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Freeway > Helping Webpages Go the Distance

Story by Jone Devlin

February 2007

How do you get your webpage from layout to live? Just take the Freeway! Freeway, produced by Softpress Systems and billed as "the fastest, easiest, and most powerful way to design and build new websites" is a cutting edge tool that uses the Web as its output device, not a printer or image-setter.

The journey to Freeway started in Oxford, England, way back in 1993, when Softpress Systems was founded to address the emerging needs of professional publishers and designers for cross-media authoring tools. Originally focused on the print industry, Softpress developed an award-winning print layout program called Uniqorn.

In the mid-nineties, as more and more focus turned to the worldwide web, Uniqorn was abandoned, and Freeway was born. Richard Logan, Managing Director of Softpress Systems, spoke with MacDirectory about this very new, very cool software.

"Freeway empowers designers by allowing them to lay out pages without being forced to write code. Freeway is a true design tool developed for the creation and assembly of new content for the web. It is a great time-saver for designers because they can lay out pages any way they want, press a button and see their creations as they will appear on the Web... without worrying about the code. Freeway is also not constrained in any way by templatesÑ it lets you do anything you want."

This is important, says Logan, "because it gives users everything they need for their creative process and allows them to concentrate on the real design issues without the distraction of code." Rrecently winning the MacDirectory iWard award, Freeway comes in two flavors: Freeway Pro and Freeway Express.

According to Logan both versions are extremely user friendly, "intuitive and Mac- like; especially in their ability to offer total design flexibility and power while seamlessly handling all the difficult bits like graphic file format conversion and code production." Both versions also allow users to use original art in most formats, and to easily add QuickTime, Flash, and multimedia to pages. Freeway also allows for sites to be updated in one simple step.

As for the differences between the two, Freeway Pro is designed for the high-end consumer, and is a fully featured web design application that gives users every- thing they need to concentrate on design issues without the distraction of code. Richard Logan explains further, "Freeway is a Mac-only HTML generator, and will produce compliant code with no user intervention. Coupled with Freeway Actions, encapsulated and reusable slices of code, Freeway Pro is capable of building even the most sophisticated database driven sites."

Freeway Express meanwhile, is perfect for the small business or private consumer. Though it boasts fewer features, Richard Logan assured us that Freeway Express "is still a powerful design tool that provides all the functionality needed by novices right through to small business users. Like Pro, users can produce spell check-able graphic text on the fly, take advantage of a wide range of dynamic behaviors without coding, and publish automatically to the user's webpage or Mac account."

As an added bonus, both Freeway Pro and Freeway Express have the Freeway Store included for free. The Freeway Store is a suite of Freeway Actions used to create catalog pages right through to connecting with back-end card processors. Best of all, says Logan, "All of our applications are also Universal taking full advantage of Apple's fantastic new range of machines."

Two flavors, Universal applications, a bonus and guess what else? A free trial too! If you've been impressed with what you've read, and would like to take Freeway for a test drive, go to softpress.comand try one of the free thirty-day, fully working trials of Freeway. Support for all Softpress products is free. So what's next for Softpress and Freeway? Says Richard Logan, "In the future we will continue to extend these compelling themes and ensure that Freeway is always on the leading edge of web development."