Softpress KnowledgeBase

Opening your Freeway 4 files in the latest version of Freeway should be trouble free. We do however recommend looking through your sites and make sure that everything is working as expected.

Below are a couple of issues that should be checked:

Even though Freeway will automatically save a backup we still recommend you make a backup of your Freeway 4 file before starting this work. This way you will have the original to go back to is anything untoward happens.

1. Freeway outputs links in a slightly differently way to older versions (particularly Freeway 3.5), which fixes a bug that caused links' underlines not to be a different color to the link itself.

Check your links in Freeways Preview to make sure that they look as expected. If you find they don't then the easiest way to fix the problem is to remove the link and re-apply it.

If the problem persists then you may need to remove both the styling and the link and then reapply them again in that order.

Go here for more information on creating custom links in freeway 5

2. Some items in your site may become overflowed. This could be caused by the improved CSS rendering in Freeway which may increase the size or spacing of your items. Don't worry, it's easy to fix up. Simply nudge your items down the page so they are no longer overlapping, once you do this the X that appears in the items will disappear revealing your content again.

Opening your Freeway 3 files in Freeway 5 sounds like a daunting task, but in fact it's quite a simple process. You can make the move much simpler by doing some groundwork in Freeway 3 before making the move.

Even though Freeway will automatically save a backup we still recommend you make a backup of your Freeway 3 file before starting this work. This way you will have the original to go back to is anything untoward happens.

Freeway 5 assumes that your file was saved in one of the last versions of Freeway 3. We recommend that you download the Freeway 3.5.15 update and use that to update your site. Open the file in Freeway 3.5.15, publish and save. Check your published site to ensure that it works. Once you are happy that all is well, you can proceed to the next step.

Freeway 5 is a very different beast to Freeway 3. Much has changed internally, and no more so than the way in which styles are handled. You may find that some problems that have been encountered with the transition from 3 to 5 have been to do with styles. Get your styles straightened out, and Freeway 5 will give you a much smoother ride.

Make a BodyStyle. Go to Edit>Styles and locate the style that forms the majority of the body text on your site. Duplicate the style.

Give the duplicate style a sensible name - eg "BodyText". If it is not a paragraph style, click on the Paragraph check box. This will be the foundation of all body text in the site. Paragraph styles are your friend. Apply them to every single block of HTML text you can find (remembering to keep a copy of the text on the pasteboard so you can match up bold/italic and restore any links that will be lost)

Next, create styles for Bold, Italic, Headings and so forth. These are plain character styles. Apply these to the text as you go through the site. Restore any lost links in the text, using the copies you kept on the pasteboard.

Headings can be  paragraph styles (depending on their placement on the site). Remember that paragraph styles will affect whole paragraphs, so if your headings are separated by a soft return (opt+return), go through your site and replace them with a hard return (just return). Use View>:Invisibles to help you. In Freeway 4, you can convert headings to the H1, H2 styles easily.

When you are happy that the refurbished site look as good as the original,  delete all the backup text on pasteboards as they are no longer needed.

Delete all stray styles and save and close.

If you have any third party Actions, ensure you have the Freeway 5 versions installed before proceeding. There are differences between Freeway 3 and Freeway 5 Actions, and using the wrong kind can cause problems.

Open the file in Freeway 5. Convert the header styles into h1, h2, h3 , etc.. You can use the Edit>Style dialogue to do this.

You may have a number of Actions in your Freeway 5 document that are no longer needed or not present in the Freeway 5 Actions folder. Going to Edit>Actions will help you switch unwanted Action off. Any that are in the Document Actions section will need to either have their Freeway 5 versions installed, or their check-box switched off. A number of Freeway 3 Actions duplicate functionality offered by Freeway 5, and are unnecessary.

Publish and check the site again.

The result should be a much sleeker site. Not only will it just validate, but you also get much better CSS and HTML.

To summarise: look at your Freeway 3 file carefully and redo styles if necessary. Check your Actions usage and prune out any that won't be necessary.

If you are at all concerned about moving your files from Freeway 3 to Freeway 5 and you have not yet upgraded, then please try the demo of Freeway 5 before proceeding.