 and runs on Snow Leopard as well. Freeway Express is $70, while Freeway Pro is $230. There are education, senior and non-profit discounts of 20-percent off available.





Slideshows




Image Galleries




by MacNN Staff

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TAGS :

 software, Graphics/Web Design, Softpress Systems

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Comments

  1. nikstar101

    Junior Member

    Joined: Jul 2001

    +1
    08/23, 05:20pm | report spam | Reply |

    Blogging

    It would be nice if they added an easy to use blogging setup. At the moment you can only create templates for Blogger.com, but i would like to see some sort of iWeb setup too.

  1. MyRightEye

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Apr 2008

    +1
    08/23, 06:12pm | report spam | Reply |

    What the heck?

    Freeway has been outdated for 5 or 6 YEARS and adding a photo gallery, well that's there idea of a major .X release! Speaks volumes. It's quite ridiculous.

  1. rtbarry

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2001

    +2
    08/24, 12:13am | report spam | Reply |

    wow

    photo galleries. anyone heard of facebook or wordpress?

    if this were freeware or cheap shareware, i'd understand. but come on.

  1. JeffHarris

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 1999

    0
    08/24, 08:42am | report spam | Reply |

    Have you USED it?

    Freeway Pro is great!
    Hey, they even dropped the price, too! It used to be $99 and $299.

    Having never built a web site before, Freeway saved my butt and really made the process pretty straightforward.

    I agree that the photo gallery thing is overdue and I had to jump through some hoops to make a bunch of them (25 to be exact) for my web site with the third-party MooTools plug-in. I wanted slide shows on my site, not redirect to somewhere else.

    @nikstar101 There are lots of plug-ins (and links to others) available on the SoftPress web site.

  1. lemon-kun

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Sep 2010

    +1
    09/02, 10:01am | report spam | Reply |

    ...yes I used it...

    I like Freeway, this was for me the easiest way to create a website, with the most intuitive UI (at least for me...). However, it feels like an OS 9 application, which is not bad, but at some point you start to watch where the competition is going... I downloaded the 5.5 demo to play around a bit, but no way I will buy it. I feel they should rewrite the whole app, there is too much legacy-code in it. I understand that costs a lot of time=money, but there is no easy other way to implement some stuff we are used to in modern apps. Freeway has still only one UNDO, yupp, that's in 2010... Freeway has still no "real" WYSIWYG-rendering, so all stuff looks a tiny bit differently when you edit, you must start your browser to get a real idea. No "real" drag and drop of objects, actually you can only drag frames, like in the apps 10 years ago. Of course, Freeway is still a nice app, and I would like it to be successful, but when I look at the competitors, then, well...

    - Plug-ins? You mean the Freeway-actions? Well great, yes, there are some new ones, but: if you could add some HTML snippets into Freeway, that wouldn't be a topic anyway. There are lots of snippets on the web, but no way to put them into Freeway. Talking about actions: You want a simple search field for your Freeway site, without getting any adds? Yes, it seems for this option you need Freeway Pro, there is no third-party action available for the Express version.

    And the competition? Personally, I didn't like RapidWeaver, but I've seen some great sites created with it. I didn't try Sandvox and Goldfish... I think if you really have time and want a professional self-designed layout, there is Flux3. I feel it is actually how Freeway Pro should be, while you don't have to code, you can still do so if you like (or put in snippets), and open and edit any existing Website; the latest version has HTML5 and is (as I think) very powerful, it competes more with Dreamweaver than with Freeway Pro. So you can do much more things - and the price is still only 66 GBP I think. Yeah, that's a lot cheaper than FW Pro. Downside, it's quite complex, and the UI is somewhat unintuitive (for me).

    If you need something easy, fast and cheap like Freeway 5 Express, I recommend iWeb if you have it anyway on your Mac. I think it's much better than its reputation. Ok, for advanced things you have to do some workarounds, but you can design a page from scratch, you can use Flash, you can make rollovers with pictures, menus, favcons, optimize the code for search, insert snippets, all of that. Just download iFuWeb, or other extensions... The good thing is, if you get some ambitions with your site, you can still open your site with flux or any other editor, tune the code etc.

    I still hope for Freeway 6. But honestly, I don't believe there will be much progress unless they rewrite the whole thing. Maybe it's just time to move on.

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