5 Principles For Freeway Users

Creating a website is getting a lot easier these days. With third party programs, now being both affordable and attractive, we've seen the dawn of many people who never thought they'd be a designer and have now entered the age of digital freedom. People are now able to create attractive and professional print and web pieces with the greatest of ease. Paid designers are now being undone as they see their business not being able to output the quality that these programs now have to offer.

When it comes to strictly the web design part of today's digital age, it doesn't get any easier than software such as Freeway from Softpress.com. For this specific post I am going to be talking directly to Freeway users (both Pro and Express) who have taken their business into their own hands. I'd like to point out 5 essential principles that all new and old Freeway users need to know.

1. Don't Use All The Fancy Features Unless It's Necessary - One of my biggest pet peeves is finding people who have tons and tons of JavaScript coding all over their pages just because they can. Whether it is having a site unload for 20 seconds in a shingle format full of odd contraptions and delayed text modules. Understand the features before you use them and make sure that it fits a purpose.

2. Don't Underestimate The Dark Side Of Internet Explorer - For the past two days this site has failed to show up in both IE6/IE7 and even thought FW5 has IE6/IE7 compatibility it won't always fix the situation. If you ever loaded up that "ie6.css" file you'd see it's mostly fixing height issues along with an image loader for handling PNG transparency.

3. Understand both a CSS layout and a Table Based Layout - Understanding the program is the first step to mastering it. Whether you're trying to build a CSS layout or using tables, understand how to complete a project both ways because someday you'll run into someone who wants something the only way they understand.

4. Expect Delays In CSS - For years people have been complaining about the lack of a full CSS suite from Freeway 3.5-5.1.3. You'll see that not every option is available and the entire user base have begged for a resemblance to that of CSSEdit (from MacRabbit.com.) Makes sense to me and I feel this would be a huge step forward in the design process if everyone had options at their fingertips all under one category and all in one place.

5. You Can't Do Everything - Not to burst your bubble for number five, but there is just certain things you can't do. Day after day I run through new user messages and see people asking if Freeway has a built-in content management system or how to create a MySpace page. It can't do everything, but it can get you started and that's important for someone who doesn't understand always how it works right off-the-bat.

These are just 5 essential principles that can be used on any projects you're working on, but remember there is at least an infinite amount of great things that can be done properly.

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Glad to see people are still downloading the blogger tutorial and stay tuned for more updates.