Blocks 3.0.7 beta 7

Short and sweet
More bugs fixed. More fixes for page blocks of various sorts and more fixes for sidebar content.

The Beta
Download it here: Blocks v3.0.7 beta 7

Kwix Public Beta 6
Kwix is still in beta but we've made some significant fixes. All around Kwix is behaving much better and is much more compatible with all sorts of browsers and themes. You'll notice smoother animation, better compatibility with the latest Blocks releases, and behavior in Internet Explorer that is consistent with the other browsers.

A Note About Themes
Kwix, like all my newer plugins, requires RapidWeaver 3.6 themes. Really, all that means is that your theme needs to have the tag somewhere inside and that you're using RapidWeaver 3.5 or 3.6. If your theme doesn't support these features your pages will look pretty dull, but don't worry, it's a simple change that either your theme developer or YourHead can help you with.

What's new?
An all new javascript engine is now driving Kwix, with a new, simplified layout. This means that some problems with Firefox are now gone, you can now set the edge overlap all the way down to zero pixels, and lots and lots of problems with Internet Explorer have been corrected.

Get it Now!
Jump over to our Kwix pages to see a sample and download the beta: Kwix beta 6

Blocks 3.0.7 beta 4

This time for sure Rocky
OK, so I usually don't get all the way to a beta 4. I know, I know. But the Page Block code is not exactly straightforward. So with much less fanfare I'll just say that I've taken a week to redesign a bit of the code in hopes of minimizing that in the future. Hopefully the benefits will pay off quickly.


Sidebar content
Beta 3 did indeed fix the majority of page block, their links, and all manners of other issues, but it as a side effect it functionally disabled the "Use Sidebar" feature. I've, of course, brought this back and hopefully without hurting too much else.


Fixbox script
The fixbox javascript has, once again, been modified. Not in the way it's written, but in the way it's called from your site. In my tests it's substantially faster. For most people this will probably just be something that happens in the background of their site, but for those who have a deep understanding of how Blocks works its magic, it'll probably be much appreciated. Give it a whirl.


The Beta
Download it here: Blocks v3.0.7 beta 4

Blocks 3.0.7 beta 3

Another Change?
I had hoped to catch all the remaining issues that modifications to Page Blocks created, but it looks like I missed one. Not half an hour after posting beta 2 I read a post and knew almost immediately what the problem was. So I've corrected that problem now too and I think, with a bit of luck, this could become the final version.

The Beta
Download it here: Blocks v3.0.7 beta 3

Blocks 3.0.7 beta 2

One More Time
After the last beta we introduced a couple bugs. Page blocks worked wonderfully for Kwix, but not so well for some other plugins. Hopefully we've got that taken care of now.


A Little Change
With this release Blocks now uses the rw_common directory to store its scripts. That way if you have more than one Blocks page on your site people viewing your site will only need to load those scripts once. The scripts should be cached by the browser after that. It's not much, but it should make your page load a tiny bit faster.

The Beta
Download it here: Blocks v3.0.7 beta 2

Kwix Public Beta
We're finally ready to show off Kwix to the whole world. It's still in beta, and we're still working on it, but it's really starting to look nice. And now that it works well with Blocks and is compatible with all the major browsers (all our plugins work with IE6&7, Opera, Firefox, Camino, and of course Safari), there's no reason to hold back. Come visit our special beta pages, download, and help us hunt for the last few bugs.

What is Kwix?
Kwix is a great way to build a simple, stylish menu in your site. I'm afraid much more description than that might be useless, though. You should jump over to the Kwix page and take a look for yourself.

I Want More
Of course you do. I'm sure you want to put a few Kwix on a page, add some text, a slideshow, and ...
Well, you're in luck. With the latest version of Blocks you can add a bunch of Kwix to your page and just about anything else, too. For now, you'll need the latest Blocks beta, though -- don't forget.

Blocks 3.0.7 beta 1

What Changed
We've corrected a number of smaller bugs, added one feature for a very determined customer, and support for some upcoming plugins, but mostly this fix is to try to solve a long standing bug.


The Bug
More than just a few people have noticed that when you import content into your Blocks layout via the Page Block feature things usually go well -- but occasionally links to other pages on your site in the imported content might not work. The workaround is simple enough -- place the imported page into the same folder (or folder hierarchy) as the Blocks page that's importing it, and voila! everything works. Since many websites fall into the workaround just because it's the most convienient -- it hasn't been a limitation for many folks. Mostly it's just confusing and a bit frustrating when you bump into it.


The Fix
I've corrected all but a small subset of the possible variations of this bug. Or at least I sure hope I have. You will still need to use the workaround when importing Blogs and Photo Albums -- their internal links are still elusive.
But the fix is less than ideal. It involves tricking the RapidWeaver export engine into generating the links appropriate for the Blocks page location instead of the imported page location. In some situations (like Assets) this can get pretty tricky. If you do import content from other pages AND that content is located elsewhere in your site then I'd really appreciate any feedback you have. I'd like to collect a bit of this feedback before blessing this one with final release status. And you never know, I might get Blog entry links to work before the beta-test is done.


The Beta
Download it here: Blocks v3.0.7 beta 1