Theme Review: Neutron by GWDI

Aside from the BlocksBox review a while back, I haven't been reviewing RapidWeaver themes, and I hope that's something that changes beginning with this new review of Neutron by GWDI. GWDI has built-up a nice portfolio or RapidWeaver themes, and by browsing the previews you will see that they are quality themes that should not disappoint. GWDI was kind enough to provide me with its newest theme, Neutron, for review here at RapidWeaved.

Theme Style and Options

Neutron is a clean, flexible theme that doesn't rely on heavy graphics to get the job done. You receive a good amount of theme variations, including: width of 600-1000px, logo placement, body text alignment, title alignment, fonts, font sizes, line height, sidebar placement, and color-picker support. I especially appreciate the range of width options, font sizes, line height and color-picker support. The font size options actually give you pixel measurements for the smaller sizes and EMs for the larger options -- so regardless of which "font-measurement camp" you are in, you should be satisfied. :) Color-picker support covers pretty much everything and there are 6 additional built-in styles to get you going.

Neutron has nice logo support through RapidWeaver's Site Setup panel. I added logos of several different sizes and shapes -- both square and rectangular, and they all appeared perfectly. The header itself is not one complete image, but a repeating horizontal image that boasts a nice vertical gradient, overlaying whatever header color you choose through the color-picker. This means you won't be adding full-size custom headers, but I bet you could pull something off using the RapidWeaver's logo feature.

There are 3 levels of navigation in Neutron. The primary navigation bar is located at the top of the layout just above the header, with the 2nd and 3rd nav levels appearing horizontally just below the header. As far as content is concerned, Neutron has styles for all 6 Headline tags and a nice script-like font styling for the blockquote. Of course you can do a lot of text customization using the available theme variations. The line-height option is a nice touch and I'd like to see that available in all themes.

Quirks
There's a small number of minor quirks I encountered while testing the theme. The theme's default styles gives you some text color issues, specifically in the nav bar where the inactive page link is a dark blue on black, and in the footer where the hyperlink color is white on white. Of course these can be quickly adjusted with the color-picker so it's very minor. Apart from that, you might see a few confusing results when using the color-picker. Adjusting the Title Text also adjusts the breadcrumb and footer hyperlinks with the same color, and Link affects the H1-H3 tags (not H4-H6) in addition to the links, even though I don't have the H-tags linked. You will also want to adjust the line-height variation for the blog page, otherwise the two lines of the blog title (title and date/category lines) run into each other -- more significantly in some browsers than in others. Speaking of browsers...

Browser Compatibility
I exported a sample Neutron site and viewed it in Safari 3, Firefox (Mac & PC) and IE6 & 7. Aside from a minor issue in IE6 everything looked great in all browsers. As I mentioned above you'll probably want to increase the line-height for the blog page, though. The IE6 issue is that the container extends out to the right an additional 5px or so, creating a thin, vertical line to the right of the header and all the way down the page. It blends with the content and footer areas since it is the same color, but it sticks-out on account of the header being different. There is a separate stylesheet for IE6, so it's likely a quick fix to eliminate this issue.

Conclusion
Neutron is a great, clean theme with a lot of flexibility and very little to be concerned about when it comes to bugs. I took a quick peek at the main styles.css document and it's very cleanly coded and CSSEdit-friendly for all you theme modification freaks... *points at self.* Thanks again to GWDI for the opportunity to review Neutron, and I definitely look forward to its future offerings.

10 Questions: Chris of Varsis Studio

Chris of Varsis Studio has been busy developing the highly anticipated CoverFlow plugin for RapidWeaver. Well-known for their 3rd-party theme offerings, Varsis Studio has their first plugin in the late stages of beta testing. Chris was kind enough to field some questions for this RapidWeaved interview. Enjoy!

RapidWeaved: To my knowledge you are the first developer of both themes and plugins for RapidWeaver. What do you enjoy about developing for RW?

Chris: I am not the only, but only one to make a somewhat sophisticated plugin. Josh Lockhart made a Yahoo search plugin [RapidSearch].

I enjoy everything about developing for Rapidweaver. I don't have to handle much on the back end but it has been a large learning experience, from beginning to start. I started doing themes a long time ago, and enjoyed that. I like mostly the large community and helpful people, I know how much help it is for people to get one-on-one experience and I like to do the same for customers and for my themes. Also, I enjoy others doing the same respect for me. I love doing this, and being a part time job has paid off a fair bit for me, as I don't have too many large, long breaks it helps to be doing this.

RapidWeaved: What was your motivation to branch into plugin development?

Chris: I wanted to learn something new, and I did and I still am learning. I have learned a lot on the way.

RapidWeaved: Before you started the CoverFlow project you asked the community what plugin they'd like to see. What was it about CoverFlow that made you decide to take it on?

Chris: CoverFlow seemed to be something new and innovative. It also was the most popular request I noticed, and I happened to find a lot of helpful stuff in creating the plugin; also got an experience in Flash which I did learn awhile back but never used it. It [Flash] has evolved a lot in the last few years.

RapidWeaved: Not only did you involve the RW community in deciding your first plugin, you've made everyone a part of the entire development process. You've made the betas public from very early on and have possibly the longest thread on the support forum! How has the experience been with making this process so public?

Chris: I have enjoyed it. I wish I could do themes like that, unfortunately there is no way to secure development on a theme, unlike a plugin. I like to implement what the community wants, not what I want, and it does seem to be very helpful to work, and also giving people the public beta gives them a chance to tell me what they would like or need.

RapidWeaved: Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the feedback and requests?

Chris: Sometimes, yes. It has been overwhelming in-between school and this. But I try to get back on everything, and fulfill as many requests as I can though some are hard to do, or are almost impossible to do within coverFlow.

RapidWeaved: What makes you consider and address one feature request over another?

Chris: I try to weed out the impossible ones over the possible ones. It is hard because most of them are possible, but I try to get the most needed ones, or most requested.

RapidWeaved: What are some of the challenges you've faced during development?

Chris: I have had to learn how to replicate the users experience, but I have had to learn how to fix the problems. This is technically my first project, and learning the RapidWeaver API is like learning a new language. I've had to learn how to do everything just about from top to bottom.

RapidWeaved: Any projections on when CoverFlow could go final?

Chris: I hope to be getting close to the final here. With Flickr going to be supported in the next version, I hope the requests will finally slow down.

RapidWeaved: Have you started to consider what your next plugin might be?

Chris: I have considered it, but I haven't found any ideas which I will enjoy as much as this one yet.

RapidWeaved: Final question: Ben vs. Dan in a sock wrestling match. Who do you put your money on?

Chris: Who's the bigger guy? LOL I have never met them in real life so I don't know, but just for the sake of it, I would say Dan!

BlocksBox & JonasThemes

I've recently had the pleasure of working with the BlocksBox theme and talking with its developer, Jonas of JonasThemes. BlocksBox is probably the most unique of all the available RapidWeaver themes in that it is a blank slate -- no menu, no content containers -- and pretty much relies fully on the Blocks plugin from YourHead. The power of Blocks, combined with BlockBox and its variations, allows the RapidWeaver user to essentially develop their own theme and website with little limitation beyond their own imagination.

BlocksBox is literally a blank page when you first bring it up in RW's Preview mode, but there are categories of variations that allow you to quickly style the layout for your website. The variations in the Theme Inspector include: background color using the color picker, a custom background image, background image position, background image repeat (horizontally, vertically, or both), top spacing, header logo, font, font size, text color and styling using the color picker, photo album styling, blog styling, file sharing styling and contact form styling. These variations let you define some constants throughout your website, but everything else can be as dynamic as you wish since it is all added through Blocks.

RapidWeaver users are so accustomed to the navigation menu being one of the defining features of a theme that it can be a bit awkward to envision a theme without a navigation menu. The Blocks plugin provides the flexibility to create your menu with BlocksBox -- using plain text, image text or images you've collected or created yourself. Blocks' mouseover feature for images presents some particularly exciting options for your navigation menu where you can create some really cool hover effects for the menu options.

For my testing I created a splash page for a website using BlocksBox. I used a repeating image horizontally and vertically for the background of the site and placed the logo in the top left-corner of my Blocks page. I then added some text in a text block and added some text images I created in Photoshop for the menu options. Using the mouseover feature I animated the menu links by having them change colors on hover. In about 20 minutes I had a nice-looking splash page that doesn't look like something normally created in RapidWeaver. The BlocksBox-included variations made it especially easy to accomplish an attractive background without knowledge of CSS.

As it exists in its current version, BlocksBox is quite a powerful tool for creating a completely original website. The limitations I noticed were on account of what is expected to exist in a "normal" RapidWeaver theme. Typically a Blocks page will be the content area of your website that fits into a structured content container, but in the case of BlocksBox the Blocks page is the website, so that means that you will need to create the containers and divisions of your site's layout using lines and/or graphics if that's what you want. Graphic designers or people with some graphic skill will benefit when using BlocksBox -- not to say that BlocksBox users need to have graphic design skills to create something impressive. By the way, there is a nice showcase at the JonasThemes website that will give you some examples of the power behind BlocksBox.

Jonas has given me a beta version of his next update to BlocksBox, and at first glance it appears the new features will address some of the perceived limitations. At the least the update presents options that will make the design process even easier, so I look forward to the public release of this update in the future. And speaking of Jonas, I asked him to answer a few questions for me and so I will close-out this article with some insight from the BlocksBox Man himself!

RapidWeaved: How did your idea for BlocksBox come about?

Jonas: At first I build websites using the standard RapidWeaver themes. But after making about three websites I wanted to be able to have more influence on the layout. Because of the predefined layout in RapidWeaver I was forced using iWeb instead. But then I missed all the great page-styles and plug-ins, so I switched back and found the solution in using really minimal themes in combination with Blocks. I still wondered why there was no theme made specially for Blocks. I contacted Isaiah from Yourhead and he was shocked as well that no theme-developer created it yet. At that moment I never wrote a single line of code but three weeks later the first (not so stable version) of BlocksBox was launched to my own surprise.

RapidWeaved: What were some of the challenges you faced while developing the theme?

Jonas: The biggest challenge was to learn all the necessary code (.plist xhtml and css) and at the same time writing the BlocksBox-theme. I learned a lot during the development. And actually I still do not like writing codes but that's why I wrote BlocksBox.

RapidWeaved: How dependent is BlocksBox on the Blocks plugin? Can the theme be used without Blocks?

Jonas: BlocksBox has been written with Blocks in mind. BlocksBox can't function normal without it. Due to page-blocks most other page types can be imported into the Blocks pagestyle. BlocksBox makes Blocks a lay-out editor instead of just a content editing plug-in.

RapidWeaved: Since you started with a virtually limitless theme, do you see yourself creating more themes in the future?

Jonas: I am having some more theme ideas but at the moment I want BlocksBox to be better and more customizable first.

RapidWeaved: What are your plans concerning updates/upgrades for BlocksBox?

Jonas: I am currently working on a major BlocksBox upgrade. In the new version people do not need to enter the theme if they want custom background and it will also be possible to use the standard RW menu-system. Due to my study it may take some more time then originally planned but it will be sweet. Besides the theme the website will be updated as well with a lot more information.

Week in Review: February 3rd- 9th

In case you missed it...

Plugin Announcements
CoverFlow
Work continues on this plugin and is now available at version 0.6.2.

Theme Announcements
Theme 010
The newest release from Theme Weaver.

OHM 1.1.2
A minor but important update to the Rapid Ideas theme.

Gothic 3.0.1
Another theme update from Rapid Ideas.

Week in Review: January 27th - February 2nd

In case you missed it...

Plugin Announcements
Accordion 1.3.1
The outstanding Accordion plugin has been updated with the latest version of Mootools.

Carousel 1.2 Beta 2
This update to the beta corrects a bug relating to Internet Explorer.

FlexibleList 1.0.2
This update is mostly bug fixes with one new feature supporting Blocks pageblocks.

PageTOC Update
This update adds the smooth scrolling feature as an option.

CoverFlow
Progress continues on this awesome plugin which is now at version 0.6.

RapidGuestbookTdb
This version of the guestbook plugin functions without a MySQL database.

Theme Announcements
Headliner
RapidWeaver Themes has updated this theme to be fully compatible with RW 3.6.

Golden Gate
Michel Honold releases another free theme.

Alpha Theme Update
RealMac has updated its built-in Alpha theme, fixing an Internet Explorer issue.

Gary and the venerable RWT

seyDoggy: RapidWeaverThemes.com (RWT) is one of the original, if not THE original third party developer of RapidWeaver themes; what's it like to be able to fly that banner?

Gary: Well, to be completely honest I try not to fly that banner very often. As you know Dave Cantu was the original owner of RWT and I feel a little funny about claiming to be the first.

seyDoggy: For those that don't know, Dave Cantu cut his theme dev teeth on the now defunct Site Studio (a forerunner of sorts to todays RapidWeaver) before he founded RWT. How did you come to be in the captains chair at RWT?

Gary: Well, where do I begin ... way "back in the day" when RapidWeaver was still in version 3.0, I began using it for some small personal sites. In those days there were not very many 3rd party developers (only Dave, Charlie, Michaelangelo and Scott) so I was naturally intrigued with their themes. But around June or July of 05 there was some pretty strong dialog on the forums about 3rd party themes and how you could and could not use them etc... So much of it seemed really stupid to me so I decided to start my own little business developing themes. I was already familiar with html and was learning the ins and outs of css pretty fast. In the early days, it was seyDoggys' "abLe" theme, RapidIdeas "Diamond" theme and Multithemes themes that really opened my eyes as to what could actually be done with an RW theme. After some time, Dave approached me about buying him out and things just fell into place.

seyDoggy: For a while you ran both Pioneer Themes (your "own little business") and RWT in parallel. Is this still true today or has RWT pretty much absorbed Pioneer themes?

Gary: Originally my intentions were for it to be the other way around. I wanted for Pioneer to be the "mothership" and eventually do away with RWT. But I soon realized how powerful a name can be. (example: I could sell the exact same themes on Pioneer and RWT and the sales from RWT would be 10 times what Pioneer would be)

seyDoggy: You and I have seen RapidWeaver come up from being a small time app with a great community, to a critically acclaimed app with an unbelievably vibrant and lively community. Do you think you would be developing themes today if RapidWeaver were just as big but without the great community?

Gary: I seriously doubt it. A great part of what makes it so rewarding is the RW community. Dan and Co. have done an outstanding job of creating a RW "ecosystem".

seyDoggy: You probably have the most extensive theme library of any pro 3rd party developer. What drives you most to be as prolific as you are?

Gary: The monthly bills I have to pay ... lol, but seriously, usually it goes something like this. I see a website that I like and I say "ooh, I bet I could do something like that" and so I will sit down and try. A lot of times I will get an e-mail asking for a particular type of theme and I try to oblige.

seyDoggy: Where do you see RapidWeaver and RWT one year from now?

Gary: Boy I wish I knew ;). I am they type to always see the big picture. As I see Apples market share growing more and more that tells me that Realmac and RapidWeaver will only grow. They have a strong product and a great community. I think that that will bode well for the developers who have stuck it out. (You and me would be included in that list) As far as RWT ... there are so many things I would like to do with RWT but the but we're a prisoner to the name. Our Name will always be "RapidWeaverThemes". Where we go has a lot to do with where Realmac goes. If version 4 brings us some much needed changes then there will be a lot of room for expansion. If version 4 is pretty much the same then it will be harder to expand.

seyDoggy: What changes in RapidWeaver have impressed you the most since RW 3.0, and what changes do you think are still needed?

Gary: Well, the most obvious change would be the addition of the Color Choose that 3.6 brought. I would also have to say that the 3rd party plug-ins that are now available have been the most welcome change. I would like to see RW add native support for more navigation menu's as well as native support for 2 sidebars. Being able to do more in the footer area would also be a welcome addition. Gone are the days when RW was just a good "bloggers" web app. It has become so much more and I would like to see RW incorporate those into version 4+.

seyDoggy: Final question, I promise... wings or drumstick?

Gary: Drumsticks for sure.

Week in Review: January 20th -26th

In case you missed it...

Plugin Announcements
CoverFlow
Varsis Studio continues its beta of this plugin. Currently at version 0.54, CoverFlow now supports Blocks.

FlexibleList 1.01
This plugin has been updated and includes a number of bug fixes as well as a few minor features.

Blocks 3.1.1
More proof that Isaiah never rests -- Blocks has been updated with a few bug fixes.

Carousel 1.2 Beta
As if more proof was needed, YourHead updates its plugin to use Mootools 1.1.

Theme Announcements
Modernity
Josh Lockhart returns from a lengthy hiatus with his newest theme.

Gothic V3
Rapid Ideas updates its Gothic theme with many new features.

DC GarageBand 1.5
This theme from Dave Cantu is now RW 3.6 compatible.

Theme 009 R3
Theme Weaver has updated its newest theme with a couple of minor changes.

Month in Review: December 18th - January 18th

The Christmas and New Year's holidays, along with a recent bout with the flu, has prevented me from my regular weekly posting of the latest RapidWeaver news. Nothing seems to have prevented the developers from working hard over the past month, though! So in an attempt to play catch-up, here is a list of the most important announcements from the past month.

Plugin Announcements
CoverFlow
This awesome new release from Varsis Studio is still in beta, but it has a very promising future in the RW community. Based on Apple's CoverFlow feature in iTunes and Leopard, this plugin will add some great style to your RW website.

Carousel 1.2 Beta
YourHead has released a beta update to its popular Carousel plugin. This update includes the newest build of Mootools and adds some additional support.

Kwix 1.0
Kwix comes out of beta with its first full release. This plugin utilizes the Mootools javascript library to create stylish animated menus. See further down in this post for info on Kwix Styles.

Blocks 3.1.0
Isaiah must never rest! This release of Blocks is described as a "culmination of many refinements," with more details available at the YourHead Blog.

RapidForum and RapidIframe
Dominique has developed a couple of new plugins, with RapidForum being the answer to a widely requested plugin for some time now. It utilizes the PBLang forum and is an easy solution for integrating a forum into your RW website.

FlexibleList
Nilrog has created a new plugin that allows the user to organize content into a list, with many advanced options available to make it more powerful.

RapidAlbum 1.0.3
The update to this very popular plugin squashes a number of bugs and adds the LightWindow template as a new option.

Theme Announcements

Theme 009 from Theme Weaver

Theme 008 from Theme Weaver

Sandwich and Sandwich Slider from Henk

3isles from Henk

Element Theme Series from GWDI

Slix and Pinewood from GWDI

DC Agency 1.7 from Dave Cantu

Gleam from weaverthemes

seyDoggy viEw 3.6

Jay Strip from New Ending Studios

Hamburg from Michael Honold

Indian Summer from Michael Honold

Gras 2 from Michael Honold

Coffee from Michael Honold

Blueball High Def Colors 36

Blueball Paradox 36


Miscellaneous

Adam at Elixir Graphics has released some new icon packages as well as launching the new website The Icon Lab. Free icons and stock icons will be available there -- they should be great additions to most any website created with RapidWeaver.

In other design news, YourHead's Kwix plugin has received some nice Kwix Styles -- graphics used to style the Kwix menu. These styles can be found here, here, here and here. Some of these are available for free from 3rd-party sources, while others are for purchase -- including some official styles from YourHead.

Review: Adding Sound to Your Website

I need to start out this tutorial review by saying I’m not a big fan sound on web pages. In fact, I hate it when I’m innocently surfing along, click on what might be an interesting link and am assaulted by some crummy keyboard generated auto-playing MIDI cover for “Another One Bites the Dust”. You know what I’m talking about, we’ve all been there. Oh and if your site is guilty of this egregious violation to my ears, STOP IT!

Okay, deep breath............

As averse as I am to the above, on-click type sounds on web pages are okay in my opinion as long as they serve a purpose and are used judiciously. I’m not about to define what judicious is but will say that “I know it when I see it”. With that in mind I decided to try adding some sound to one of my websites and it just so happens that Vince (aka wizeman of V2C Studios and rwReview.com) kindly posted an excellent screen cast tutorial of how to do just that using JavaScript snippets that he wrote and SoundManager from schillmania.com.

Vince begins his tutorial by recommending anyone not familiar with JavaScript (me) go to w3school to learn the basics by working through one of their tutorials, but he also states that if you follow his instructions closely you should be able to complete his SoundManager tutorial. That’s what I did and I completed the tutorial with everything working as it should. I am going to check out the w3school JavaScript tutorial when I get a little extra time (says this as if it will ever happen).

The only real problem I encountered was mostly my fault but I’m also going to blame RapidWeaver as well. I’m not going to go into the gory details but if you’re interested in reading about my publishing problems, check out this forum thread. Sufice it to say I wasn’t thinking when I decided to work through the tutorial and I just applied it to the site file that opened when I launched RapidWeaver. This was an as yet unpublished site and was quite large. Like I said I’m not going into details.

The tutorial was very easy to follow and Vince has a pleasant voice and an easy-on-the-ears speaking style. Vince clearly lays out the steps involved and I was able to understand what was going on with very little effort. I have a site in mind that I think I’ll be able to incorporate some sound so this was a fun and useful tutorial indeed. Check out Vince’s SoundManager tutorial and many more at his rwReview.com website.

Thanks Vince!

Review: RWcss by Larry Pollock

When Larry Pollock (aka Sundog on the RW forums) released RWcss last September I immediately purchased the book. Since hopping aboard the RapidWeaver train I’ve long wanted to learn some CSS and knowing Larry’s reputation as one of the CSS code gurus on the RapidWeaver forums, I figured I couldn’t go wrong.

Unfortunately, shortly after I bought the book, my non-RapidWeaver life intruded and I only had time to briefly skim the book. With the new year I made sort of a mini New Years resolution to thoroughly read RWcss and work through the tutorial (remember the promise I made to myself in my Videobox tutorial review?). Well I finally did it and here are my impressions of RWcss.

The book comes as a 73 page PDF which Larry has thoughtful laid out in such a manner that you can print and have it bound. I’m too cheap to do that and a PDF is just hunky-dory for me. When you unzip the package you’ll find four items:

1. The RWcss Book PDF itself


2. a Basic RapidWeaver Theme


3. a CSS FIles folder (containing a 23 page PDF of basic CSS code, a Rich Text document of CSS used in the book which is especially good for copy and pasting along with the tutorial, and Rich Text document containing Greybox CSS)


4. a “Demo & Tutorial Stuff” folder (containing a Rich Text document of the CSS used in the demo, the demo site RapidWeaver file and all the images used in the demo).

The book is divided into three parts: a basic information section, a full theme modification tutorial and a reference section choked full of links to external resources. Larry recommends that the reader read through the first part “several times” and this is good advice. I read through it a couple times and during the tutorial, I went back and reread parts. Surprisingly, it’s a pretty easy read. By that I mean, considering the content (CSS code) and it’s intended audience (CSS newbies like me), it was interesting and not too heavy. Larry has a nice writing style and I was able to follow along and understand what he was saying with very little effort.

In the first part of the book Larry lays the foundation for the tutorial by going over and explaining the basics of CSS. He explains how browsers interpret CSS and how RapidWeaver theme styles affect what is displayed. The rules for how styles “cascade” (CSS stands for "Cascading Style Sheets"), are laid out and Larry explains some of the terminology used when discussing CSS.

In this first section Larry also takes us through modifying a theme using example CSS code entered into the Custom CSS box in RapidWeaver’s Page Inspector. Many of his examples included screen shots graphically showing what the results look like. He also briefly touches on some of the features third party theme developers include with themes, like custom header options, as well as using RWMultitool.

Larry then goes on to briefly explain some common CSS terminology and corresponding “parts”. This is where it gets a bit deep and it was very helpful, as Larry suggested, to reread this part. He also touches on page specific CSS in this section as well as including a developer “tips” section. This last part was a particularly interesting read.

The next main section of the book is the tutorial. Larry lays it out in a fairly straight forward fashion that is quite easily to follow. For the most part you’re copying and pasting code from either the book itself or from the included CSS rtf to RapidWeaver’s Custom CSS panel. I’d suggest not bothering with copying from the book and just using the CSS rtf. The reason being that when you copy from the book, you’ll sometimes inadvertently (and unavoidably) copy some of the tutorial text.

For the most part, the tutorial went as intended. I did encounter a couple minor problems but nothing that prevented me from completing it. The first popped up (literally) when I went to load the RW tutorial file. I got an RW error pop up message that said “Could not find theme. Could not locate the theme...” I immediately emailed Larry and he responded within an hour. The fix was as easy as applying the Blog Pop duplicate theme that I’d created in the previous step to the blank RW demo site file.

The next minor problem I encountered was when I modified the QuickTime page. This step came late in the tutorial and Larry doesn’t go into a lot of detail on these later steps. Larry doesn't include a movie file for this page (I’m assuming for size reasons) so I just added my own in Edit view. I’ve never used a QuickTime page so was unprepared for the result: the movie completely took over the page, overlapping most of the navigation menu.

Lastly, because I was copying from the CSS rtf file, the instructions and accompanying screenshots in the book didn’t exactly follow the results I was getting. For example, in the book, Larry tells us to past this code into the Custom CSS panel:

 #pageHeader { 
  background: #005400 url(assets/redrock_golf.jpg) no-repeat top 
  left; 
 }

Next he states to add this code to the #pageheader CSS:

 height: 244px;

In the CSS rtf file, however, the height attribute was already included in the code. This really is no big deal and I immediately knew what was going on.

All in all it was a fun exercise. My tutorial site turned out pretty much how Larry illustrated. There were a couple minor bumps in the road but nothing that I couldn’t figure out by myself. Larry was quick to reply to my one support question and had I thought about it a little bit, I probably would’ve been able to find the solution on my own.

If I were to make one suggestion, it’d be for a more in depth discussion of CSS terminology and the corresponding mechanics. For example, I’m still not entirely sure what Selectors are and what they do, and Larry mentions divs but never really explained what they are and how they fit into this whole CSS thing. This, of course, might be beyond the scope of this book. I’m sure there’s a “CSS for Dummies” that I could pick up that delves more deeply into this sort of thing.

I highly recommend RWcss, especially if your a relative newbie to RW and are itching to modify themes a bit. You’re not going to completely learn CSS from this book and I’m sure this is not what Larry intends. What you are going to learn are some fundamentals and you’ll walk away with a good basic understanding of how to use CSS in the Custom CSS panel. If you’re like me, you’ll also probably walk away with a desire to learn more. I can’t wait for RWcss II (hint, hint Larry)! At $14.95 (USD) RWcss is a steal and you can get at Larry’s InsideRapidweaver.com website.

Editors note: A CSS selector is the html element that you are applying style to. In the case of:

#pageHeader { 
 background: #005400; 
}

"#pageHeader" is the selector as it is the item in the html that you want to change the look of.

A "div" or <div> tag defines a division in the in the document that is a block level html element, meaning that by default, it exists on it's own in the document, occupying the full page width (unless we style it otherwise). It is a common element in RapidWeaver theme development used mainly for layout.