I'm not going to hide the fact that Flood has exceeded all of my expectations. It was a theme I had originally put together for my own website (ThemeFlood), because I needed something very clean and modern-looking, in which to showcase my collection of themes and stacks. It didn't take very long before I was getting a steady trickle of people asking what theme I was using, followed closely by the question of where it was obtainable! So I spent a couple of weeks tidying up the theme and building in a lot of theme style and colour settings. Because it was quite a complex theme, it had to warrant the £20 price tag. And so it went on sale in March 2011.
I honestly thought that a lot of people would have laughed at the Flood theme and questioned why something that looks so simple should cost so much. But thankfully the provision of a free demo version meant that many people downloaded Flood and quickly came to realise the power and potential of this theme. And that is why I think it has been the most successful RapidWeaver theme I've ever released. To date, I have told over 300 copies of Flood through my website, and I know for sure that there have been several dozen purchase orders for it as well, from education organisations and bigger media / publishing companies. Considering the theme is not even a year old, that is pretty good going.
Some of the most noteworthy changes in version 2.0:
Support for SS3 slideshows
SS3 is a slideshow script originally developed by Adam Merrified over at SeyDesign. Recently we've been sharing a few ideas relating to RapidWeaver themes, and Adam had kindly made the SS3 script available in 'opensource' form for other developers to use. SS3 is no WeaverPix or SymNivo killer, but if you are wanting a basic slideshow without the need for additional plugins, SS3 offers a superb solution. The way it works is that SS3 can read from a set of images provided in the theme. New theme style settings allow you to customise the slideshow transitions and duration's. For those who have previously used SS3 in some of Adam's themes, you'll feel right at home with SS3 in the Flood theme. If you've previously not used SS3 before, then there is a wealth of information published in the new user guide.Intelligent jQuery calling
A common complaint made by some RapidWeaver users is that their themes break when they are working offline. This is primarily because themes use public libraries like jQuery or MooTools sourced from Google API's. Of course when the internet connection to Google is lost, aspects of the theme like ExtraContent and drop-downs stop working. In Flood 2.0, we're piloting a new system whereby the theme will always try to pull in cached versions of jQuery from Google. If no jQuery can be accessed, the theme will instead use its own local version. This new system has the advantage of allowing you to work on RapidWeaver projects offline, and demonstrate websites round at your client's office, where an internet connection is not always available. If it proves successful, this is something that will be rolled out to other ThemeFlood themes in the next few weeks.Tidying up
Flood is quite a technical theme behind the scenes with several layers of scripting. In recent weeks a lot of work has been done to consolidate code, merge multiple files together and build in some improvements. This work will hopefully result in a RapidWeaver theme which is highly optimised towards performance and less prone to doing 'quirky things' when mixed in with other scripts, stacks and plugins. In particular, all the jQuery Javascript has been merged into a single file called flood-scripts.js and is wrapped up inside a closure with it's own namespace. Some of the more troublesome code like the date / time function has been removed altogether, to reduce browser memory leaks and the risk of things going wrong in Internet Explorer.Better print output
By request, printed pages should look a lot better now. The print.css file included with the theme has been updated and now only the most important parts of the page like body content and sidebar are printed. All the extra trimmings which waste ink and paper like the banner container and navigation are excluded from printouts. The default font face for printed pages is Spranq Eco Sans - a special environmentally friendly font face which uses less ink compared to other fonts. For computers without this free font installed, the print output will revert back to a sans-serif typeface.Banner box background
The banner box is a small content container which floats left or right inside the main banner container. It is empowered using ExtraContent and can be used to display extra text, images or links. A common request from users was an easier way to change the banner content background. So Flood 2.0 introduces a new group of settings called Banner Box Background. These enable you to easily customise the background opacity and shade colour. Or alternatively you can choose to use a JPG or PNG image instead, as a background.Sticky footer
Sometimes page content does not extend all the way down a page. So sometimes you may end up with a rather odd configuration and the Footer bar running mid-way across the page. It can look a bit amateurish. To resolve this potential issue, the Flood theme now uses a 'sticky' footer bar which is permanently affixed to the bottom of a page. This is achieved by using some clever CSS wizardry which ensures the footer container is always sat at the bottom of a browser window. It works in all major web browsers and on devices like the iPhone and iPad. Incidentally the bug that was causing the footer bar not to extend fully horizontally on iOS versions of Safari has been fixed in the latest version of Flood, by adding a viewport META tag in the index.html file.Space-saving slogan
The site slogan is now a more integral part of the content container, and has lost the default 50px of padding which were previously applied above and below the slogan text. This should make the slogan more useful, rather than a space-wasting inconvenience. Of course if you preferred the older slogan style, you can still use custom CSS code to restore spacing above and below the slogan text.Getting the update
Flood 2.0 is a free update for all existing users, and you can get it using your original download link. If for some reason you no longer have this download link or it has expired, see details on the ThemeFlood support page for obtaining a reactivated link.Other links
Flood product page: http://www.themeflood.com/flood/Realmac Addons page: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/addons/rapidweaver/themes/flood
Support documentation: http://www.themeflood.com/support/
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