Contacts Plug-In Update
Another beta version of the Address Book plug–in for RapidWeaver
Here is a new beta of the Contacts plug-in. This release simply corrects a problem running under 10.5 and extends the preview date. No work has been done to enhance the plug-in for use in RapidWeaver 4 or use the new API features.
'List view' will give more reliable results than 'Cards view' but please test thoroughly before using on a public site. Most of the 'display issues' still occur in Internet Explorer 6 and vary depending on the RapidWeaver theme used. Clicking on telephone numbers still gives unpredictable results in Internet Explorer.
Many of the issues with the first version still remain. Public Beta 2 will expire on 25th June 2009.
New Beta of Contacts Plug-in
Here is a new beta of the Contacts plug-in. There have been fixes since the last version, primarily with Internet Explorer display issues. It is now possible to use the plug-in in production sites depending on the options selected.
'List view' will give more reliable results than 'Cards view' but please test thoroughly before using on a public site. Most of the 'display issues' occur in Internet Explorer 6 and vary depending on the RapidWeaver theme used. They are also some CSS & Javascript problems with Safari 3 that have yet to be resolved.
Many of the issues with the last version still remain. Public Beta 2 will expire on 25th September 2007.
Contacts Plug-in
There's been (some) progress on the RapidWeaver plug-in that allows users to create a page using cards from Address Book.
I've been pretty busy working on the Church Hall conversion in my spare time so development of this plug-in has been painfully slow and I'm still far from finished but I thought I would release an early Beta for anybody that is interested in seeing progress.
Warning: this plugin is not for production use. It may look fine when previewed in RapidWeaver but things go downhill when the pages are exported and things get even worse when viewed in Internet Explorer.
Some notable omissions include (but not limited to):
- No support for mobile telephone numbers
- Incorrect handling of PNGs, Javascript and CSS in Internet Explorer
- No visual feedback of 'Large Type' telephone numbers; just click them
- Incomplete Microformat support
- Dragging multiple cards, or groups, from the list or in from Address Book results in a single card being added
- Broken pagination links in List view
- Miscalculated pagination when some contacts are disabled in the list
- The Appearance tab in Setup does nothing. Still not sure how I will handle changing the appearance (If at all).
and so it goes on… Anyway, if you haven't been put off and are still interested the download and have a look.
Web Horizontal Layout
After a gap of some time away, it's time for another horizontally scrolling site for an artist's residency.
I've just started work on a quick, small site for Jackie who needs something for her residency at Pontypridd railway station. The site just needs to provide an online diary and some brief background information. So Jackie can update the diary quickly and easily I've decided to make her a RapidWeaver template.
It's been three years since I last worked on a horizontal layout for the Digest project and obviously the memories have faded enough for me to start work on another.
I do like the way the horizontal layout forces the content to be broken up into small, neat chunks and reading large amounts of text appears easier. A reader doesn't 'loose their place' quite so many times.
There are plenty of reasons not to use a horizontal layout:
- Not many sites are designed in this way and the user could become confused or not notice the horizontal scroll bars at the bottom of the window.
- Web browser support for content to the right of the viewport is lacking. Browsers will happily scroll the page vertically to follow a fragment link but many do not alter the horizontal scroll position.
- Using CSS to position elements on the page is particularly irksome for this layout. All the content columns need a parent container with a fixed width to force the browser to extend the right side of the box past the window's edge. As the content varies from page to page, Javascript is needed to adjust the width of the page after it has loaded.
My head is telling me to stay well away from this layout but my heart is telling me to persevere and continue. I think it's too late now anyway.
Universal Binary Address Book Plug-ins
Streetmap.co.uk and Google Maps plug-ins for Address Book are now Universal Binaries.
Just a quick entry to note that I have uploaded Universal Binary versions of the two Address Book plug-ins. There are some additional small bug fixes in the Streetmap plug-in that are worth upgrading for.
The minimum requirements haven't changed: still MacOS 10.3 or later, Apple's Address Book application and an Internet connection.