September 6, 2007
Okay people, I have found a way to make alternate layouts a bit easier to create. It’s still not the wiz-bang solution we used to have. I still have to do a lot of tinkering, but it’s better than nothing. The only problem is, it doesn’t work at all for the blog or podcast pages. In fact, it causes a lot of problems.
What does this mean? Well it means I can do something like this:
But when it comes to the blog and podcast pages, it would take me so much time and effort to place each object on the page, one by one and troubleshoot its settings until it works. Each object has unique IDs, an associated paragraph style, layout style and graphic style all that have to be created and aligned to the object. None of this data can use the IDs already in use somewhere in the approximately 18,000 lines of code.
:-O
It would be very easy for me to knock out themes left and right if it weren’t for the blog and podcast pages. Complex themes like the one in the picture could be created fairly easily. But if I do blog and podcast pages, I have to limit the items on the page to just a few, primarily the background images for the header, navigation menu and footer because it’s just too difficult to insert items manually.
So here’s my question… would you be interested in a theme that does NOT have blog or podcast pages? Please comment with your thoughts on this.
About This Article
This entry was posted by Suzanne on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 2:10 PM and was filed in the FYI category using the tags: layout, theme. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Foshay Aqua Light Pages for iWeb 2.0 Released
Can I change the background color or image of the Aerolite theme?
First off, this theme is GORGEOUS and I’d buy it in a heartbeat. No…podcast or blog pages aren’t necessary. Also, is it possible to populate the tabs with words?
BTW, this comment box didn’t appear in Firefox so I launched Safari and logged in from it and it appeared.
NOTE: Just posted the comment above in Safari and then refreshed this page in Firefox and lo-and-behold the box appeared.
Cue ‘The Twilight Zone’ theme music…
Suz,
Personally, I can live without the podcast page, but I do use blog pages. Is there a happy medium – can you create a blog or podcast page that uses the same colors and looks similar enough to ‘pass’ even thought it’s not -exactly- the same? Perhaps that might work for some themes.
Just my 2 cents.
Ron
BTW, this theme rocks! (as usual!!!!!)
Hey Steve, glad to see you pop in the mix. Thanks for the feedback and the FYI about Firefox. That’s no good. I’ll have to look into that :-O
The tab thing… yes you could type your own words and link them on there. The way I have them in there right now, you’d have to manually manage them but yes, you can.
OMG – this theme better be for sale soon!!!
I don’t mind there not being a blog or podcast page. Really, I could just select a different theme style for that particular page. Or if you do decide to make a blog or podcast page – have it incorporate the same colors so that it looks like it all ties in somehow. Or for the geeky folk, you can include all the images for those pages so they can be inserted by the user if they wanted to. Just a thought.
You are AWESOME!! Go Suzanne!!!!
Hola Ron – yes, I could also create the theme with a blog and no podcast. It’s less of a pain to do one, but still that blog page could take a week to create all by itself… and those are seven days of “Suzanne time” which means about 14-16 hours a day.
Thank you for your comments on my work :)
Oh Reina! You bring up an excellent point. One thing I CAN do easily is style the text and hyperlinks and nav bar for you. That’s easy. But getting the stuff on the page is hard.
HOWEVER!!! Yes, all you need to do is copy and paste the items on to the page yourself. Since the main blog page and the archive page never change, you do it once and you’re done. For the blog entry, all you’d have to do is create the first entry and the duplicate it from then on. Blamo! You have the real deal.
THAT WOULD WORK! :D
This theme you’re viewing by the way, was a test theme I was using to find a better “custom layout” process. I succeeded obviously, but fell short on those two pages. It’s complete for all intents and purposes so you might see it show up in the store soon under this “revised” approach. Maybe I will use this theme as market research to see how well people will tolerate that inconvenience.
I think we’re either going to have to live with that limitation, but have more themes to choose from, or have less-interesting themes that are fully prepared. More to antipcate for iWeb 3 ey?
Hi Suzanne :)
First of, you could just do the blog and or the podcast pages with the same bg colors images and skip the “extra” imagery, since i think people in general who use iweb have some knowledge of the basic cut and paste functions.
So you should only do whats easy for those pages :)
I for one like to customize the designs even further to fit my needs, so theme switching is pretty out the window for me anyways :)
Keep up the good work but don’t work TO hard! OK?!
Btw, i still haven’t found a completely working solution for the iframe content resize script…:(
There are several out there, but most of them are only working in IE on the PC. The one i have had the most success with is the SSI script i first told you about.
The problem with it is, that it isn’t resizing correctly, so i have to go in to iweb and hit the apply button for the frame, and re-publish…then it looks ok, till i put in a post that requires resizing again, and i have to do the iweb thing all over again…
But im looking for solutions! :)
hmm….my post “dissapeared”…
I don’t think it was submitted Jimmy. I haven’t gotten an email indicating one was posted. There is a “preview” function on this form that you could have triggered somehow. I have the button hidden, but it’s possible that showed up on the page rather than the actual post. Use your back button to see if you can recover the comment.
Nope…couldn’t retrieve it…
Well what i meant to post was:
First of GREAT job with all the themes Suzanne :) You make me want to create tons of sites, which i normally don’t like to much!
Make sure you take time “off” for yourself so you don’t wear yourself out! OK?!
Secondly i think you should keep the blog / podcast pages as simple as you can, just make it “blend” in with the theme in general, color wize and bg image wize, if thats not to hard offcourse!
I think most of the people with basic knowledge on how to use a computer, and most definete those who uses iweb, know how to cut and paste and such, so there shouldn’t be any problems with those pages.
I for one customizes the themes to fit my needs, so the whole theme swapping is pretty much out the window for me anyways :)
Cheers :)
Oh and about the iframe resize script…
I haven’t had any luck on gettin one that works completely yet!
There are lots of them out there, but most of them is designed to work wit IE for the PC…
So the one i’m using right now is the one i first talked about…It “semi” works, it resizes partially, but cuts the page off, so i have to work around that by opening iweb and hit the iframe apply button for it to get the correct size…and then re-publish!
But i will keep searching for a solution….
Suz!
First, this theme is beautiful! Second, I have NEVER used the blog or podcast pages in iWeb. Ever. I’ve always found them to be clunky and load-heavy. I use WordPress (on your recommendation!). So it wouldn’t bother me AT ALL to purchase a theme with no blog or podcast pages.
My 2 cents..
Deane