There's three new pieces of screencasting news that have converged to make for some great viewing right now, very soon, and in the future too.

Right Now
Sceencasts Online has published a new RapidWeaver tutorial. It covers all the new RW 3.5 stuff so you should definitely go check it out.

Soon
Where there's smoke there's fire. And with this RapidWeaver tutorial I smell smoke. Here's hoping Don McAllister over at SceenCasts Online wants to do a YourHead screencast too. A little bird told me that there's a pretty good chance.

Off in the Distance
Ambrosia has finally released a new version of Snapz Pro. The ONLY solution for high quality screencast recording. What's new in this version? Probably a lot of stuff, but all I really care about is that it supports Intel processors. And that means the end of yellow cursors in my own screencasts.

Update: I'm Back
I thought I'd post a little note to mention that I'll be away from my office this weekend. That means that I might not get back to your email in the normally timely manner that you might be used to.

Not to worry, there's lots of help all around, though.

Check the FAQ, look at the RapidWeaver Forum, and if all else fails you can even try the reference docs (Accordion, Blocks, Collage, and Columns).

Not to worry, though. I should be back Sunday evening and be rested up and ready for all the tough questions that the web couldn't answer.

And as a hint to what I'll be doing I'll leave you with a couple journal entries from my previous journeys.

I've added a couple more little tweaks to Blocks:

Go get your download: Blocks 2.0.2

1. Added the ability to align the page content on the page either left/center/right. This was added by popular demand since some people's pages were relying on the left justification to align their content with their theme.
2. Image Blocks and Image Text Blocks with links will no longer have a border around the image in FireFox when a theme forgets the all important "border-style:none" style tag. I still allow that ugly looking border inside inline linked images inside of text blocks. But on the Image blocks and Image text blocks it was just messing up the positioning too much -- so it had to go.
3. I ummm... made a really big mistake and... well... oops. Sorry. The main feature of 2.0.1 was links for Image Text blocks. Well those links aren't actually saved. I can't believe I let it slip by. Doh!

A few minor CSS issues and one significant feature omission somehow slipped by my crack team of Blocks testers. So I'm releasing this small fix.

Go get your download: Blocks 2.0.1


You might not even notice the changes, but then again you might. Here's what was fixed:

New Feature:
Added the ability to add a link to a Image Text block.

Fixed:
Width
The overall width of the Blocks content box has been increased by 2% to 99%. I have done (way too) much reading on the subject of IE 6 width issues and I believe this to be safe so long as pages retain their DTD (Document Type Declaration) and don't fall back into IE 6 Quirks Mode. I have also done some extensive testing with many of the RapidWeaver themes as well as third party vendor themes. If you'd like me to add another particular theme to my test suite just let me know.
I spent many hours trying to find a way to make 100% work -- but in the end there's no trickery that can save IE from itself. Attempting to use 100% of the area will always cause some themes to fail to render in IE.
Centering
The Blocks content area will now be centered within the themes content div. It's a small change, but important to some.

Other CSS Stuff
Fixed a property without units.
The content wrappers divs now have ids.
The topmost content wrapper is placed relative. This helps when using z-index in IE 6.
The wrappers have specific properties to avoid margins, borders, and padding. No matter how well intentioned the theme those wrappers shouldn't have any extra spacing around them. Why? IE 6 rendering issues, of course.

Blocks 2.0 is here. Go get your download: Blocks 2.0

Many have been following along with the Public Beta version but for those of you that haven't here are some of the new features:

Three big new features
Page Blocks -- Embed other pages from your Web site inside a block.
Image Text Blocks -- Add blocks of text that render into an image allowing you free rein of fonts and styles.
Guides -- Dyanic guides help you align your blocks on the page.

And tons of not very little features
Much more accurate box model means that your blocks are placed very accurately.
Borders and Margins adjustable on all sides independently.
Full undo/redo support.
Cut/Copy/Paste/Clear support.
Copy and Paste between documents and between pages.
Add Image alt tags
Add Image file names

And literally hundreds of bug fixes.

Screencasts
If you haven't already, go check out the screencasts. They'll show you how to use the new power of Blocks 2.0.

Documentation
The reference documentation is updated to include the new stuff.

Examples
If you want to see a page designed with Blocks, check out our home page or the Blocks page itself. They're both designed and built entirely from Blocks. I didn't add any extra HTML code, javascript, flash, or anything. Just a little TLC and a lot of Photoshopping.

Sale
And, when you're in the mood to buy we have a great new bundle for all of our other plugins. Make sure to check that out too.