Freeway (originally UniQorn) is a

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

web design Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code an ...

application for

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

developed by the British company Softpress Systems.

UniQorn

Freeway is based on a pre-Mac OS X

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...

application called UniQorn, designed to rely on the new

QuickDraw GX QuickDraw GX was a replacement for the QuickDraw (QD) 2D graphics engine and Printing Manager inside the classic Mac OS. Its underlying drawing platform was a resolution-independent object oriented retained mode system, making it much easier for ...

, and developed by Softpress in 1995. It was designed to copy QuarkXPress. UniQorn 1.1 added support for exporting its documents to the web by producing a

Java applet Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...

, and version 1.2 made

optional. It was discontinued when

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

stopped supporting

Mac OS 8 Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It includes the largest overhaul of the classic Mac OS experience since the release of System 7, approximately six years before. It places a greater emphasis on ...

, and replaced by Freeway.

Freeway

The idea behind Freeway is to offer a tool to design websites using an interface very similar to that of

Desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...

applications like

QuarkXPress QuarkXPress is a desktop publishing software for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. It runs on macOS and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc. in 1987 and is still owned and ...

Adobe InDesign Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and page layout designing software application produced by Adobe Inc. and first released in 1999. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, ...

, without the need to dig into the HTML and JavaScript code. More advanced website features, like connecting to a database, are managed through plug-ins called ''"Actions"''. Many commonly used Actions are bundled with Freeway itself, like a suite of Actions that lets the user create a shopping cart through the Mals

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

system. Freeway produces syntactically valid

HTML code The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript ...

and

Cascading Style Sheets Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

, making it usable in situations where valid HTML code is obligatory. Versions of Freeway from 4.3 onwards also create HTML and CSS that correct many rendering problems with

Internet Explorer 6 Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is a graphical web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems. Released on August 24, 2001, it is the sixth, and by now discontinued, version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet ...

on Windows.

Freeway Express

Freeway Express appeared around the same time as version 3.5. It is a more entry level version of Freeway aimed at home users and priced accordingly compared to the ''Pro'' version. Version 6 for Freeway Expres became the

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

version of Freeway Pro.

Reception

While presenting favourably to QuarkXPress users with a familiar user experience, Freeway HTML capabilities were often compared to GoLive CyberStudio or

Dreamweaver Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool from Adobe Inc. It was created by Macromedia in 1997 and developed by them until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. Adobe Dreamweaver is available for the macOS and Windows ...

, outlining the latter had better HTML editing. - Freeway 1.0 got mice (out of 5) from

Macworld ''Macworld'' is a website dedicated to products and software of Apple Inc., published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG Inc. It started life as a print magazine in 1984 and had the largest audited circulation (both total and newsstand) of Macint ...

in February 1998, praising the ease of use despite the limited HTML capabilities, and the missing features that the competition offers. - Freeway 2.0 got mice (out of 5) from

in May 1999, citing the familiarity of use for

users and the good support for CSS and JavaScript, while outlining the lack of access to the HTML output.

MacAddict ''MacLife'' (stylized as ''Mac, Life'') is an American monthly magazine published by Future US. It focuses on the Macintosh personal computer and related products, including the iPad and iPhone. It’s sold as a print product on newsstands, and ...

in July 1999 additionally found its retail price too high. - Freeway 3.0 got 3 mice (out of 5) from

in September 2000, outlining the improvements, but still citing the lack in HTML import, the lack of external style sheet, and the non-validating generated HTML markup. For Freeway 3.5.5,

gave a 3 (out of 5) ''solid'' rating in February 2003. - Freeway 4 Pro got (out of 5) rating from

in February 2006, praising the "no HTML experience required" approach while noting the difficulty for an experienced web designer to adjust to it. - Freeway 5 Pro got 4 (out of 5) with a ''great'' rating from

MacLife ''MacLife'' (stylized as ''Mac, Life'') is an American monthly magazine published by Future US. It focuses on the Macintosh personal computer and related products, including the iPad and iPhone. It’s sold as a print product on newsstands, and a ...

in September 2008, praising its ease of use, standard compliant code and excellent documentation while being limited with HTML hand coding.

Discontinuation

On July 4, 2016, Softpress announced the end of development on Freeway and other software products via a post on the homepage stating, "The end of Softpress Systems Ltd. has come. It has become clear that our prospects, both in terms of current revenue and

new product development In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product (business), product to market, renewing an existing product or introducing a product in a new market. A central aspect of NPD is prod ...

, are insufficient to sustain the company as a viable entity going forward." At the start of 2017 the author of Freeway announced the resumption of Softpress' business without dedicated staff technical support. It currently offers five products: Freeway, Freeway Express, Chroma (for selecting color palettes), Exhibio (photo gallery creation), and Fretspace (for creating chord diagrams). Freeway no longer runs on

macOS Catalina macOS Catalina (version 10.15) is the sixteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. It is the successor to macOS Mojave and was announced at WWDC 2019 on June 3, 2019 and released to the publ ...

or later as Apple deprecated support for its 32-bits API. It is being replaced by Xway.

References

External links

Softpress Systems Homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Freeway (Software) MacOS-only software Web development software