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The Div-a-Tron!

Action guru Paul Dunning has recently published a standards-centric Action called the Div-a-Tron. What this Action does is allow the user to nest layered items—‘divs’—set margins, paddings, even borders to HTML items and more. And when combined with a couple of actions by the legendary Tim Plumb it lets us make use of CSS positioning easily. [Yeah, so?]

Using CSS layout rather than the normal, more straight-forward DTP style of layout that you’re used to, means that you can actually create sites in Freeway that will validate against W3C specs and regulations. This isn’t something everyone wants or needs, I know; but some do. And for those that do, the Div-a-Tron/Remove Paragraph Tags-combo means that they can keep on using Freeway for much of their production—and yet produce standards compliant sites. It is a big step forward in terms of Freeway’s professional abilities.

This site is a living example of that fact; the two actions have been used (along with some others of course), to produce a design built according to W3C standards. It uses HTML 4 and a mix of nested and free-standing items, as well as a mix of positioning types. All the styles —text styles, borders, backgrounds etc— have been moved from the HTML-file to an external stylesheet.

So, what does the Div-a-Tron actually do? First, let’s look at a screenshot of the Action palette. (It will open in a new window, and it’s a good idea to keep both windows side by side, if you have the space, for easy reference.)

One of the key features of this Action is the Height Auto checkbox. Checking the box will let you use layer HTML boxes and get the functionality of non-layer HTML boxes: resizing text in the browser will make any box placed beneath a box with height auto to shift downwards with the box above it. No more overlapping boxes!

Other cool features include the float property as well as margin and padding for HTML boxes. What the Action does is allow you to use the DTP-style interface of Freeway to work with CSS features that previously required hand coding through an external editor (or a myriad of markup items). The Div-a-Tron makes it less time consuming and much more user friendly to build complex, standards compliant sites. What it doesn’t do is make the construction WYSIWYG in the application. For that to happen, the Action’s features would have to be built into the application core. Perhaps it will be so one day, who knows? <hint>

Quick links:
» The Div-a-Tron action file
» Remove Paragraph Items @ freewayactions.com