Freeway Talk

Remove Explorer Glow Action?

DVTVFilm — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:09:45 -500

In this action:

Remove Explorer Glow Action

—still necessary to apply in FWPro5, (if only to accommodate lower level versions of IE still out there?)

If so, I don’t see it as an option to in the PAGE ACTIONS choices.

Thanks….

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Some CSS Help (1 Reply)

waltd — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:09:37 -500

In Freeway, you can’t make a span without adding a classname to it. So make a dummy style with nothing in the Tag field, and some word (maybe span) in the Name field. Don’t add any style attributes to it, but be sure that Permanent is checked.

So now you have a style that doesn’t do anything. To re-write your CSS so it will only attach itself to this style, you can simply change it to:

span.span {
    float: left;
    display: block;
}

Or, if that doesn’t do the trick, you could do this:

#menu li a span.span {
    float: left;
    display: block;
}

But I suspect that first one will do fine.

Now select the text you want to apply this span.span style to and click on .span in the Styles palette list of styles. As long as what you have applied the style to is less than a full paragraph of text, the code that will be written will be something like this:

<li><a href="#" title="Link 1"><span class="span">Link 1</span></a><li>

By the way, there are MUCH simpler ways to make a horizontal list than this.

Try this:

#menu ul {
    float: left;
    width: 100%;
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0;
}
#menu li {
    float: left;
    list-style-type: none;
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0;
}
#menu li a {
    display: inline-block;
    padding: 4px 8px;
    background-color: #cfc;
    border: 1px solid #333;
}

Yes, it’s way more CSS, but absolutely nothing that doesn’t belong in your HTML. Your menu is nothing but a list of links, which is a very semantic structure. If Freeway allowed you to add IDs or classes to lists, then you would be using the absolute bare-minimum amount of HTML, because you could skip that wrapper DIV.

Walter

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Moving objects inside a graphics element (7 Replies)

Alex Neuman — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:58:05 -500

I’ll give those a try.

Thanks a lot,

Alex N.

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Gif animations not working in 5.2 (3 Replies)

thatkeith — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:33:01 -500

Sometime around 5/9/08 (at 02:35 -0700) Tom Byrne said:

when installed into a graphic box in freeway 5.2 Pro, it gets cut into slices and displays very slowly and in a juxtaposed manner. Bits of one frame appear mixed with bits of another.

I’d first like to echo Dave’s comment that this isn’t ideal content for the GIF format. For a cross-fading photo slideshow effect I think you’d actually be better off using Flash!

Regarding the thing being sliced up, this can only happen if you have HTML items sitting partly on top of the graphic, or at least on top of the overall combined graphic area, OR if any overlapping graphic element has been set not to combine.

What you could then also hit is cache reload ‘errors’, where the browser loads caches versions of the animated GIF into different slice parts in the layout, distorting and fragmenting the appearance horribly. This is NOT what the page is really like, it is just produced by your browser being lazy about fetching the real graphic elements when it thinks it has seen them already and doesn’t need to reload them from scratch.

Your page seems to be behaving itself, which seems to indicate that it was a cache problem you were seeing.

If you really don’t want Freeway to touch your animated GIF in any way other than to include it in your page layout, just click the Passthrough checkbox when you use the Import dialog. This tells Freeway to ‘pass the image straight through’ without attempting to optimise or modify it in any way. I generally don’t use this option, as it blocks everything from cropping to merging with other graphic elements - but it does have its place.

If you import an animated GIF in the normal way, you can have other graphics combine with it in the output, just as normal non-animated graphics can combine in the output. What happens when an animated GIF is in the mix is rather clever: every frame is remade, using the animated GIF file’s settings but combining the additional graphic elements into each frame. Clever, huh? And very handy if you want to do things such as add title content, logos (including translucent and cut-out graphics) or other items to the animated GIF content itself.

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Tweaking Mark up code (4 Replies)

thatkeith — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:07:33 -500

Sometime around 5/9/08 (at 14:47 -0400) deidremc said:

or do i leave out action= ?

Leave out the quotes as well! Those are wrapped around the content you put into that field automatically in the code that Freeway makes for you.

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Editing layers (10 Replies)

thatkeith — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:05:51 -500

Sometime around 5/9/08 (at 13:11 -0400) Scott said:

My automatic assumption had been “top of list/top of layers” which was, of course, wrong.

That was my assumption too, ‘way back when’. There’s a logic to either way, and the way Freeway works fits the idea of the page being the back-most item and items ‘closest’ to it in the list are ‘further back’ in the stacking order than those that aren’t.

Try to think it terms of front/back (as in the Item > Arrange options) rather than top/bottom. It helps. :-)

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items sticking to browser's left side (3 Replies)

thatkeith — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:05:51 -500

Sometime around 5/9/08 (at 22:28 +0200) Omar KN said:

A “Cc” goes to Dan J because it is based on his (otherwise) splendid boxmodel.

A very gentlemanly and courteous thing to do. But probably best to keep these things purely on the forum/list when we’re all talking together, that’s how things generally work around here. I’m sure Dan will be reading. :-)

Anyway, you said:

I was wondering what settings determine items to stick to browser’s left side/ or not, when one stretches the browser window to the right. This only becomes apparent in a large screen.

What you’re describing is either

(1) a centered layout, where the page content is presented centered in the browser window (when the window is wider than your original page design width), or

(2) a flexible layout, where layered items are given settings that ‘pin’ them to one side of the window or the other or let them stretch to maintain some position relationship with both sides of the browser window.

To make a centered layout, just choose Center from the Alignment popup menu in the Inspector palette when inspecting the page itself.

To make a flexible layout the simple way, make sure the items you want to work with are layered elements (so they’re positioned as divs), select one, and play with the left/right/width controls in the Dimensions pane in the Inspector palette. Click the buttons beside the appropriate text fields to make different ones active or not.

Using the centered layout approach described above as (1) will prevent any (2)-style flexible layout tricks from working, because those rely on a flexible underlying width but the centered step wraps things in a non-flexing page-width wrapper.

[Struggling inside the box(model)]

Working with the box model for layouts is a whole ‘nother thing entirely. I’ll leave the explanations to others, but I will ask this: do you NEED to work with the box model approach?

This site www.thetypographic.com/lecture/ was made without working with the box model. Different elements work (okay play) with the browser window width - and height - in different ways. (After flexing the window width, try scrolling down while looking at the nav links on the left. Then use the ‘back to the top’ link.)

Yes, the box model approach to layout can lead to some damn clever structures, but at this point in the game it isn’t always a particularly visual or intuitive way to work.

Sorry, I don’t mean to put you off, really! But I do mean to say that there are other ways…

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Counter (9 Replies)

waltd — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:52:00 -500

Recall the UPS (or maybe IBM) commercial with the two guys explaining to their boss: “We could have a spinning logo OR a flaming logo!!!”

Walter

On Sep 5, 2008, at 3:47 PM, Paul Bradforth wrote:

On 5 Sep 2008, at 20:19, DeltaDave wrote:

But you know there are plenty of fashion trends that have come back to haunt us - visualising Walter in huge flairs and shaggy sideburns - so maybe the Visible Counter will make a comeback.

Y’know, I’ve always wanted to make a site with animated GIFs of flaming torches in each corner …

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

www.paulbradforth.com

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Page wont stop loading (10 Replies)

DeltaDave — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:06:36 -500

Agreed - if there is too much on the page/taking too long to load then most folk will just bail out and that will reflect badly on you.

David

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Flash movie control (6 Replies)

rebeccintosh — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:39:42 -500

Thank you! The tutorial looks easy enough to follow. I’ll read through it and try it out and let you know how it works out. You guys are great.

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