And this is going to be huge! I’m literally bursting to tell you about our newest theme - how completely awesome it is, how it really breaks the mold of what RapidWeaver themes are so often viewed to be, and how you can use it in so many different ways for so many different sites - seriously!

iPhone/iPod Touch/Android enabled? - check
Beautiful, exquisite design? - check
A seriously intelligent navigation system? - check
ExtraContent? - check
Custom headers? - check
Custom backgrounds? - check
Much, much, much more? - check

And some other features that are so completely amazing, you’ll wonder how one theme can do it all.

As a wise kung-fu panda once said, “There is no charge for awesomeness.”

Tags: RapidWeaver Themes, mobile web design, theme development

Whew! The story behind this update has been months in the making, every since we first thought up the idea of creating a RapidWeaver theme that could do “double duty”. Being a pioneer offering - the first RW theme to also serve up a separate iPhone version of your site - we were breaking new ground, pushing RapidWeaver (and our frustration at times) to the limit. Unity’s sacrifice was Glide’s gain, as we were able to use the experiences building Unity to make Glide the best it could be.

This major update brings Unity up to par with Glide - pushes beyond it, actually. Here’s what changed:

- Fixed a lingering bug in IE 6/7 so that the sub menu displays properly
- Rewrote the FancyZoom script so it doesn’t conflict with 3rd party plugins (obviously we can’t test all possible scenarios, so let us know if you’re still running into any problems)
- Fixed formatting issues that caused TabLoom and WP-Blog pages to not display correctly
- Fixed the CSS sprite graphic used with blog icons - no more overlap or disembodied icons
- Increased the number of page headers from 10 to 30
- There are now options to hide both the page header and the sub menu located below it
- Added a more height options for the page header
- Added a Content Width Declaration option - for use when you hide the sidebar, you can use this option for any 3rd party plugins that need a declared width to fill the entire width of the main content area
- Changed some footer design elements so Unity displays well on larger resolution displays
- Added a couple of footer text/link color options
- Switched placement of the Menu and Sidebar buttons on the iPhone version

You can download the update installer from Unity’s features page. Keep in mind, you must have a copy of Unity installed on your mac already for the installer to work. As always, make sure to backup your data first before running the installer.

Happy Weaving~!

Tags: theme development, RapidWeaver Themes, web design

It’s now been almost a year since we started developing themes for RapidWeaver. As many of you are aware, we focused on making mobile themes first, as there were no RapidWeaver themes specifically designed to be viewed on mobile devices at the time. There’s no doubt that everything is trending towards the mobile web.

Mobile web design is a different animal than your typical desktop variety. There are so many different and limiting factors that you really can’t compare the two at all, but I always thought the mobile space would remain the most challenging by far....

That was before we started working on desktop themes and had to build in compatibility for IE 6. I can now say, without pause or even the slightest bit of doubt, that developing with IE 6 compatibility in mind is a nightmare.

Take, for instance, our newest theme (which is currently out to our beta group). We were having a incredibly frustrating problem I’d never seen before. When hovering over one of the split level navigation menus, IE 6 (and 7, in this case) cut off the bottom portion of the content area. After hours of testing, applying various hacks, and googling until my eyes bled, we still hadn’t figured out what the problem was.

Next day we start afresh. Checked to see if any other coding gurus out there had come across similar problems...and just by chance stumbled across what is called the Guillotine bug. Bingo! The fix was simple, and IE 6/7 now play nice.

Tags: web design, guillotine bug, theme development