Flood 2.0 released

Today I'm releasing Flood 2.0. Cosmetically not a lot changes in this version. The update was mainly put together to address a couple of niggling issues and build in support for some new features, which existing users had contacted and asked me about. As ever, this update is completely free for existing users to obtain, and you can grab the latest update using your download link or requesting a new link.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, passes away aged 56

Sad news this morning that Steve Jobs, who stepped down from position of CEO in August has died at the age of 56. Without question, Steve has inspired millions and had a significant influence on 21st century technology. Steve was always pushing the limits of design and technology. He set ambitious standards for the competition to equal and certainly a world without Apple would be a more subdued place. BBC News writeup: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15193922

MacRabbit releases Espresso 2.0

Following quick behind the launch of Analog this week, MacRabbit has released Espresso 2.0. This version of Espresso merges the previous Apple award-winning CSSEdit with Espresso 1.0, and introduces a swath of new features. Previously I really liked CSSEdit and Espresso 1 and used them extensively on a day-to-day basis for RapidWeaver theme and stack development. So to have both apps merged together as one makes sense to me. The user interface in this latest version of Espresso remains fantastic, and there are plenty of options to satisfy both novice web developers and seasoned professionals.

Purchasing Espresso 2 will cost you $79. That may seem a little steep, but one web development project would easily cover that cost. Existing Espresso or CSSEdit users can benefit from very generous upgrade discounts as well. Altogether Espresso 2 offers a fantastic application for web developers, a beautiful interface and is brimming with professional features for getting jobs done quicker.

MacRabbit website: http://macrabbit.com/

RapidMaps plugin on special offer today

RapidMaps is today's featured MacZot, selling for $6.99 instead of the normal price of $14.95. A very useful plugin to use in RapidWeaver, wherever you want to display a map. It uses Google Maps, so you don't have to worry about sub-licensing maps from other companies. Remarkably simple to setup and the interface is much easier to work with, compared with competing stacks.

RapidMaps is a RapidWeaver plugin that lets you add Google Maps to your site in a few clicks. Just center your map, fill in your Google API Key and publish!

MacZot website: http://maczot.com/
RapidMaps: http://www.omnidea.it/rapidmaps/

Analog released by Realmac Software

A superb little image editor I've been Beta testing for the past few months got released today. It's called Analog and is developed by Realmac Software, the same company behind other prestigious software titles like RapidWeaver, LittleSnapper and Courier. Analog is a remarkably simple application that lets you to drag and drop images into a placeholder and choose from a range of professional looking filters and frame effects. Then these processed images can be saved locally on your hard drive, attached to an email or published to various online 'clouds' like Flickr, Picasa or Facebook for the world to see.

Do we need yet another Mac-exclusive image editor? Well put yourself in my position. Two weeks ago I shot over 1000 photographs on my 2 year-old Sony A350 DSL, only to find later on in iPhoto that the camera had developed a fault, and I had white over-exposed bands running across the bottom third of my pictures. While I battle with the paper trail at Sony UK to have my camera repaired for less than the quoted £300, it left me with the problem of what to do with these imperfect images. Rather than trash the entire shoot, I tried several of them through Analog. In quite a number of examples, it turned the bad images into 'artistically refined' images. So it was great to find a way to recycle less-than-perfect pictures. Likewise I had a mess around with some of the effects in Analog, and found that it gave me some inspirational ideas for future creative projects. Even if you drop in a picture taken on a 1MB camera phone, the finished image is pretty impressive.

Introducing System7

Drop-down menu navigation layouts have become a popular trend in modern web design. Although they are sometimes criticised by accessibility experts, generally they are favoured by both developers and site visitors and mimic navigation layouts found in common desktop software. However integrating drop-downs into websites is still a very challenging process. Many methods exist relying on a broad range of techniques and technologies. Integration in RapidWeaver is particularly difficult as page links get generated automatically and projects can be quite hostile places with any number of stacks or scripts running in the same page.

System7 is my own drop-down menu plugin developed from scratch specifically for RapidWeaver. I became very frustrated by the lack of decent drop-down menu scripts suitable for RapidWeaver. Existing scripts either had serious compatibility flaws or were completely bloated with messy code. It is called System7 because it incorporates 7 basic functions I deem to be essential for a drop-down menu in RapidWeaver:

1) Cross browser compatibility

The range of browsers and browsing devices in use now is quite daunting. At one end of the scale you have a decade-old version of Internet Explorer which can barely handle basic CSS code. At the other end of the timeline, browsers like Safari, Firefox and Opera pack in some serious technology and excellent support for web standards. It would be easy to say “no support for IE6”. But that is simply not an option for many I supply themes to. Fortunately System7 can handle all these browser versions without problem, and does so elegantly without any conditional comments or browser hacks, to keep things clean and future-proof. And it works on the iPad and iPhone really well.

2) Dynamic class selectors

A frequent request on the RapidWeaver forums is the ability to change the style of individual navigation links - to highlight particular pages for example. Currently this can only be done by wrapping links in span tags and using inline CSS. There is nothing seriously wrong with this, but it is not an ideal setup and does not work in many themes. What System7 does is to apply unique class selector names to all navigation links dynamically via the browser DOM. Using the Safari inspector or Firebug, it is possible to grab these selector names and apply custom CSS. Several style changes can be applied such as text formatting, fonts, colours and even icons. Apply styles to one or more links.

3) Ability to disable page links

If you’ve been studying existing drop-down navigation menus online, you may have noticed in many examples that the parent (trigger) link at the top is not actually a link to another page. Again this is something people had raised on the forums time and time again. But it has not been previously possible without constantly editing a site after publication, which is very tedious to say the least. System7 builds in support to disable navigation links, without actually hiding them. All that’s required is some basic HTML code in the page name to prematurely close a link, display static text and reopen the link tag to maintain validation.

4) Smooth and customisable animation

Lots of drop-down menus online are boring. They just have an option of open or close. This does not look particularly professional and the ‘had a go’ approach simply wont make the cut with professional designers and developers. System7 uses jQuery Javascript to create menus which fade in and fade out. Not only does this look and behave a lot better, but helps with site accessibility. The speed at which a menu fades in and fades out can be customised.

5) Intelligent styling

System7 can detect when a page link acts as a trigger for sub pages. It will automatically adjust padding and add either a downward facing arrow or a sideway facing arrow. This gives you the confidence to build more complex site layouts, without having to worry about menu structure. Everything is taken care of for you. There is no danger of padding or indicator arrows being misplaced where they are not required.

6) Fallback compatible

Apparently some loonies are still browsing the internet with no Javascript enabled in their web browser! Normally you would not get very far these days without Javascript - just about every major website and search engine relies on Javascript now. But it is reassuring to know that System7 will fall back to CSS-only mode, meaning the menu will still work in non Javascript-enabled browsers. Because menu links are created from a simple HTML unordered list, all links are perfectly accessible to search engines as well for improved SEO.

7) A true framework

System7 is not another ‘one trick pony’ jQuery plugin. It has been engineered to be expanded and built on. As well as powering basic drop-down menu’s, System7 has recently been used to power a full blown mega-menu in an upcoming RapidWeaver theme. It can be adapted and reused in various themes with excellent flexibility and robustness. RapidWeaver theme style and colour settings can be used, enabling end users to customise width and styles of drop-downs without any code.

Currently only the Media, Boxes Pro and Decorate themes have System7 built in. But there are at least four new themes in development by ThemeFlood which incorporate System7. Commercial agreements have also been made with a couple of other theme developers, so it is hoped System7 will find its way into other themes. The feedback so far has been very positive, many agreeing in full with the above merits. Although it is another one of these projects which has taken a huge amount of time to complete, hopefully System7 will provide many years of use, until we are at such as stage that CSS can be trusted to do everything.

Putting a "Share This" button in a blog post

Social networking icons and buttons have become a common feature in blogs. This in turn makes it easier to promote blog posts organically, improve SEO (search engine optimisation) and generally make your blog a more friendly place for regular readers. There are a number of different social networking icons which can be added to a page. Some authors prefer to use their own custom icons, whereas other prefer to use a widget or module. This post will focus on a ready-made module of buttons, but the same procedure can be applied to custom buttons as well.