Freeway - By David Knopfler
Professional DTP for the web for the Mac  

Tailored for professional, non-webby, designers already savvy about design, but who might not want to deal with the learning curve necessary for source coded, dynamic HTML, this product offers a bridge for those not quite ready to abandon the security of QuarkXpress for the more unnerving Cyberstudio or Macromedia products. 

Works equally well with both PPC and 68400 Macs running System 7.5.1 or later

The software comes with a very well laid out comprehensive 390 page manual - as one would expect from this Oxford based, English company, together with a wodge of foreign dictionaries which make it ideal software for say designers who are designing sites with international branches - Dictionaries include Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish. I believe a further wodge can also be obtained from their website. 

The CD, which comes with a raft of free goodies, including hundreds ofgraphics, while the software is simplicity itself to install. Using it, however, may prove a little harder :( ... This is not, I think, for complete computer novices. It's page layout, I'm afraid, I don't find as intuitive as the claims made for it, though others I'm told, not already conditioned by other WYSIWYG web authoring applications, may well not agree with me. I get the same sense of wooziness when I open a Macromedia application to be fair and even QuarkXpress, which is the nearest application to it stylistically, scared me into brown trousers the first time I looked at it. 

Freeway 2.0 offers the ability to work with advanced Web design features including HTML 4.0 layers, Cascading Style Sheets, frames and more. Among it's unique selling points, it automatically generates text as anti-aliased GIF graphics on the fly and converts imported graphics to the correct Web format automatically. It also supports: 

 HTML 4.0 layout using CSS 2 positioning
 Cascading Style Sheets
 Frames with in-place editing of source pages
 Customizable Actions technology
 HTML import
 Tables
 Built-in upload using FTP or file copy.

DK Self portrait, trying out "brown trouser" mode 

It's worth noting that Freeway 2.0 relies on GX graphics (no longer supported by Apple) to work and therefor installs GXGraphics, SoftPress Type 1 Works and ColorSync to your extensions folder.

For the best reason to buy it, I'd say it feels like the kind of company where support will be both copious and polite and where, if you are already design literate and don't mind doing the tutorials and allowing a little time for learning it's dynamics, it's software might well prove rewarding. For those already web design savvy with either Cyberstudio or alternatively with one of the WYSIWYG application like VisualPage, HomePage or PageMill, I think it's uniqueness might prove a slight hindrance to exploring all it's features fully. Those who want to break the mould in the latest in javascripting SMIL and dynamic content might also not be instantly drawn to this as a first choice either but then IMHO programmers don't like anything that even hints that non-programmer types could probably get to grips with it without brown trousers, or their extremely expensive help. 

You can reach SoftPress Systems using the following contact details:

Web site
http://www.softpress.com/

Email
Support: support@softpress.com
Sales: sales@softpress.com
Inquiries: info@softpress.com

Currently competitively priced at £129 UK ($199) until 31st December when it will jump to £199 (US $299)

David Knopfler
<david@knopfler.com> 
His Mac Link web site can be found at http://www.knopfler.com/Maclinks <http://www.knopfler.com/Maclinks>