Program Tip: no code web development

[brenthomer]

If like me, you do what ever you can not to touch HTML, CSS, PHP and any other web scripting system then I have found a cool program for you.
http://www.softpress.com/products/freewayprointerf.php

It's called Freeway and it is the best of Iweb with more modern functionality. I am currently building a page with it and I am really impressed. You can see the page I am using for our church now at
www.praisefellowshipag.com

That page is ok. But it could be improved in so many ways. Way to improve it #1 is to have some roll overs and motion on the page. Nothing crazy mind you, but to me a little bit of roll over goes a long way to have visual feedback.

The other thing that Iweb doesnt have (multiple hacks are around to solve this) is a way to put in html, flash, etc. Pretty much the problem with iweb is, what it does, it does well, but it doesn't do much

It looks like Freeway Pro will do everything I want to do without having to actually know anything. I had to look up some stuff in the manual like how to have a picture pop up based on mouse position, but it is pretty easy to use. It's way easier then learning proper html anyway.

I made a few sample pages and was really impressed. I like how it lets you tag everything (for google and handicap access) and just how easy it is to have interactive items on the page.

For the first time in months I am pumped about redoing our web page!

Anyway I figured I am not the only one on the site who takes care of their churches web page but hates html and web coding so I thought I would share.

It's not a product review yet, because I havn't finished a page, but the program is what I have been looking for.

One of my favorite features is the stuff you do in the program without a graphics program. One example is you can make a square, give it rounded corners and enter some text. You could add gradients, shadows, outlines, opacaty, etc to it.

Then you could duplicate the square (yes its a button lets say) and highlight the text and give it a dropshadow, or maybe highlight the square and put a border on it.

Next take the align tool and stack both buttons on top of each other so you can only see one button. Then go into the actions menu and apply the roll over function to it. Define which graphic is the natural state, and define which one is the roll over state.

At this point you could also give it an action # so when that action is triggered a picture/text could pop up on your web page as well.

Maybe I am doing a bad job explaining it, but this program is so cool. I love the fact you can generating a lot of the elements in the program without having to dump down to graphics program for everything.

You can also do all your graphics in Photoshop, and it will crunch them down at publishing so you don't even have to have multiple copies of graphics on your computer.

I know that other programs (dreamweaver) do even more then this program, but this program is "Mac Like" and easy to pick up and use. Dreamweaver never came easy for me and I don't want to spend that kind of money on it anyway.

This program is like $170 for educational/non-profit and you can get a 5 seat liscence for under $400. Providing my sample page turns out ok I am going to get a few copies of this for church. Some of our staffers should even be able to use this...

Anyway, sorry for the ranting and hype. I just thought I would share with the mac users here that I have found an awesome web tool. If you are comfortable with traditional tools just ignore, but if you are like me and not very code savy this program will be a lifesaver....