January 31, 2009
Hello folks, I’ve posted a new version of my Aerolite theme for RapidWeaver today and it has also been posted to the store now. I have to say, this theme STILL looks beautiful when implemented on a site with great content. The glossy headers were redone for the RapidWeaver version and they look hot. For those of you not familiar with (or resisting RapidWeaver), you really should consider it. Themes for RapidWeaver provide you with so much more control over the way your site looks.
For example, check out my demo site for Aerolite. I have a number of theme styles that illustrate this. My favorites are Glowstick Green, Grape Juice, and Tundra
You can also configure your own custom theme styles so if you really want a purple, red and green version of Aerolite, you can have it.
Did you notice Aerolite for RapidWeaver includes white glossy headers and footers??? Look again…
It also includes options to have a silver gradient nav bar, a dark charcoal gradient nav bar OR, a solid color of your choice for the nav bar background.
You would not believe what I had to go through to create the HTML and CSS to make all that happen :-/ This theme is highly complex – mostly because I can’t stand not being able to have something the way I want it. The options code is crazy, but somehow I got everything working as I wanted it. It’ll make you one happy Aerolite camper.
This release has been tested successfully in all modern browsers including Safari, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Flock and IE7 and IE8 Beta 2. It has some issues in IE6 yet however. I am debating how to resolve these because it’s looking like I may have to restrict a number of options to get things working fully for IE6. For example, you might want your header center aligned, but I may only be able to support left aligned headers for IE6. It’s situations like that. If you want more detail as to why that’s the case, ask in a comment and I’ll elaborate. It has to do with the way RapidWeaver reads in the CSS files. The browser specific “fix” CSS is always last and sometimes overwrites your option CSS specified before it. Get’s a bit techy but you guys are smart.
FYI if you are not aware of this, the IE6 Death March is nearly at the cemetery… If you aren’t doing this already, install a stat counter script like StatCounter and find out just how many IE6 users really visit your site.
About This Article
This entry was posted by Suzanne on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 2:31 PM and was filed in the Announcements category using the tags: aerolite, RapidWeaver, released, theme. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Suzanne,
You need to change http://www.shepartstudio.com from Aerolite theme for iWeb live examples to Aerolite theme for Rapidweaver.
I am really excited about this theme. I love the flexibility!!
Kari I was trying to hit your site earlier. I’m getting the can’t connect to server error??? Just tried it again with your link and same thing. Is it me?
Live Examples – I’m going to redo the way I do live examples here with my new site (coming soon) and I’ll get everyone re-linked then.
I was having issues with the site earlier today, but I thought they were all cleared up. Try it again and let me know. I may need to contact the host again.
Thanks!
Yep good to go now! Looks awesome!
I LOVE that glowing green style. I need to dream up a reason to create a RW site using that.
Have you considered using the Flash slideshow option for your photo pages? That might be a nice option for those photographs Architectural Rendering area.
I have been looking at different ways to work with the architectural portfolio. I will check out the Flash slideshow option.
I would love to make the jump but I’m not sold on some of the picture galleries in Rapidweaver, kari’s smugmug plug in looks good but then you’re playing with 2 programs. Is there a list of rapidweaver photo page add ons?
Hum… I’m not the pro there. You might want to ask this at the RW forums. It may be possible to integrate the standard RW photo page with Lightbox. If that’s possible, I can create a custom version of Aerolite for you that includes that – OR I’ll just insert it in the theme but you gotta do the homework there cuz I’m juggling too much at the moment to take do it myself. Find out what’s possible and I’ll help you do it. Perhaps Kari has a vested interest in that solution too. I like collaboration ;)
I will look around a little to see what I come up with. I really like the threaded comments, I’ve had you on my igoogle page for over a year and a half now but it doesn’t seem to update enough for my liking. It’s nice getting a response quickly that pertains to my questions!
Thank you again!
Suzanne, I know you’re busy, I wasn’t sure if you got my email from earlier today?
I see it yes. I attend to mail in chunks. Otherwise it can severely disrupt your ability to get anything done.
Ryan, the smugmug is not a plug-in. I am just linking to my smugmug site. I used the Aerolite design elements to make my smugmug header. (Don’t ask me how right now…. it took a while to get it right and I don’t remember what all I had to do.)
As you may have surmised from my comments, I am not fully set on what I have right now. As I work more with it, I hope to come up with a better solution.
Thank you, I have a little time in the next week to play around… so I’ll see what I come up with. I’d like to find something that’s drag and drop and looks great… basically my cake and eat it too for the price of an ice cream! :)
How do you guys like these threaded comments by the way?
I like the threaded comments. Makes it easier to follow a discussion.
Congratulations! Aerolite looks great. Might have to get me a copy! Is Lightside far behind in terms of a final release?
On a completely different note, Is there any way we can embed this type of threaded commenting with RW? I specifically use RapidBlog (which connects to Blogger) when I want commenting. But I’d be interesting in learning how to do this threaded discussion with either the regular RW blog pages or RapidBlog.
Hey Mathew… great to hear from you again. Yes Lightside is actually really close. It is not as complex as Aerolite because there’s no fixed height header to battle with on that one.
Regarding threaded comments in RB… no idea there. That’s one to pose to the developer of that plug-in. I can’t imagine it’s all that hard. For WordPress, they just spit out the comments in UL format with the threads as nested UL’s and a class of children. The RB guy would just have to do the same I think.
I’m going to make WordPress versions of my themes so if you’re really wanting to go big time, switch to using WP. In your line of work I would think you’d love the features. I’m getting pretty good with writing the PHP now. Will post some of my solutions at this site in coming days.
Hey Suz:
I’ve got the Aerolite RW pre-release but I’m having some trouble upgrading it to your final release. When I try to purchase it, your store recognizes that I’ve already bought it and when I go to the Aerolite RW page and click on the download pkg, I get a bad link.
I’d enjoy getting upgraded to the final release cause it’s a skookum theme and I’m building a site that could use it as we speak.
Jamie
Jamie clear your cache. The link is good, you probably are looking at an old cached version of the page.
BTW, really appreciated your heads-up on IE6. It’s been driving me bonkers trying to make sites compliant. No idea that it was 7 years old.
I downloaded and installed IE7, wishfully thinking that it might be better…
Yeah I am so done with IE6. It prevents you from doing a lot of stuff. For RapidWeaver, this is partly why those themes have remained relatively basic all this time – IE6 doesn’t allow you to do anything creative. Therefore I may not even support it. If I can get it to produce a simpler version of the theme (meaning you lose some options to make it work for that browser) then I will. But if it costs the best parts of the theme simply to appease that browser, sorry, no way. Time to die IE.