Freeway or RapidWeaver?

[Artful Dodger]

Hi, just looking around at some easy (not mind bending, skull splitting) ways to build a website other than using iWeb and I found one called Freeway. I just started to play with RapidWeaver (the demo) and while I like it so far has anyone used Freeway? Are there some things that make it nicer or better than the other? I found a good amount of artists using Freeway for their own sites and liked what I saw
I went through the Freeway site and it has some nice sites that others have built from simple to what "looks" complex. I'm always open to choice and if anyone has links to work or sites that they did using either please share and just state which one you used or prefer.

 

[20rogersc]

I've got Freeway, but only because I got it free with a magazine subscription!

Personally I think it's a lot more versatile than RapidWeaver, as it doesn't limit you to the themes.

::20ROGERSC::

 

[johnniewalker]

I recently moved to a Mac and spent ages looking for a WYSIWYG web builder that I liked.

I tried iweb, sandvox, freeway, and rapidweaver (and a couple more which I've now forgotten the name of!)

When I first tried RW I took an instant dislike to the 'theme' idea, I had been using other WYSIWYG software on a PC before which gave me a blank page to start with and I had total freedom so I felt too restricted.

However, once I'd discovered some of the themes and plugins available I gave it a second chance and now I love it

I found this site which was very helpful: http://www.squidoo.com/rapidweaver/

And don't forget that themes can be edited anyway and some themes such as this one: http://www.rapid-ideas.com/themes/pro/diamond.html

make it very simple to gain virtually total control of the look of your site.

There are some video tutorials available from screencasts online which really help explain how easy RW is to use and shows how excellent sites are built very quickly.

My most recent purchase is a plugin from www.yourhead.com called 'blocks 2', it makes page layout very easy and can now incorporate other pages into one (similar to the sandvox pagelets idea)

hope this helps

 

[johnniewalker]

oh I've just seen this link to example sites using the 'diamond' theme mentioned
above

http://www.rapid-ideas.com/themes/showcase/diamond.html

I think there are some excellent looking sites there

 

[redAPPLE]

i am trying to help out a friend who has a sight disability. he wanted me to help him create a webpage for people with disabilities. is freeway or rapidweaver mature enough for stuff like this?

the better question would be, which software should be best used to create pages for "others".

i hope i am not hijacking this thread...

 

[RacerX]

I use Stone Design's Create over Freeway mainly because Create added a ton of abilities that Freeway doesn't... like illustration and page layout.

You can also get the full Stone Studio suite of apps (Create, GIFfun, PStill, Slice&Dice, PhotoToWeb, PackUpAndGo and TimeEqualsMoney) that helps with a ton of site development tasks (Create by itself is about $150, where as Stone Studio is about $300).

Compared with Freeway Express (about $90) and Freeway Pro (about $250), Create measures up quite nicely... specially for me as it also replaced Illustrator and InDesign on my systems.

Plus Create is Cocoa, which means it not only uses services from both the system and other apps, it provides services to other apps (Create can convert Rich Text to HTML and text to image via the service menu in other Cocoa apps).

Stone Design has also had a very long history of working closely with both NeXT and Apple. Stone Design created the first third party application for NEXTSTEP, the first third party app for Rhapsody and the first third party app for Mac OS X. They work very closely with Apple and are given early access to new Apple technologies within Mac OS X.

Plus you get free upgrades for life. I bought Create 10.x back in 2002 and haven't paid for an upgrade ever since (so Create 11.x and 12.x have been free for me, and getting a Universal version is also free). Moving from Freeway Express 3.5 to Freeway Express 4 cost about $60, and moving from Freeway Pro 3.5 to Freeway Pro 4 cost about $100. Those upgrades are mandatory for getting Universal versions as Softpress has stated:

"Freeway 3.x and Freeway 3.5.x will not run on Intel Macs. If you plan on buying an Intel Mac, you must plan on upgrading to Freeway 4.2.2."​

It is that type of upgrade costs that really end up getting you in the end.

 

[MRU]

Hiya matey how you keeping I use freeway and like it a lot, though i prefered the pre universal binary version of Freeway 4 as latest version has some issues dragging layers from photoshop straight over to it.

Do i think its worth the money, certainly. You should get a student discount.


They are meant to be working an an update that will add better HTML editing into freeway, somthing not really in freeway at the moment.