Back to Contents

Opening one of Freeway's automatic backup documents.

Starting a new site

When you start a Web site in Freeway, you can either plan the layout, structure and content before you start, or develop these aspects as you work - you'll probably find that good planning lets you work faster and more effectively.

At the very least, it's a good idea to have some basic information before you start, though, such as the width of screen you want to work within, and an idea of what the main sections of the site will be.

The most important thing to appreciate before you start a site in Freeway is how the process works, especially if you have tried other Web publishing software before. If you haven't already done so, be sure to read the previous chapter How to Work in Freeway, which will ensure that you understand the overall process of producing sites in Freeway.

Creating a new site

To create a new Web site, you first create a new Freeway document. This document will contain the material which will be used to generate your site. You may define as many pages as you like in the document, which each correspond to an HTML Web page which will be created when you export or "build" the site. On the pages you can create items which may contain text, graphics, multimedia content, or which are exported as colored graphics or rules.

You can also define Master Pages which are used to define the basic appearance of the pages in your document. Any items which appear on all the pages in a particular section can be created on a specific master page, which is then applied to one or more of your document pages. The items from the master page are copied to each document page where they may be further edited if required.

Within a document, you may also define folders and sub folders, to organize the physical structure of your site hierarchically, if you require this. To create a new site, you use the New command on the File menu, which brings up the Document Setup dialog. This allows you to specify the basic settings for the new site.

Document setup

Using the Document Setup dialog box, you can specify parameters for the Web site including the basic page format for your site.

Displaying the Document Setup dialog box

You can specify the site setup when you first open a new document (choose File/New) or change the setup of the current document (by choosing File/Document Setup). Both these methods display the Document Setup dialog box.

The following section tell you how to use the Document Setup dialog box to specify your site.

Selecting page size

In the Page cluster at the top of the dialogue box, the Screen size popup menu offers a selection of common computer monitor screen sizes. Select a size from here if you want to work with Web pages which will fit into a computer screen (your readers will not have to scroll to view all of the page). You can use the Width and Height text boxes to specify other page sizes. Freeway works in point sizes which equate to pixels.

Setting margins

Enter the margin values for your page in the Top, Bottom, Left and Right text boxes. Tab to move between boxes.

Site requirements

The Site cluster allows you to specify whether you want to use DOS file names. Click the check box on, if you do. You would use DOS file names if you plan to place your Web pages on a DOS or some UNIX servers.

Here is an example of a filename

and the equivalent DOS filename using the DOS file names option in Freeway.

Finally, you need to specify the Site Folder. This is the folder in which Freeway will place the Web page files generated from your Freeway document. Click on the Site Folder button to display a dialog box which allows you to either create and name a new folder or locate and select an existing folder. When you have the folder listed in the button labelled Destination Folder, click that same button. This specifies the folder.

Click OK to confirm your settings. Freeway displays the first page of the new document.

Setting up Master pages

You will probably want to use master pages in your site design to ensure consistency across the pages on your site. In sites with a few pages, one master page will be used through the site. In more complex sites, your will want to use different master pages for the different sections of your site.

Controlling your site set up

Viewing your site using the Site palette

The Site palette displays the folders, pages, master pages and the structure of your site. Display the palette by choosing Site from the View menu.

The palette is interactive so you can use it to add, delete and rearrange pages and folders.

Adding folders to the site

You may want to add folders to your site to help organize the files:

1. Choose Page/New Folder... or click on the triangle on the Site palette and choose New Folder....

2. Enter the name of the folder in the dialog box and then click OK.

A new folder is added to the document and shown in the Site palette. You can move the folder and add existing pages to it by dragging icons in the Site palette.

Saving your document

After you have created your document, you need to save it. To save a file which has not been saved before, choose Save from the File menu. Freeway will display the Save As dialog box, which you can use to specify where you wish to save the document.

Choose a location, then type a file name for your Freeway document. You should make the document file name simple and informative, so that you will be able to identify it easily in the future. It does not matter what name you give the document file, as this file remains on your system and is not uploaded to the Web. Macintosh file names may be up to 31 characters long.

You may wish to keep both the Freeway document and the destination folder together in a folder, for ease of administration.

You can use the New Folder button to create a new folder in the location shown at the top of the dialog box.

When you have made some changes to the file, and wish these to be preserved, use the Save command again. When you do a Save in a document which has already been saved, Freeway updates that file with the new information and does not ask you to specify the file name again.

Note that Freeway does not do incremental or 'mini' saves like some other applications do - this means that in Freeway the entire document is re-written as a file on disk every time you do a save, and this may take a few seconds with documents which have many pages contained within them - however, the files created are always the optimum size. (Applications which do mini saves tend to store documents which are much larger and more complex than they need to be, although the save operation itself is slightly faster.)

Saving a document with a new name.

Occasionally you may find you need to create a copy of the file with a different name - to do this, you may either duplicate the file in the Finder, or use the Save As command in Freeway.

If you use the Save As command, the document that is open in memory will be saved to disk with the new name you specify. Any currently unsaved changes are not written down to the original file on disk, which stays preserved the way it was when you last used the Save command, but will be contained in the new file you create with the Save As command.

Automatic Backups

The importance of backups

An important fact of life is that any computer file may become damaged at any time - always unpredictably and usually at the worst possible time. Damaged files may not behave normally in use, or may fail to open at all. This is true of any complex document file created by modern applications, not just Freeway files. It's important to have a general backup strategy in place if the work you create on your computer is an important part of your or your employer's business, so that you can recover a version of any important file in the event of mishap. For example, what would happen if your computer was stolen? If the hard disk failed? If a document you needed for an imminent deadline for some reason couldn't be opened suddenly? If the answer to any of these questions is 'Don't know', then you may be risking serious consequences. You should aim to be in a position in which if something happens, you can put your hands on a recent copy of the files in question, so that the amount of work that is lost through unforeseen events is kept to a minimum.

Backups in Freeway

This means that when you finish working with a file, save and close it, you also have a copy of the file as it was before you edited it this time. If through some obscure chance, the main document file cannot be opened, you should still be able to open the backup file and recover your work up to that earlier stage.

You have one generation of backup through Freeway's automatic backup facility. This means that when you open up the main document file and save it next time you begin working on it, the old backup file is overwritten.

Opening one of Freeway's automatic backup documents.

Freeway does not list backup documents in the File/Open dialog by default. This is because you should never need to open the backup, unless the original document is damaged for some reason. If you do need to open the backup document, you can do one of the following:

• double-click on the icon of the backup document in the Finder, which will cause the backup file to open in Freeway
• hold down the Option key as you choose Open from the File menu within Freeway, which will cause the backup files to be listed in the File/Open dialog.

Back to the top
Introduction | Getting Started | User Guide | Contacting SoftPress