Say hi to Stacks. It’s our latest plugin. It’s a new way to layout pages in RapidWeaver.

Stacks is still having a private beta, but we’ve started to invite a few more people to help us test it out.

Since it’s not quite ready yet we thought we’d whet your appetite and let you have a sneak peek at what we’ve been working so hard on.

Jump on over to to our Stacks page for a little intro screencast.

Stacks Beta

How Much is Lunch?

Beta 7 is out and with it we’ve added an even slicker lightbox, work with even more themes, and have, we hope, nailed down all the IE6 bugs -- but IE 6 always seems to come up with new and unique ways to frustrate developers -- and that’s why this is still a beta.

But we’re getting very very close to release quality with this build. In fact, we wanted to test our registration code so we’ve turned on the Buy Now button. Sorry, I guess there’s no free lunch after all.

Hopefully, if you’ve been using GoogaLoom for a while it’s already paid for itself and it will be a easy business decision. If you haven’t been selling with GoogaLoom, well, what are you waiting for?! Grab some stuff, put up a page and let’s get selling!

What's New?

• New LightBox
• Better Internet Explorer 6 compatability
• Improved CSS is compatible with more themes.
• Registration is now enabled.

How Much?

GoogaLoom is now on sale for $19.95.

Requirements

RapidWeaver 3.6 and Mac OS X 10.4

Another Blocks beta is going out tonight. It will again be only for the auto-updater. So if you’re not seeing auto-updates, you’re missing out.

To get auto-updates you’ll need to download the Blocks 3.2 beta 1. Read all about it.

Again we’re squashing a few more bugs that have been outstanding for too long. Some cosmetic drawing bugs. See the release notes that come with the updater for more info.

Let me know if, when, and how the auto-update went. We’re still working out a few of the kinks.

Google, eCommerce, and RapidWeaver. Three great things that go better together.

Ever since we released PayLoom last year we’ve been hounded to add some of the competition. Google Checkout, of course, was high on the list. With Google you get a slick payment system, inexpensive or even free processing (for AdWords users), and a brand that the whole world trusts to, “do no evil.”

Beta 1

This is our first beta release of GoogaLoom, so there are bound to be a few bugs. Obviously, you may want to hold off using this for mission critical sites. But in return for the growing pains, we’ve made this release free of any registration or constraints. GoogaLoom will be for sale when we make the final release, but until then feel free to play, build sites, and let us know what you think.
DownLoad GoogaLoom

Fun New Toys

We’ve tried hard to maintain a consistancy between the PayLoom and GoogaLoom interfaces -- hiding as many of the HTML differences as we possibly can. But the reality is that PayPal and Google Checkout are really quite different. Different enough that the GoogaLoom has some interesting features you may want to check out.

Floating Cart

Rather than forwarding you off to another server, GoogaLoom uses Javascript to float the cart right on your store webpage. This keeps your customers engaged and gives immediate feedback to their actions.

Options, Overrides, and Custom Controls

Google gives you total freedom in defining production options. You can add as many as you like, each with a set of predefined choices, price overrides, and interface options. Of course learning how to build this into your web site could be a real chore, but with GoogaLoom you can easily add and remove options, change prices, and mix up the interface.

Power User Control

Fine tune your cart with power user features that let your web store feel like an integrated part of your site.
Of course, you don’t need to use these settings, we’ve found some nice defaults so if you need to get your store up and running, you don’t have to change a thing.

And More

There are even more fun new things to play with, but this being a beta release, you’re supposed to explore a bit, so I’ll save the rest as an exercise for the reader.

Blocks 3.2.0 beta 2 was just pushed up to our update server. There is no difference to the beta 1 version that we published yesterday -- except that beta 2 is only being sent out via automatic update.

If you picked up the auto-update, let us know how it went. We’d like to know how things worked out for you.

What’s new?

1) It’s a beta.
2) It requires RapidWeaver 4.
3) It will automatically update itself when a new version is released.

It’s because of #3 that this is a beta. It’s the first plugin to have this feature and there are any number of things that might go wrong. So please download this one only:

1) If you don’t mind beta software.
2) You are using RapidWeaver 4
3) If you’d like to test out some auto updating.

If you’re still using RapidWeaver 3, are working on a production web site, or just don’t feel like testing beta software. Stick with Blocks 3.1.4.

Requirements?

To get the auto-update feature you’ll need the very latest and greatest RapidWeaver: RapidWeaver 4.1.3. Nothing earlier will do -- although version back to 4.0 will work, but without auto-updating.

How do you get the auto-updating to work?

1) Make sure that you have enabled automatic updates in RapidWeaver.
2) Open a file with a blocks page and select the page.
3) If an update is available, then the rest should be the familiar series confirmations, downloads, and a rapidweaver relaunch.

OK, still interested?

Here’s what you need to do to get the beta:
1) Repeat after me, “I will send bug reports to support@yourhead.com. I will not post them on the forum.” OK. Good.
I WILL NOT respond to forum posts about beta bugs. I WILL NOT!
Email. Please. Really! Thanks.
2) Download it here: Blocks 3.2.0 beta 1
3) Make sure to use the update feature and report back to me how it works.

The next version will come automatically Monday morning (Sept 2, 08). Please let me know (via email!) how the auto update went and if there’s anything I can do to make it even better.

Now with exactly what you want!

One thing we noticed pretty much as soon as we published PayLoom was how much people wanted to customize every little thing. It seems obvious now -- people want their store to be as unique as their products that the store is selling.
We aim to please and have added a totally customizable HTML template to PayLoom. This means that you can tweak your PayLoom pages to your hearts desire.
Be careful what you ask for, though. The templates and custom CSS require some web-savvy. We’ll post some examples when the final version is released, to give you a helping hand.

What's New

• Custom templates.
• Custom CSS.
• An “Out of Stock” button allows you to display the item without the Buy Now button.

What's Fixed

• Better RW 4 support.
• Header and Footer images no longer have name collisions with other images.
• jQuery based, “no conflict” Javascript for smoother integrations.

How much?

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 the PayLoom disk image.
4. Double click on the PayLoom 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 version of PayLoom is always available (with release dates and build numbers) on our Downloads page. Or you can just click right here: PayLoom 1.2 beta 1

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 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.

Happy Release Day!

With the release of RapidWeaver 4 we can finally let everyone see Collage 2. We’re still beta testing, but we’d love it if you would download it and help us work out the last few bugs. The beta is quite stable and definitely ready for real world use.

Collage 2 Beta 1: 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.

Oh, And there’s One More Thing

We really tried hard to get rid of the Header and Footer sections of the original Collage. You won’t find them in this release at all. Why? Well, people have been quite successful at using Kwix without them and we thought it would be great to eliminate all that complex code in Collage too.
But, then we sent the Collage 2 beta copies around for private testing. It’s been pretty much unanimous that we really screwed up. We’re sorry. We promise it won’t happen again. :-)
We’ll put back the headers and footers before the final release. But it’s a lot more code than you might imagine, so be patient while we hammer it out.