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 Design
A new, easier to read, design for my personal site.
As much as I liked the last design for the site, it just didn't work anymore. The columns were too narrow: the code samples had to be edited to fit the narrow width and images had to be scaled fairly small to fit the narrow colum.
I designed and almost finished the RapidWeaver template almost year ago. Whilst adding recent posts with copious code examples, I saw that I really needed to get the new template used. I wanted the new design to be easy to read longer articles and typographically mature. I do think the site, is perhaps, not as distinctive, but is far less painful to read.
I'm using RapidWeaver 4.0 now, and have made a few small changes, partly due to new features in RapidWeaver, partly due to changes at Watershed and partly because I just haven't completed the template. Comments are back, iChat status and links are gone and so is Twitter messages.
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.
Rapidweaver 3.5
I've decided to start using the public beta of RapidWeaver 3.5 to edit the site now. I mention this in case the site goes a 'bit funny' over the next few weeks. For a public beta it appears very stable and hopefully the site will still be online tomorrow. The interface changes are a refreshing change and the layout feels much more logical, especially splitting some of the inspectors into separate panels.
I need to make some small changes to the template (apart from finishing it) to allow it to work with RapidWeaver 3.5. Rich media content is now embedded using Javascript and the functions are missing from my JS file. I thought I read that a feature of the blog in 3.5 was the ability to make 'sub pages' use the main template with the sidebar menus. Just can't seem to get that to work.
The more I use Rapidweaver, the more I like it and recommend it to anybody with a Macintosh who asks how to create and maintain a web site quickly and easily. A demo can be downloaded from RealMac Software's site.
RapidWeaver
Just thought I would say some more about this site and how it is built.
I'm using RapidWeaver, from Brighton based Realmac Software, to make this site. It's such a sweet little application. Very MacOS X. I guess it's designed for Mom & Pop but if you spend all day at work trying to force IE to do something other browsers don't appear to have a problem with then you don't want to do that in the evening as well.
I'm using one of the templates that ships with RapidWeaver at the moment. It's pleasant enough but given some time should be able to get something a little less bright in place. Site templates are nice little MacOS X bundles with all the required files inside. There is normally an XHTML page with placeholder markers, CSS & Javascript files and all the interface graphic files inside the bundle. There is a healthy market for selling themes but I don't think I will have the time.
RapidWeaver is so easy to use and new plug-ins can be built for it so instead of building a site for a client and updating it under contract, it makes much more sense to just provide the client with a theme (and possibly plug-ins) and they can update the content with their own RapidWeaver.