RW Updates Gets a Dust-Off
Here is a site that’s been in need of attention for a little while now, and being as we are between themes right now I thought what better time to give RW Updates some love. RW Updates (now called RapidWeaver Updates) was started a few years ago to offer those wishing to track all the latest RapidWeaver developer goodness in one main point. It’s served that purpose well.
The most notable change is the width. I’ve all but given up on narrow sites — I’m over the skinny… and the scroll. The second most notable change is the boxes. Each new article shows up in a box — small, compact, easy to get through in a hurry.
Ok, I lied… the MOST notable change is that the site is just plain sexy now! Don’t you think?
Life As a Theme Developer
Have you ever wondered what a day in the life of a professional RapidWeaver theme developer is like? Wonder no more because I am about to tell you.
02-18-09 07:22 – started writing this which will end up being a blog post on seyDoggy.com
02-18-09 07:23 – opening up Mailplane.app to have a gander at what support has crawled in overnight.
02-18-09 07:28 – popping in the the Realmac Software forum to respond to a thread I was notified about… nothing for me to add.
02-18-09 07:40 – helped potting training daughter go to the potty.
02-18-09 07:52 – responded to an email from the seyDesign Member Group.
02-18-09 07:53 – reacted to a Twitter follow request… followed.
02-18-09 07:56 – Twittering.
02-18-09 08:02 – responding to another Realmac Software forum thread.
02-18-09 08:04 – sifting through a bunch of press releases that I subscribe to.
02-18-09 08:18 – responded to a comment on seyDoggy.com blog.
02-18-09 08:19 – moving over to the support email account now. Checking the spam box since Google seems to deem all of my real support requests as Spam.
02-18-09 08:21 – yup, 7 messages caught in the spam box.
02-18-09 08:22 – opening up Parallels to confirm one users report of an IE bug with one of my themes.
02-18-09 08:24 – realizing that their complaint has more to do with screen size than anything else. It’s not a bug, me thinks. Keep testing.
02-18-09 08:28 – just got a wrong number on the support line. “seyDoggy who? I’m trying to call my sister.”
02-18-09 08:38 – yup, IE6 issue was just the end users window size. I like that kind of support.
02-18-09 08:50 – support taking longer then I hoped. Need some tunes.
02-18-09 08:59 – support is done.
02-18-09 09:00 – opening my calendar (a Fluid.app SSB of Google Calendar) to see what’s on the plate. My calendar is my mental mapping tool.
02-18-09 09:19 – more forum posting.
02-18-09 09:20 – back to calendar, deciding how long it’s been since I invoiced this one client before deciding to do more work for them. Have to be extra cautious in todays economy, not to get into too deep with any one client.
02-18-09 09:21 – going to do some site updates (in TextMate) for said client.
02-18-09 10:27 – just answered someones questions about M Cubed Softwares Code Collector Pro.
02-18-09 10:48 – syncing client changes via Panics Transmit.
02-18-09 10:57 – hmm… forgot to update the sitemap… and all the french <title> tags… ugh
02-18-09 11:06 – sitemap updated, french <title> tags updated, re-syncing.
02-18-09 11:26 – fresh coffee, looking at my calendar… what next…
02-18-09 11:28 – checking my @bugs tags in TaskPaper to see if there are any pressing bugs I should tackle… one in seyDoggy bloop! but it’s going to have to wait until I have the time for some extensive rewriting. It’s only an issue with one plugin so it’s not really a bug as much as it’s a compatibility issue. Moving on…
02-18-09 11:33 – continuing with Med Designs Bubblegum.rwtheme update. Adding some really cool new features to it. Checking my todo list within the theme to pick up where I left off on Monday.
02-18-09 11:54 – force quitting RapidWeaver after I jammed it up with a tricky Theme.plist move.
02-18-09 12:22 – commit current set of changes to the rwtheme package go make lunch.
02-18-09 12:54 – exercise… it’s important to get away from the office chair for a bit so you don’t develop deep vein thrombosis, but getting and walking about is boring. So I exercise; 50 pushups, 25 crunches, 20 lying-on-my-back-leg-lift-thingies, 20 of the same, but lying on my side, and then again, but on my tummy. Not only is it good for preventing DVT, but it helps my core compensate for slouching at my desk for hours at a time.
02-18-09 13:17 – back to Bubblegum.rwtheme update.
02-18-09 16:04 – committed a whole whack of changes to the Bubblegum.rwtheme. Time to wonder about the house for a stretch and maybe splash some cold water on my face.
02-18-09 16:08 – scheduled in two custom jobs, one for Friday and one for Monday… sigh.
02-18-09 16:23 – feeling refreshed. Time to get back at it. But it’s time for 10 minutes of fun; time to read a chapter of jQuery in Action.
02-18-09 16:45 – Well it’s time to call it a day and go embrace the inner chef in me. I hope you’ve enjoyed peering into a day in the life of a professional RapidWeaver theme developer.
Mac OS X 10.5.5 comes with new hope
I am about to install the latest Mac OS X update, the long awaited version 10.5.5. What I am hoping for most is an a fix for the Dock.app crashing all the time. I was able to more or less fix this in 10.5.4 on my own, but I had to take drastic measures a pull out OnyX.app and totally rebuild the LaunchServices, scrub all the deep dark corners, clean caches, kill the odd plist… It was a messy process.
Since having done all that my Dock.app stopped crashing, but I can’t help but feel that there is something inherently wrong with it still. I am hoping that installing Mac OS X 10.5.5 will give me warm fuzzies and restore my faith and elation in Mac updates.
I’ll keep you posted.
Welcome to the new RW Updates
At long last I have finally updated this old beast of a website. It started out as more of a personal thing, wanting to keep all my themes and plugins up to date without having to search everyones blog for them. It’s become a fairly popular resource from what I can tell and I know quite a few people rely on it.
So it was about time I got around to redesigning it to be more inline with todays RapidWeaver 4 (as opposed to the now stale RapidWeaver 3.6 look it had been carrying for a while now). Refreshing the design wasn’t the only thing I did though, I have also cleaned up the code as best I could, removed all of the iframe elements in favor of objects and tweaked a big chunk of the css to make things a little prettier all around.
I hope you like it.
It's the whole package that counts.
Sometimes it’s not the big things that make all the difference in how a company is perceived as either professional or amateur. Sometimes it’s the littlest, nearly overlooked details. A perfect example of this is how a DMG is put together, or how an installer is skinned. This is how I came to find myself killing a few hours today by rebuilding all of the most recent update installers for seyDesign theme updates.
Some time ago, seyDesign.com became the first RapidWeaver theme developer to use update installers to deliver their theme updates in the form of an application that installs only the changed components as opposed to distributing the entire patched theme to end users. seyDesign.com recognized that many users, having had made many modifications to their themes, or having added bits and bobs to their themes innards, did not appreciate all of the work involved in returning their theme to their custom state. Update installers avoids many of these troubles, most of the time.
Being an early pioneer of these practices I hadn’t taken a whole lot of time to learn how to make this process my own, instead, treating it as a utility, not another opportunity to spread corporate identity. Since the seyDesign 2008 relaunch, however, I knew that the time was now to make things pretty, to follow suit with the look of the site.
Next up I’ll be rebuilding all of the theme DMG’s to look just as good.
Dropbox and Versions on the horizon
Given that it has been a month and a half since I’ve written to this blog, I feel compelled to tell you why it has been so long. I, Adam Merrifield, mild mannered web designer by day, and… er… mild manned web designer by night, have been so swamped with work that contributing to this little blog has been all but impossible. I could have jumped all over a dozen new apps that I had been given for beta testing, but sadly I had no time to test them.
There are two however, that are worth mentioning, as I really do want to try and work them into my daily flow. The one is Dropbox, which is a remote syncing type app that will “push” all updates and changes made from one computer to all other computers linked to the same account. Now from what I can tell the intent is that it be more of a storage/portal device that takes what you are working on here and sends it there so you can keep working on it when there become here… er.. or there… anyhow, you get the point. You’re working on a project at work and the boss tells you it need to be done by tomorrow so you send it through the pipes to home, work on it there, send it through the pipes back to work in time for the big presentation the next day, landing your company the BIG account and your boss loves you and gives you a raise and the keys to his Cadillac and owe it all to drop box…
But that’s not what intrigues me about Dropbox, no, what really has me interested in Dropbox is to see if it can be used as a remote backup device and what capacity is available to the user. As soon as I get the chance I will put this one to the test to see whether it’s worth getting my clients excited about a beta.
The other app for which I have been waiting to get my hands on for more than a year is Versions, a subversion client for the Mac. If you don’t know what subversion, I am not going to explain it here, but in short it eliminates the problem of multiple developers working on a single project at the same time. You don’t need an app to take advantage of the power of subversion (command-line in Terminal or TextMate will do just fine), but it does make it a tad sexier when you put a GUI to the process.
I did try Versions.app just briefly, signing up with a free beanstalk account for testing purposes, but I failed to get the connection. I will have to come back to this one in a few days.
So if you have any experience with either of these apps, feel free to leave your comments and let me know what you think.
RapidWeaver gets some love from ars technica
My homeboys, Realmac Software in Brighton got some big props from ars technica today for an upcoming 4.0 release to their popular web design application, RapidWeaver. If you are itching to have a sneak peek at all that’s new with RapidWeaver 4.0 then go give the article a read.
A few points that have me excited are the hinting of a more robust api that could possible allow plugin developers greater access to the OS and other apps. This is, of course, just me reading between the lines. Greater plugin freedom ovens up a whole lot of possibilities for RapidWeaver.
Something else that has me excited is the news ticker which should make it a lot easier to keep users updated with theme patches and updates.
Path Finder point release to 4.8.4
Path Finder (my all time favorite OS file system) has had a long awaited point release, bringing the version to 4.8.4. This update brings some needed bug fixes for both Tiger and Leopard versions that are apparently rooted deep within the Mac OS itself (due to be fixed in OS X 10.5.3 I suspect). For a complete list of updates and bug fixes see the Path Finder Changelog.
Mac OS X 10.5.2 is here!
Hurray!
I hope this solves all the issues I had with 10.5.1. By this list, it looks promising.
Originally posted on http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307109
What’s included?
This update delivers several improvements for both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs (as well as improvements provided in the Mac OS X 10.5.1 [update][31].)
Active Directory
- Addresses issues which could hinder or prevent binding Mac OS X 10.5.x clients to Active Directory domains.
AirPort
- Improves connection reliability and stability
- Includes 802.1X improvements.
- Resolves certain kernel panics.
Back to my Mac
- Adds support for more third-party routers, as detailed in [this article][32].
Dashboard
- Improves performance of certain Apple Dashboard widgets (such as Dictionary).
- Addresses an issue in which Dashboard widgets may no longer be accessible after switching to or from an account that has Parental Controls enabled.
Dock
- Updates Stacks with a List view option, a Folder view option, and an updated background for Grid view.
Desktop
- Addresses legibility issues with the menu bar with an option to turn off transparency in Desktop & Screen Saver preferences.
- Adjusts menus to be slightly-less translucent overall.
iCal
- Improves iCal so that it accurately reflects responses to recurring meetings.
- Addresses an issue in which a meeting may remain on the calendar after being cancelled.
- Addresses stability issues related to .Mac syncing of iCal calendars.
- Resolves an intermittent issue in which editing an event with attendees would cause the event to shrink and not register that the event was updated.
iChat
- Addresses an issue with simultaneously-logged in accounts in which iChat sounds generated from one account might be heard in another account.
- Fixes an issue in which iChat idle time is affected by Time Machine backups.
- Improves connectivity when running iChat behind a router that doesn’t preserve ports.
- Enables logged chats from previous versions of iChat to open faster and more reliably.
- Addresses an issue with text chats in which users may be unable to receive messages from the sender.
- Addresses an issue that may prevent rejoining an AIM chat room without reopening iChat.
- Addresses video chat compatibility issues with AIM 6 and third-party routers.
- Fixes an issue with case-sensitivity of AIM handles.
iSync
- Adds support for Samsung D600E and D900i phones.
Finder
- Addresses an issue in which Finder could unexpectedly quit when displaying folder contents in Column view.
- Addresses an issue in which Finder could unexpectedly quit when accessing Users and Groups in a Get Info pane.
- Resolves an issue that prevented setting permissions on a folder alias.
- Resolves an issue in which the Eject command could write to a disc in the optical drive.
- Fixes an issue in which the scroll bar might disappear when deleting a file within a folder that includes files that are out of view.
- Fixes an issue in the Sharing & Permissions section of Get Info windows, in which the gear icon appears to be gray/disabled after authentication.
- Addresses an issue in which the Show Icon Preview preference might not be not saved when turning it off.
- Fixes an issue that could occur when trying to print an image from the Finder.
- Addresses an issue with Message menu’s Mark > As Read choice.
- Fixes an issue in which duplicate On My Mac folders may appear in the sidebar after upgrading to Leopard.
- Improves the accuracy of the Data Detectors feature.
- Resolves an issue with scrolling through a Note that is displayed using the split view in the message window.
- Fixes an issue with deleting messages located in the Drafts folder.
- Fixes an issue in which dragging the icon in the Safari URL field into a Mail message creates an attachment instead of a link.
- Addresses an issue found when opening a item in the Notes folder that is not a Note.
- Fixes an issue that may prevent RSS feeds from being delivered in Mail.
- Resolves an issue in which a selected message could “flash” from blue to gray when in Organize by Thread mode.
- Fixes an issue with scrolling between multiple To Dos in an email message.
- Fixes an issue in which the body of email messages with certain MIME structures may not be displayed.
- Improves performance with America Online (AOL) account-based messages in Mail.
- Addresses issues with some ISPs during automatic set-up in Mail.
- Addresses an issue in which Mail might not send mail on some networks to some SMTP servers.
- Mail now automatically disables the (unsupported) third-party plugin GrowlMail version 1.1.2 or earlier to avoid issues.
- Adds an option to view large icons in the Mailbox list.
Networking
- Addresses a hanging issue that may occur when connecting to an AFP network volume.
Parental Controls
- Improves stability when opening the Parental Controls System Preferences pane.
- Fixes an issue that may prevent changes to the email address for permission requests.
- Addresses an issue with printer administration for a guest account enabled with Parental Controls.
- Addresses an issue with setting printer administration privileges from another Mac on the local network.
- Fixes an issue that could prevent certain applications from being allowed.
- Addresses accuracy issues with the web content filter.
Preview
- Improves stability when scrolling through a PDF document.
- Fixes an issue that prevents tabbing within a PDF document after clicking on the PDF.
- Improves the Mail Document feature so that email attachments are more reliably created from Print Preview.
Printing
- Addresses an issue in which remote printers may be deleted when the computer is put to sleep.
- Improves printing performance when using some Microsoft Office applications.
- Resolves an issue with some printing options, such as landscape orientation, number of copies, two-sided printing, and so forth that may not have functioned with some printers shared by Microsoft Windows.
- Adds support for certain printers connected to the USB port of an AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express base station.
- Resolves a stalling issue that could occur when installing certain Canon printing software from a disc.
RAW Image
- Adds RAW image support for several cameras, as detailed in [this article][33].
Safari
- Addresses issues with Safari reliably resolving certain domains.
Login and Setup Assistant
- Addresses an issue in which Setup Assistant could unexpectedly appear each time Mac OS X 10.5 starts up.
- Improves stability and performance during log in.
System
- Improves the accuracy of the grammar checker.
- The computer will now shut down if an automatic disk repair does not succeed during startup.
Time Machine
- Adds a menu bar option for accessing Time Machine features (the menu extra can be enabled in Time Machine preferences).
- Improves backup reliability when computer name contains slash or non-ASCII characters.
- Fixes an issue in which the backup disk displayed in the Finder may be out of sync with the disk chosen for Time Machine.
- Addresses issues in which some external drives are not recognized by Time Machine.
- The status menu now appears by default.
Other
- Improves general stability when running third-party applications.
- Addresses an issue in which the incorrect search results may be displayed for certain Automator Find/Filter actions.
- Addresses an issue with the Latvian and Russian keyboard layouts.
- Addresses an issue in which the backlight could turn off before Energy Saver’s backlight setting.
I'm still alive
It’s been a while hasn’t it? I’ve just come off from making a run of RapidWeaver themes for THEME WEAVER; THEME 007, THEME 008, THEME 009 and THEME 010, all of which I am extremely proud of (but THEME 010 is my favourite). I’ve also been busy updating my own edGy, viEw and 2hadow (not quite ready yet).
So what’s kept me busy in my… erm… off time? I have a few things on the go. Namely RapidWeaved.com which has turned out well. It’s the RapidWeaver showcase site that lets anyone with a RapidWeaver site to show off their stuff. It’s kind of a throwback to the old RapidWeaver showcase that was once on their site but in recent time, have opted to hand select only the very finest examples (in their opinion) to post instead.
And it’s that very project that has really spun the old cogs in my noodle. That site is a database right? Why then am I treating it like a blog when it should be handled by some sort of content management system with a database and some back-end programing to control it all? Well… because I don’t know a lick of SQL and can only struggle through enough PHP to parse a few RSS feeds. So I figured enough is enough, I’ve been wanting to learn some back-end web programming and I have now set off to do it. I am currently making my through the SitePoint book Build You Own Database Driven Website using PHP and MySQL by Kevin Yank. I am riveted. No really, I love this sort of reading.
So what about Objective-C then? You might recall that I wanted to give Chris a hand in the whole RapidWeaver plugin market and I did read the book, Programming in Objective-C, but then I saw the support involved through Chris’s eyes. Honestly, it’s not the sort of thing that a guy with a full fledged theme store like mine should get into. Don’t get me wrong, I want to some day. And Chris has definitely shown my that it’s a worth while endeavor, but it’s the sort of thing where I would have to sell my theme store before I got knee deep into plugins. I am not ready for that.
Who knows though, if all goes well with the PHP and MySQL, there are certainly a lot of things I could see making for RapidWeaver that have been missing for some time.