Unfortunately Firefox 3.6 on the Mac shipped with a bug that prevents Freeway users from previewing their pages using the browser. It appears the issue is related to file paths that contain spaces so, for example, if the path to the page you are designing in Freeway has a space in it then Firefox will silently ignore the request.

To allow Freeway users to keep using the browser from with the application I've created a very simple AppleScript droplet that patches the file path and opens the requested file for you. Simple!

Simply download the droplet, and in Freeway set it as a preview application (File/ Preview in Browser/ Browser Setup...). Now when you want to preview in Firefox simply select the Firefox 3.6 Preview droplet and your page should appear in Firefox as expected.

(Apologies to Jon Hicks for crimes against his great Firefox icon).

The guys over at Mac Bundle Box have put together another amazing bundle offer that includes twelve applications for your Mac including Softpress' very own Freeway Express.

Express offers most of the core functionality of it's older brother, Freeway Pro, allowing you to get your sites online quickly and with the minimum of fuss. You can choose from any of the supplied templates or just get started creating the exact web site of your dreams. No coding, no browser issues, just results.

The application also supports encoded actions including many on this site allowing you to extent the application's feature set without having to resort to adding markup code.

For anyone considering creating a web site on their Mac Freeway Express, and specifically the Mac Bundle Box deal is a great offer and shouldn't be missed. The fact that you also get eleven other great applications in the deal is, for me, the cherry on the cake.

Getting your hands on twelve great Mac applications worth $458.59 for just $49 can't be missed.

Mac Bundle Box - available for a limited time.

NetRenderer has long been an essential tool for any web designer to instantly check their web sites against Internet Explorer 5.5, 6, 7 and now 8.

While testing a bunch of pages this afternoon we needed to test each of the pages over all of the browser versions and rather than keep switching the version number each time I decided to create a simple test page that uses iframes to load each of the rendered pages all in one hit.

Give NetRenderer overdrive a go.

Type the URL into the Site URL field and click the Render! button. It all runs a very simple block of JavaScript (take a look at the page source) so feel free to download the page and use it locally.

You'll also find a set of bookmarklets for NetRenderer that we created so you can quickly render whatever page you are looking at using NetRenderer. Cool! Simply drag each to your browser's bookmarks bar and click on them when you need them.

And remember... if you love NetRenderer as much as we do then be sure to tip them a few dollars.

Announcing the instant availability of version 2.0.0 of the ever popular PHP Feedback Form action.

The easiest way to create powerful, secure and flexible feedback forms for Freeway. You design it - the action will send it!

New in version 2.0.0;

• Uses the more popular $ _SERVER format This allows the PHP code to run seamlessly on numerous PHP5 servers straight out of the box and without manual modification.
• Option to set php_ini (required by some ISPs) Some ISPs (FastHosts for example) require that the php-ini file be set by the PHP script.
• Option to set a comment spam trap Automatically add a text field into your feedback form that users won't see but automated spam scripts will. When these scripts fill in the field with their spam the action's PHP code appears to process the request but simply ignores it.
• Option to track the sender’s IP address Add the user's IP address to the email body. Handy for tracking visits and spam abuse.

PHP feedback Form 2.0.0 requires a server that runs PHP version 4.1.0 or higher

Although protecting your online images with tools like the Image Guardian action is a great first step it is also worth copyright owners keeping track of how their images are being used online.

TinEye from Idée Inc is a search engine with a difference. Either upload an original or give it the URL of an image online and it will trawl through it's archives looking for images that match. In my tests the results looked very promising and it even returned images that were clearly derived from the original.

Although the image database is currently quite small (compared to the total number of images online) the service is still in beta and you can always request their spider crawl a site to add more content.

Today is the day that we show our love for Freeway and what better way to express ourselves than to apply the Flurry action to our pages.

Go on, pour your heart out!

Google has stopped issuing API keys for it's SOAP search tool which the DPS Google Search action relies on. Although you won't be able to request any more keys if you already have one (or a bunch) then you will still be able to use this in the action to enable your site searches.

Now it appears that Google stopped issuing these back in 2006 - just before I went into my coma it appears! The latest news as it breaks only here at FreewayActions.com!

After a long time of holding on to the old StuffIt file archives for action downloads we've finally updated them to standard OS X zip archives. StuffIt was great for dealing with both OS 9 and OS X archives but now that almost all of our visitors are purely OS X users we felt it was time to finally switch.

Now when you download an action using Safari, for example, you will never actually see the zip file as it gets automatically extracted on completion. A much cleaner experience than having to deal with StuffIt.

We've also taken this opportunity to encode all of the actions for Freeway Express. Typically you can expect an action to now work with Freeway Pro versions 3, 4 or 5 and Freeway Express 4 and 5 unless otherwise stated.

Enjoy!

The Remote Resources action has been given a minor update to version 2.02 following reports of problems with Freeway 5.

The action now works when applied to a folder that isn't in the root level of the site. It also works around what I think is a bug in Freeway where a closing html tag could go missing.

The action works with Freeway Pro or Express versions 4 and 5.

Download the action and, as ever, let us know if you have any questions or comments.

I am very pleased to announce the availability of version 1.5 of the Mal's E-commerce actions for Freeway. This free upgrade for all registered users fixes issues users were having using the hash encoding routines in combination with multi-price select lists.

Previously these were failing to validate in the shopping cart. Although the action has been totally rewritten and the output code has been updated the action interface remains the same. This means that once the new action is installed any exiting settings will automatically be picked up and used. The remaining actions in the suite remain unchanged.

An update e-mail to all registered users will be going out this week so get in touch if you haven't heard from us by then (although do check your spam folder as our e-mails often end up in there for some reason!). :-)