Collage 2 Beta 2

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.