Collage 2 is finally here!

If you’ve been waiting for the beta testing to be done, your wait is finally over. Collage 2 is ready for download. In case you missed the announcement with all the feature details, I’ve listed some of the details below.

Collage 2: Get it Now

New Features

We’ve been hard at work on this new Collage for almost six months, so there’s quite a bit to talk about. Read about all the new features here or jump over to our Collage pages and check out some screenshots. Our screenshots even use Collage... to show off Collage!

AJAX Slideshow

Add a super cool animated slideshow with AJAX image loading. Just one click and Collage does the rest for you.

Image Editing

Now you can zoom, scale, and crop your images just by grabbing them with the mouse and dragging them into position. Or, click on the auto-reset and your image will automatically be scaled to perfectly fit into the Collage thumbnail.

New Styles

We’ve added a new Styles window. If you’ve used Kwix or Carousel, you’ll be familiar with it. Even better, we’ve begged, bartered, and bribed Elixir Graphics into creating a few professional grade Collage Styles that are built right in. They even did our super cool icon too!

Cool Effects

Everyone loves the light-box effect. Now you can have it right inside your Collage. No more Javascript wrangling or Flash incompatibilities, either. With just one click Collage will scale images, add the Javascript, and upload everything for you.
Plus you can add even more description to your images without cluttering up your pages with a Hover box. Turn on hover boxes and a nice little box will pop up when the user moves the mouse over your images.

Loads of Graphic Options

Now there are even more ways to make your collage unique. There are a lot of new things to set, here’s the big list:

• Image Backgrounds
• Image Masking
• Image Overlays
• Selectable Corner Rounding
• Set the Rounding Radius
• More settings for your shadows
• More settings for your reflections
• Edge fading

Mouseover Effects

Every single graphic setting can be changed when a user hovers their mouse over a thumbnail. It makes it simple to produce eye grabbing interactivity. Simply copy over your idle-state settings and change, change a few settings, and voila!, you’ve got a professional mouseover effect.

And there’s so much more!

A live preview window to see all your settings in real time, xHTML strict coding, AJAX image loading, Fade-Out slideshow controls, higher quality thumbnails, and of course, better IE support than ever.

RapidWeaver 4

Collage 2 uses all the great new RapidWeaver 4 API calls. That means that we have much more control over the way we manage images and save files. Collage doesn’t degrade your images at all. Collage “hard links” to the original files, just like Time Machine does. It doesn’t take any extra space on your hard disk, but if you accidentally delete the original Collage will (as if by magic) make sure that a copy is safe and sound inside your RapidWeaver file. It’s like having your cake and eating it too!

Leopard

Leopard gave us the power to add some great upgrades to the Collage interface. We take advantage of some great animation effects and use Leopards built in image browsers to give you all the speed and power Mac users are used to. But don’t worry, we didn’t go over the top. In Collage 2 form still follows function.

Requirements

You must have RapidWeaver 4 to use Collage 2.

How much?

If you purchased Collage in the past three months then Collage 2 is a free upgrade.
If you purchased Collage before that then the upgrade to Collage 2 is just $7.95.
If you’re new to Collage then it’s $14.95.
If you qualify for a free update we’ll contact you via the email address you registered with. If you don’t receive an email or believe your email address has changed feel free to send an email to support and just ask -- we want to make sure you get the bargain that was promised.

How do I install it?

The easiest way to install it is to:

1. Open RapidWeaver
2. Close any open documents.
3. Download the Collage 2 disk image here.
4. Double click on the Collage plugin in the disk image window.
5. Quit and restart RapidWeaver

How do I upgrade?

This time we’re doing things a bit differently. Collage 2 is such a huge change from Collage 1 that we decided updating your existing Collage pages just wouldn’t produce quality output. Images would suffer because Collage 1 saves small images and Collage 2 needs nice big images for Slideshows and Lightboxes. So we decided that you should probably migrate you pages slowly, using the original images, that’s the way Collage 2 works best. Here’s what you need to know:

• Q: Will my Collage 1 pages be upgraded automatically?
  A: No, you should rebuild them from the original images.
• Q: Can I keep my old Collage 1 pages while building new Collage 2 pages?
  A: Yes! Collage 1 and Collage 2 run side by side.
• Q: Do I need to uninstall Collage 2 to run RapidWeaver 3.6?
  A: No. RW3 will ignore Collage 2.

How do I get it?

Jump over to our Collage page and grab a copy.

We’ve been hard at work eliminating bugs and making refinements to Collage. We’re quickly closing in on the final release. But there were some more changes added to broaden our compatibility with a number of 3rd party themes. Collage works with just about every theme out there even some of the tough ones. We’ve even created a few test pages in some of the themes that we’ve been working with. Our test pages are published in PNG -- which is quite slow for the lightbox, we always recommend publishing lightboxes in JPEG -- but just to stress the system we did it.

Collage 2 Beta 3: Get it Now

What’s New

Most of our changes this time were to fix bugs, but we did add one new feature that we know everyone wanted:

• Headers and Footer are back. Look in the settings under the Text tab. They support full styled-text and even come with the new RapidWeaver 4.0 toolbar. Yeah!
• Content was added to Preview mode only to help users if they have content or themes that are breaking Collage.
• The image browser is now styled with Drag Images Here when it’s empty to help new users. It has a very nice Core Graphics fade-in too.

What’s Fixed

Many of the changes were to correct compatibility with a particular theme or a particular browser, these aren’t included in the list below, but rest assured there are dozens of small tweaks:

• Saving and Opening files takes less memory and should be faster too.
• Turning off the Grid in the Layout tab now packs items wherever they fit.
• Title and Subtitle should not be cut off any more, even if you enter a lot of text.
• Row height will grow to accommodate large titles/subtitles.
• CSS improved for when page is loaded without Javascript. No more red squares.
• Color pallet works in Headers and Footers (bug in RapidWeaver).
• CSS classes were added to the semantic content to help ease theming.
• There is more feedback for people entering upgrade serial numbers into the registration window.
• Compensated for a RapidWeaver memory leak in image loading API.
• You can now place HTML into the Title, Subtitle, and Hover Box (obvious cautions apply, of course).

What Else?

If you missed out on the original Collage announcement you might want to read that post. It details lots of the cool features and new exiting changes.

Requirements

You must have RapidWeaver 4 to use Collage 2.

How much?

If you purchased Collage in the past three months then Collage 2 is a free upgrade. If this is you and you haven’t heard from us, please send us an email.
If you purchased Collage before that then the upgrade to Collage 2 is just $7.95.
If you’re new to Collage then it’s $14.95.

How do I install it?

The easiest way to install it is to:

1. Open RapidWeaver
2. Close any open documents.
3. Download the Collage 2 disk image here.
4. Double click on the Collage plugin in the disk image window.
5. Quit and restart RapidWeaver

How do I upgrade?

This time we’re doing things a bit differently. Collage 2 is such a huge change from Collage 1 that we decided updating your existing Collage pages just wouldn’t produce quality output. Images would suffer because Collage 1 saves small images and Collage 2 needs nice big images for Slideshows and Lightboxes. So we decided that you should probably migrate you pages slowly, using the original images, that’s the way Collage 2 works best. Here’s what you need to know:

• Q: Will my Collage 1 pages be upgraded automatically?
  A: No, you should rebuild them from the original images.
• Q: Can I keep my old Collage 1 pages while building new Collage 2 pages?
  A: Yes! Collage 1 and Collage 2 run side by side.
• Q: Do I need to uninstall Collage 2 to run RapidWeaver 3.6?
  A: No. RW3 will ignore Collage 2.

How do I get it?

Jump over to our Collage page and grab a copy.

Collage 2 is out, in beta, and loads of fun, but now what?
Want to get that extra edge to make your site perfect. Check this out: Elixir Collage 2 Styles. Elixir has created some really great graphics and packaged them up in an easy to use package. Just download, install, and you’re ready to run.
All the graphics are high-quality 512x512 images and include beutiful images and masks that work together to create some really stunning effects.
And you get it all fro just $7.95.

Go grab it!

Collage 2 is a pretty complex piece of software for a plug-in. It’s still nowhere approaching Blocks sort of size, but it far surpasses any of our other plugins. As such our first beta was, well... well... it was rough. It was buggy, even for a beta. With so many changes to the plugin as well as to RapidWeaver it was probably bound to happen, but it was a bit more than we bargained for. We’ve had to roll up our sleeves and spend a lot of late night hours squashing all the bugs.
We’ve also taken a lot more time to test more themes, more machines, and more data. I suspect there may yet be some difficult bugs in beta 2, but with all the great bug reporting from our users, loads of detailed tests, and lots of help from the themers, this release (we hope) will be much more enjoyable for everyone.

Collage 2 Beta 2: Get it Now

What’s New & What’s Fixed

Our primary goal with this release was to get rid of any bugs we could find, to make Collage faster, and more usable for everyone, and to eliminate any incompatibilities that were found in Beta 1. That means no new features, but a whole lot of fixes. Here’s the big list of what we fixed:

• Image previews no longer duplicate the first item on PPC machines.
• Apply button no longer locks up after the first few clicks.
• Wait spin cursor is no longer missing sometimes.
• Drag and drop no longer has off by one error when reordering images.
• PNG replacement scripts of many themes no longer cause disappearing Collage in IE 6
• Some incompatibilities fixed between Moo.fx based themes
• Zoom made more smooth and a bit slower
• Zoom no longer distorts image
• Hover box styles work with more themes
• File loading and saving times improved

What Else?

If you missed out on the original Collage announcement you might want to read that post. It details lots of the cool features and new exiting changes.

Requirements

You must have RapidWeaver 4 to use Collage 2.

How much?

If you purchased Collage in the past three months then Collage 2 is a free upgrade.
If you purchased Collage before that then the upgrade to Collage 2 is just $7.95.
If you’re new to Collage then it’s $14.95.
If you qualify for a free update we’ll contact you via the email address you registered with. If you don’t receive an email or believe your email address has changed feel free to send an email to support and just ask -- we want to make sure you get the bargain that was promised.

How do I install it?

The easiest way to install it is to:

1. Open RapidWeaver
2. Close any open documents.
3. Download the Collage 2 disk image here.
4. Double click on the Collage plugin in the disk image window.
5. Quit and restart RapidWeaver

How do I upgrade?

This time we’re doing things a bit differently. Collage 2 is such a huge change from Collage 1 that we decided updating your existing Collage pages just wouldn’t produce quality output. Images would suffer because Collage 1 saves small images and Collage 2 needs nice big images for Slideshows and Lightboxes. So we decided that you should probably migrate you pages slowly, using the original images, that’s the way Collage 2 works best. Here’s what you need to know:

• Q: Will my Collage 1 pages be upgraded automatically?
  A: No, you should rebuild them from the original images.
• Q: Can I keep my old Collage 1 pages while building new Collage 2 pages?
  A: Yes! Collage 1 and Collage 2 run side by side.
• Q: Do I need to uninstall Collage 2 to run RapidWeaver 3.6?
  A: No. RW3 will ignore Collage 2.

How do I get it?

Jump over to our Collage page and grab a copy.

What’s still not fixed in this beta

Although we have eliminated a number of issues we still know of a handful of cosmetic issues. We’re also aware that if you have about 10 Collage pages things start to slow down more than they should. And the header and footer still have yet to make their reappearance. Don’t worry, they’ll be back.

Bug Squashing

This version of Blocks fixes one nasty bug and also optimizes a change that was introduced a couple releases ago. It's recommended for everyone, especially folks that are using RapidWeaver 4, but this release works just fine with RapidWeaver 3 too.

What's fixed?

There are no new features in this version of Blocks. It's just the bug fixes:

• RW4 Only: Page Blocks imported from Styled Text pages no longer hang RW on export.
• RW3+: Changing the folder name of a Blocks page no longer causes page blocks to import poorly.
• RW3+: JPEG images no longer call the PNG fix script on mouseover events.

What isn't fixed?

There is still a known bug when importing Photo Albums in a Page Block. This bug is near and dear to me and affects the publishing of this very website -- so my motivation to fix this bug is even more keen than usual. However, after a few days of research I've come to the conclusion that this is likely a race condition that exists in Photo Album page publishing. Blocks exacerbates that Race Condition making it fail much of the time.
It's quite possible there is a change to Blocks that could correct this problem, however we need to spend more time working with the RapidWeaver developers before we can mutually make changes to correct the problem.
Usually we would not publish Blocks with any known bugs -- especially ones that were as serious as this one. However there are three mitigating factors that force the decision:
1) The bug that was fixed was critical and needed to be fixed ASAP to get people back on track.
2) The photo album bug may take time to fix and may not result in any changes to Blocks.
3) The RapidWeaver devs have their hands full with lots of support issues, it may be a few days before this issue gets the time it needs to be resolved.
If you are experiencing this error, which is likely (although not guaranteed) if you are importing a photo album in a Page Block, then I would recommend temporarily removing that page block or pointing it to a static image until this is resolved.
On my site both my photo album alone and my page block importing the photo album generated a hang while exporting. The only workaround was to (hopefully temporarily) remove both.
I expect that this bug should be resolved sometime this week, check back soon for more info.

How much?

Like most updates from YourHead Software this update is free.

How do I install it?

The easiest way to install it is to:

1. Open RapidWeaver
2. Close any open documents.
3. Download Blocks.
4. Double click on the Blocks plugin in the disk image window.
5. Quit and restart RapidWeaver

You'll need to republish pages before the new content (like the new Javascripts) gets to your server, but otherwise there should be no changes required.

How do I get it?

The most recent versions of Blocks are always available (with release dates and build numbers) on our Downloads page. Or you can just click right here: Blocks v3.1.4