Carousel 1.0 is here.

Go get your download.

For those who've been too shy to download the Public Beta then let me tell you what you've been missing.

What is it?
Carousel adds a little bar of thumbnail images that scroll back and forth. When you click on them, more content fades in below.
It's really difficult to describe. It's better to just go have a look at the examples here and here.

What's it good for?
You can use Carousel to organize just about any content, but it works really well for displaying images in a slideshow format too.

How hard is it to use?
It's really easy. Just drop in some photos, choose a nice style, and publish. There are lots of styles available on our style forum.

Is it configurable?
You bet! There are lots of configuration options. So many that we let you easily save your configurations to a style file and even share your styles with other users.

Where can I learn more?
There are lots of resources available. There's the Quick Start guide which gets you going in a few simple steps; the Reference for when you need the details; our Carousel Forum always has some interesting discussions; and the Styles forum has over 50 styles now.

Have you seen this? There appears to be something big happening in the theme world right now. Everybody is super hush-hush right now, so it's hard to say what. But there seem to be a few people in on it. It'll be a good way to kick off the new year.

Here's the link to Elixir's blog where it was first sighted: Elixir Blog
But it also seems to have shown up here, here, here, and here.

I'm guessing that a little more info will leak out soon.


Keep your eyes peeled.

Carousel Beta 3 is here and it has tons of great new features and fixes.

Go get your download!

Carousel Beta 3 DOES have a ton of great new stuff -- but you won't be able to tell. Let me explain...

There are lots of big changes in this new release, but they're all under the surface, so the hope is that you won't notice at all.

Over the past month we've been in a constant release mode. First with a new version of Accordion, then the public Beta of Carousel, then a new version of Blocks to support them both, and now a new Beta release of Carousel. This entire string of releases was planned months ago and is now about to complete. Soon we'll have a complete Web 2.0 package of Blocks + Carousel + Accordion -- all able to work together, all able to have many unique copies on the same Blocks page, and all using the most awesome Javascript library ever, Mootools.

With the latest beta of Carousel we've completed all the necessary work to achieve those goals (multiple Carousels on a Blocks page was the last hurdle). But along the way we had a chance to go over all our xHTML/CSS/Javascript and preen it for browser compatibility. There were a lot of issues with IE, of course, but also with FireFox too. All have been fixed and we've been busy checking our regression pages for problems. Even at the 11th hour before release we've caught four more bugs that were trying to sneak through. I'm happy to report that all our demo pages are xHTML/CSS strict, and work flawlessly in IE 6/7 for Windows, Firefox, Opera 9, and of course Safari. All the browsers we could throw at it like Carousel even better than before, and that probably means that you'll like more too.

There are still a couple more items on our bug list that have to be nailed down before we release the final version, but we're feeling awfully close. So hopefully it shouldn't be long.

I'm back from my travels and I've finally managed to work my way through a very overstuffed inbox. If somehow I managed to overlook your email or forum post please give me another chance, send it through again, I promise I do read them all. It's just that sometimes in the chaos of a really long list of questions I get a bit confused and push the delete key too quickly.

I'll probably be traveling again next week on business as my employer has no mercy or sense of family or holiday spirit, but hopefully it will settle down after that and I can build some more plugins for the new year.

Who's excited about MacWorld this year? Are you going to the conference? There's a meetup planned, and I'm sensing some beer, good food, and lots of talk of web development is in our future. Check the link below and see you there:

MacWorld Meetup

Blocks 2.2 is out and we finally have a relatively stable release. If you're experiencing any trouble, make sure that you have the latest and greatest -- check the Build # in the Get Info window of the Finder if there's any doubt.

But that's not what this Blog post is about. This post is to let you know that I will be, at best, sporadically connected to the internet until Saturday. I will be traveling for business. That means that, at least while I'm in the air I will be totally incommunicado.

Someone here at YourHead will definitely get around to answering all the email and forum questions, but it might take a bit longer than usual. So make sure and read the FAQ, post your questions to the forum because there's lots of helpful people out there, and if you have one of those, "Hey could you just give me a hand with some CSS?" -- which I usually try to answer -- maybe it would be best just to hold off until next week.

Oh, and if you have any cool links to rollovers that you've done -- I want to see 'em! Post 'em to the forum.

Isaiah

After much delay Blocks 2.2 is out,

So, go get your download!
Blocks v2.2 is only for Mac OS X 10.4


Blocks 2.2 is a huge little update. What do I mean by that? Well, along with fixing a few bugs and adding support for a few other plugins, there is only one new feature. But, oh what a cool feature it is!

Rollovers
I'm not certain where the term actually came from, but a "rollover" image is one that you gets displayed when your mouse is right over another image. It's a little change, but it's powerful when used well.

Up until now, if you wanted a rollover you had to do it by hand in RapidWeaver. And that involved some coding, some javascript, perhaps sticking things in your Assets, and so on. But now it's a piece of cake. Just drop a second image in the rollover area and your done. Blocks takes care of the rest. Blocks even takes care of the hard stuff like resizing the rollover image if you resize the regular one. Internet Explorer? Yeah, no problem. It even works with transparent PNGs.

Want to see it in action, just take a look at the YourHead homepage. A bunch of the images change. I just whipped up a variant of each in Photoshop and dropped 'em in.

Update: I've posted the REAL Blocks 2.2 (Build #290). Sorry for the confusion.

This weekend changed course on me suddenly Friday night. The release that was planned for last night didn't materialize. If you're waiting for some help in the support forums or dying for that new Blocks release, then please just hold tight. It won't be much longer. Things should settle down and return to normal in a few hours.

Thanks for your patience.

Adding the Page Block was a pretty big deal. Allowing the combination of different page styles really enabled a new way to build RapidWeaver sites, but for the sheer joy of making a cool looking site -- I think I like rollovers even more.

I've totally lost control. I'm adding rollovers to everything. I'm pretty sure that it's not the best design practice to make everything you hover your mouse over change, but right now... I just don't care. It's just too much fun.

Check out the latest version of the YourHead HomePage. Almost everything has a hover effect. It's so cool and it's WAY too easy to do.

Of course this only works in Blocks 2.2 -- and I haven't actually posted that yet. But be patient, it shouldn't be long now.

1. Here's How

2. Double-click on any image on a Blocks page.
3. In the Blocks Info Window click on the Content tab.
4. Drag the rollover version of the image into the Rollover image-well.

Wow, what a lot of work for such a small thing. But it really is a really nice little feature.
Check out my home page. There's rollover images on the "More Info" and "Buy Now" links.
And remember, I don't use any hand coding to do my site. It's either part of the theme, or it's all RapidWeaver.