Existing users, 
I'm neither affiliated with this developer nor affiliated with any competing developer. I have no axe to grind in this review, that I'm consciously aware of.
So, I grudgingly bought Freeway Pro for the ~$300 (grudgingly, because of the high cost) plus the two expansion packs that are pretty much essential to use the app to its full ability. I realized that I needed to buid a Web site and although the price was steep, I didn't see a competitor that was cheapter. About me: I'd call myself a light-to-medium techy sort of guy. I'm an advanced OS X user, know FTP and QuickTime, but not much else. And since I couldn't hand-code, a WYSIWYG editor was essential.
ROBUST
Freeway Pro is a very stable application that has crashed once or twice on me in about forty hours of use. An incredibly helpful Knowledgebase on their Web site (on topics like QuickTime, Web colors, font usage, pop-up windows and tons of other subjects) is at your finger tips, too. This is where you'll find lots of practical tips for questions you will undoubtedly have when building your site.
This seriously feature packed software. I found the menus largely intuitive, and the features to work as advertised. I really liked the Preview function (to show your work in Safari and IE) as well as the Upload feature that lets you get your whole site uploaded without a hitch.
GREAT SUPPORT
The double-whammy of having both an incredibly well-crafted on-board Help system plus Softpress' own online Knowledgebase is powerful. I've consulted both dozens of times on dozens of different topics. I find it clear and well-written.
LACKING
This is a major nit. You can't get to the HTML code for your pages in Freeway Pro. Ever. That's right. Know a Web gal who you'd like to tweak your page or make an adjustment ot it? Well, she can without Freeway Pro...but you'l never be able to bring your page back into the program again. Of course, if she has Freeway Pro, she can mess with it as much as you want. You see, they don't let you touch your own HTML, so that creates a system that forces anyone in your production path (and involved in your Web site), to buy Freeway Pro as well. It's an unfortunate thing, of course, but it's designed to sell more copies of their software. The developer is entitled to develop anyway they want, but this makes going from HTML Code-->Freeway Pro impossible.
This is a minor nit. The templates they provide for building your site look just awful. Most uf us wouldn't be caught dead with the gross stuff that they pass of as "boilerplate" Web site fare. They could really use a graphic designer to beef up their templates. How about ones for online portfolios, ecommerce sites, doctors, students, etc.? They're just plain ugly.
Another nit is that when you upload your Web site using Freeway Pro's tool, I don't believe it's intelligent enough to do a "diff" and tell what files it needs to replace on your Web server and which ones it can leave alone. Right now, my uploads take around 20 or 30 minutes for my tiny Web site, even when I make a minor change. That's just not right and should be fixed.
I'd recommend Freeway Pro. This is quality software. I've used a lot of apps, and you can tell how much time they've put into it. A lot! I've used Dreamweaver in the past and found it more difficult to use. If you're equivocating, I'd say get Freeway Pro. Remember if you don't support the "other" developers, how will they have the resources to make better software in the future?
Version:
Freeway Pro: Robust, Great Support, and Lacking
Feedback Type: Review
Contributed by: marmaladewanker Wednesday, April 06 2005 @ 02:02 PM PDT
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: Less than a month
Recommend Product: YES
Overall Rating:
Ease of Use:
Support:
Features:
Quality / Stability:
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Comments
Freeway Pro: Robust, Great Support, and Lacking - thatkeith
Hi Marmaladew... Just a comment or two about the mention you made about the lack of code access:First of all, this is largely true: the program presents a design environment rather than a programming one. This is because Freeway generates the most *optimised and robust* code its industrial-strength engine can create, each and every time you preview or publish. Idle messing around in code is what leads to inefficient, poorly structured page structure, so steering users towards high-level layout and production tasks and taking away the messy code-wrangling tasks is a Good Thing.
*(Note those two things: optimised AND robust. Good code will be efficient, but not to the detriment of different kinds of browsers. Freeway excels at making code which performs well in a wide range of browsers. Automatically.)
But if you do want to start putting in custom code, there are actually numerous options right there in the main interface. The Extended options allow extended attributes to be set up, Markup items let you slip in hand-woven snippets or large swathes of code anywhere in your layout (I find this wonderful when making PHP-driven pages), and there are other similar options on hand. (Including Source Code Snooper, a free add-on Action which gives direct access to code when you really need it!)
If you want to do something more interactive with the code then take a look at Freeway's Actions. These are able to take Freeway's output and customise it intelligently, using code logic, to deliver precisely what you want. You get a pile of Actions installed already, you can add third party ones if you use Freeway Pro, and you can even write your own.
There are two key and very cool things to remember about Actions. First of all, they are built with JavaScript and XML-style code, so any web programmer can write them. And second, unlike hand-written code which has to be inserted and tweaked each time you use it, they can be used wherever and whenever you like with zero effort.
Apply, pick a few options from the Actions palette, and get on with the important stuff.
(Oh, and the FAST Packs add features not even found in competing products, so it isn't really the case that Freeway is missing features without 'em! For example, the ability to make imported graphics transparent by percentage, generate custom edge effects, and even hand-tweak the individual color channels of an image in the page... you'll find them invaluable when you have 'em, but that's hardly basic stuff! :-)
I hope this helps explain a few thing!
Friday, April 08 2005 @ 03:58 AM PDT
Freeway Pro: Robust, Great Support, and Lacking - e.oliver
Freeway is easily the worst piece of web development software I have ever used in 8 years of development for the web.If you cannot recognise how bad the hideously verbose HTML it produces is, you don't know enough about the basics of HTML. If you don't mind making amateurish sites full of unnecessary images and inaccessible features then go ahead and waste your money, if not, just spend half a day learning ANY simple shareware HTML WYSIWYG editor (of which there are lots) and you'll be a lot better off.
There is simply nothing to recommend this awful program. Made for lazy designers with too much money and no sense of what's required by most clients (accessibility, good info architecture, fast download times etc.)
Wednesday, September 14 2005 @ 05:23 AM PDT
Freeway Pro: Robust, Great Support, and Lacking - MacVet-0SXNeophyte
RE: I takes a half hour to upload...it doesn't seem to know what was changed....NOT MY EXPERIENCE....
FREEWAY and upload:
...it DOES only upload what has been changed...and should take very little time to upload....I am in and out after a change in less than 10 minutes, right from adding content to checking the links on line....maybe something in your setup or pref files needs tweaking...may be it is set somewhere to do a complete/fresh upload each time....that is not stanard practice.....I LOVE THE UPLOADING FEATURE ESPECIALLY....I had to buy FETCH to upload my GOLIVE files as I couldn't do what I wanted with their built in uploading feature....with out getting down and dirty in the file heirarchy and uploading as a complete site...rather than a page at a time.
Friday, April 07 2006 @ 10:22 AM PDT
Freeway Pro: Robust, Great Support, and Lacking - Finlay Dobbie
I'm not sure that it's designed purposefully to lock you in to Freeway per se, it's more a side-effect of how the Freeway workflow works. Your HTML doesn't exist AT ALL until you publish the site, upon which the HTML is generated from your Freeway document. This allows a much richer editing process because it's not bound by the restrictions of HTML (since it isn't).Reply to This
Wednesday, April 06 2005 @ 02:58 PM PDT