The Preamble

As the web matures and operating systems continue to forge ahead we are constantly at a crossroads in our work, between modern techniques and backwards compatibility. Our products are not nearly as advanced as they could be and this is primarily because we must also consider how to make our RapidWeaver themes render on older browsers.

But consider this for a moment — the ONLY browser that gets backwards support is Internet Explorer. We ensure the proper functioning and relatively good rendering on three versions of Internet Explorer (IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8). We do this with no other browser; not Safari, FireFox, Opera or Chrome. In all modern browsers we support only the most current versions.

The reason for this is simple. There is no reason or excuse not to be using the latest version of these aforementioned modern browsers. None. So why then do we excuse Internet Explorer users? Some say that other browsers may not be allowed in the corporate workplace or that those who are stuck on IE 6 don’t know any better. I think it’s because we don’t give them any incentive to do so.

Why upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer when the internet looks just fine the way it is in IE 6?

We have been enablers for those who are unwilling or supposedly unable to update their browsers, bending the web backwards to make it look just right in a 9 year old browser!

Just last week, Google announced that support for Internet Explorer 6 on their web apps will be phased out by March 1st. This is great news, as the number and stature of those web services that are choosing to take this path is increasing by the month. Already sites like YouTube, Digg and many others have begun to issue warning to users of IE 6 that they need to upgrade to a newer browser to take full advantage of their services.

We would like to follow suit.

The Announcement

As of August 27, 2010, Internet Explorer 6 will officially be 9 years old, and that is old enough for us. So on that date, seyDoggy Systems and seyDesign Themes will be discontinuing all support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE 6) and focussing only on Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) and 8 (IE 8).

The Reasons

The biggest, most important reason is that Internet Explorer 6 poses a serious security risk to all who use it — including those of us who have to test our products with it. With the recently exposed exploits and Microsoft’s continual insistence that users should leave IE 6, we see no reason why we should expose our own systems to such threats anymore. We are just as vulnerable to IE 6 exploits as the rest of the world and if Google can be effected by such exploits, so too can we.

And then there is the matter of how IE 6 looks. Internet Explorer 6 is nearing 9 years of age… the web was a different place back then. IE 6 is incapable of performing many of todays web tricks and common standards. It renders the web horrendously and the hacks and workarounds required to make web pages look half ways decent can some times take as long to develop as the page itself.

This is neither fair to us as developers or you as end users who would like to see the latest and greatest the web has to offer, not some dumbed-down in-between stage of the web that looks ok in all browsers.

Usage

According to StatCounter, IE 6’s market share has dropped to below 15% worldwide* — that’s more then 6% lower then its contemporary, IE 8, on the worldwide stage. If more people are using IE 8 then IE 6 then I see no reason to slow that trend down and will gladly assist IE 6’s timely demise by any means necessary.

As IE 6 users find it increasingly difficult to take part in many web services and find that the web looks more and more hideous as 2010 rolls on I suspect those still on IE 6 will migrate to newer versions of Internet Explorer (or other modern browsers) faster and faster.

* North American figures show that IE 6 sits at just below 6% while IE 8 has earned a whopping 27% market share.

Summation

While I can certainly understand that some of you may have reservations about us ceasing support of IE 6 in August, we can assure you that this is the best way forward for us, our end users and the web as a whole. It is time to move on from browsers built in another decade and focus on the future. It’s time that we focus on standards compliant, forward thinking browsers that enhance the web and not cripple it.

We may meet with some trepidation over our decision to stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 and in turn you may decide that our products are not for you. This is a calculated risk that we feel is necessary for the future of our company and the continued quality of our products.

We hope others in our industry will follow our lead as we have followed those before us. We feel this is the only way for the web to move forward.

Tags: code, design, developer, new, rapidweaver, seydesign, seydoggy, support, theme, themes, update, version

For some time now Chris from Varsis Studio has been working on a new RapidWeaver utility to allow users to quickly and easily modify the CSS in their themes. The idea was born out of my frustration with trying to support user modified themes. I asked Chris if he could make an application that could help users modify their themes the right way — in a non-destructive manner — and in such a way that users could keep their mods even after the themes developer updates or upgrades that theme.

Here is a quick look at what Chris has come up with. It’s code named “CodeCutter” for now. If you like the idea, please get on board and take the alpha out for a spin and help Chris get this application closer to completion.

The Video Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, this Adam from seyDoggy.com. I want to give you a brief introduction to an exciting new application in the works at Varsis Studios. This new application is a RapidWeaver utility that will allow users to modify the style of their themes in a non-destructive manner and will also allow users to retain those modifications through future developer issued updates.

Theme Editing Today

Lets first look at how themes are modified today:

Hack the Theme

[00:00:25] The most common, and arguably most problematic way to modify a theme is to open the themes contents and edit the style sheets within. The success rate will often vary since the modifications placed in one file may or may not be overwritten by another file further down the line.

[00:00:41] If you look at these results you can see my font changes made to the blockquote were effective, but the color changes were not recognized in the blockquote, the h1 tag or the link.

Modifications done this way can cause a lot of damage to theme and may create havoc for the developer when supporting it in the future. In fact, lots of theme developers will not support modified RapidWeaver themes.

Custom CSS Box

[00:01:11] The second, more ideal approach is add custom css to RapidWeavers own CSS field. This will result in the most successful style modifications but they are not carried over from page to page, making it necessary to copy your custom css to each page in your site.

CodeCutter method

[00:01:32] So what’s the solution? Varsis Studios has come up with a way to browse your themes CSS code, modify it and save it to it’s own style sheet directly in the theme. The application is code named CodeCutter and is a RapidWeaver utility with one purpose in mind, to help you modify your themes the right way. Lets have a look.

[00:01:49] Upon opening Code Cutter you’ll notice some familiar buttons. Let’s start by selecting the theme we wish to modify.

[00:01:58] Notice how the left-hand column gathers all of the style sheets used within the theme. It does so in the order that they appear on a published site. This important for recognizing the style sheet hierarchy. You can either browse through each sheets entire contents, or by expanding the sheet you can chose each selector individually.

[00:02:17] Once you have found the selector you wish to change, simply click the “Add To CSS” button, and your selector is now copied to the lower panels. This is where your custom CSS sheet is created.

Make some changes… and those changes are reflected in the theme preview.

[00:02:39] Remember how those styles I added directly to the themes contents didn’t work? Notice that there is nothing getting in the way of them working in Code Cutter. Also notice that the changes now effect every page in your site.

Always in Sync

[00:02:59] But here is where the real power of CodeCutter comes into play. All too often users will modify a theme only to have those modifications deleted or overwritten the next time the developer updates their theme. CodeCutter is smart enough to sync your changes back up if it detects that you customizations have been lost!

[00:03:30] And here is the other beautiful thing about CodeCutter; remember I said it’s non destructive? This means that CodeCutter doesn’t modify your themes built in style sheets. This makes it easy for developers to still support their own themes. Your theme modifications can be found in a single, easy to identify, CSS file. This makes it quick and easy to rule out, or remove your modifications all together. Getting to the root of the problem is now as easy as flipping a switch.

Wrap up

[00:03:59] I hope you’re as excited about CodeCutter as I am. It has a way to go still and Varsis Studio is looking for testers to help make this app become a reality. If you are interested in getting involved please visit dev.varsisstudio.com

Tags: code, developer, development, help, member, new, rapidweaver, seydoggy, studio, support, theme, update, varsis

It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this this for 4 years! We have remained unwavering in our pursuit of RapidWeaver theme perfection. In that time we have seen a lot of developers come and go and have remained close with those who’ve stuck around. We’ve enjoyed highs and suffered lows and in the end our drive, passion and determination to be the best RapidWeaver theme developers we can be has led us to this… a four year success story that we can only be proud of!

We continually strive to improve both our products and ourselves as a company and we do it for one reason, the reason that got us here in the first place… you, our loyal customers.

So from our eternal appreciation of everything you have made possible for us we would like to offer you a discount code worth 30% off your entire shopping cart. This offer ends on December 7th so don’t delay.

Discount code: birthday2009

And what good is discount code without anything new and shiny to spend it on?

Our All New RapidWeaver Theme, GiD3OUS

GiD3OUS, our latest theme for RapidWeaver 3.6 and above, is the culmination of months of design, planning, and exhaustive testing. We believe the end result is our finest work to date.

This is a design we’ve been sitting on for nearly a year now. Chris (DEVi8) brought it to the table even before CR3ATiV3. We’ve been refining and revising it constantly — we didn’t want to even think of coding it until we knew it could be done right. That’s why much of what we’ve released in the last year has been in preparation for GiD3OUS.

We could have made GiD3OUS a fixed, graphical layout with very little flexibility, but this layout warranted more. The GiD3OUS theme deserved to be as flexible as we could manage and that meant we had a lot of new ideas to test out before hand, like work done previously on advanced systems such as 3 tier navigation, rounded corners, combination drop menus and ExtraContent … all of which we put together to make GiD3OUS the flexible, easy to use but highly polished theme that it is.

As a seyDoggy Ultimate theme, GiD3OUS comes fully loaded with powerful features, including width control, 3 tier tabbed navigation, rounded corners, ExtraContent, and a variety of others:

• 2 ExtraContent areas
• RWmultitool ready
• 10 customizable headers
• 10 customizable footers
• 3 tier hybrid-split navigation
• sidebar positioning
• comprehensive color control
• width control
• font size and style selections

Learn more about GiD3OUS (Ultimate)
See the live preview
Learn more about ExtraContent

Also Check out Some Updates

We have also dropped some minor updates to 5 other themes, badNas, Tuo, TW004, TW005 and TW006. Be sure to check those out and update your themes today.

Tags: code, design, developer, devi8, graphic, new, rapidweaver, release, seydesign, seydoggy, theme, update

MacHeist is giving away six free apps this week! Joining in on the fun, Daniel Jalkut or Red Sweater Software started a movement, One Finger Discount, to offer a 20% discount on their software. But he decided to take all of us along for the ride.

There are now over 100 other developers (including us) listed at One Finger Discount and with each of them, using the “OneFingerDiscount” coupon code gets you 20% off.

Learn more at One Finger Discount.

Tags: code, developer, software

Last night I had the opportunity to demonstrate Realmac Software’s RapidWeaver to an attentive group of web designers and developers at the Waterloo Region Web Design and Technology Group. Here is the video from that presentation. While unrehearsed and rather rough, the response was still very positive so I thought I would share it here for posterity.

Tags: design, developer, rapidweaver, realmac, software

seyDoggy is proud to announce their first all-new RapidWeaver theme since the launch of PlayMore in January, 2009. Our latest offering, CR3ATiV3 Ultimate is an exquisite example of what happens when you put together brilliant design with effective and efficient coding.

Beneath this RapidWeaver themes breathtaking exterior and magnificent functionality is a surprisingly lightweight and agile collection of finely tuned code and styling. CR3ATiV3’s developers, Creative Director Chris Cifonie (aka pixel.ninja) and Lead Developer Adam Merrifield (aka code.ninja) seamlessly lock skill sets to bring you one of their finest work yet.

Features at a glance:

• 2 Extracontent Areas
• 3 tier navigation
• 10 Custom headers
• RWmultitool Ready
• Header height
• Multiple Widths
• Sidebar Positioning and sizing
• Font control
• Highly Comprehensive Color Control
• and more…

Learn more about CR3ATiV3 (Ultimate).
See the live preview.
Learn more about ExtraContent.

Tags: code, design, developer, new, rapidweaver, seydesign, seydoggy, theme

We have three updates to give you this time, Creamux, Gotem and PlayMore. The updates are primarily based on the updated ExtraContent scripts announced earlier today. The updates to ExtraContent should hopefully increase compatibility in the ExtraContent areas with a wider range of content, such as user scripts, @import pages with javascript (like Kwix and Collage 2) and should improve stability with said items on FireFox as well as Safari.

Learn More about the Creamux update.
Download the Creamux update.

Learn More about the Gotem update.
Download the Gotem update.

Learn More about the PlayMore update.
Download the PlayMore update.

Tags: design, developer, rapidweaver, seydesign, theme, update

On February 18th Isaiah of YourHead Software announced the release of Stacks 1.0, a brilliant RapidWeaver plugin for easy yet exquisite page layouts. It’s possibly one of the most advanced and powerful page layout tools we’ve seen for RapidWeaver to date. But Isaiah also released the API for Stacks to allow developers like myself to hook into the power of Stacks and create our own custom stacks to add to the Stacks library.

Having recently addressed concerns of whether or not accessing ExtraContent areas in ExtraContent enabled themes was difficult to do with little fragments of code I seized the opportunity to explore the new Stacks API to find a better way. That’s how I came up with the ExtraContent Stacks Plugin, a custom Stacks library item that allows you o utlize ExtraContent without snippets or code. Just drag and drop it into your page like any other stack and build on top of it. From the comfort of the Stacks interface you can choose the ExtraContent area you wish to access and then build your your layout inside of it. Everything inside the ExtraContent stack will render in the ExtraContent area you chose. Watch this movie to see it in action.

Just like ExtraContent, the ExtraContent Stacks plugin is free and open source. If you are a developer who has embraced ExtraContent in your themes then feel free to distribute this custom Stack as an added bonus.

Learn more about the ExtraContent Stacks plugin here, watch the tutorial here, download the ExtraContent Stacks plugin here and get YourHead Softwares Stacks for RapidWeaver.

Tags: code, developer, new, plugin, rapidweaver, release, snippet, software, theme, yourhead

It recently came to our attention that Med-Designs had closed up shop. Being one of the original RapidWeaver theme developers, Med-Designs has been one of those names you’ve gotten used to seeing in RapidWeaver circles, so you can imagine our surprise to see that kind of institution shutting it’s doors.

I promptly contacted Scott of Med-Designs and asked him what he had planned for his theme library. Before long we had struck up a deal to bring the works over to seyDesign.com and breath some new life into them. So it is with great pleasure and a certain amount honor to bring you the legendary theme, RetroFilm

RetroFilm, a highly stylized RapidWeaver theme from Med-Designs gives you the sense you are looking at a salvaged bit 35 mm “Safety” film. For the movie buffs, this old stock of a theme should fit your movie blogs or review sites just fine. Tickets please!

RetroFilm has been totally reworked to bring it up to date with RapidWeaver 4 and has also had a few feature enhancements. We’ve made all of the headers and footers RWmultitool. We have also added the much asked for width feature, which is fully compatible with all headers and footers. Enjoy this old theme like it’s new all over again.

Updates at a glance:

• upgraded to RapidWeaver 4 compatibility
• refined code to validate
• added Info.plist for end user version tracking
• added release.txt for developer bug tracking
• added IE 6 png transparency support
• added RWmultitool ready headers and footers
• added fully functional width options
• refined color picker features
• added large preview image
• updated small preview image
• added keywords
• and much, much more…

Learn more about RetroFilm (Designer).

See the live preview.

Tags: code, design, developer, med-design, new, rapidweaver, release, seydesign, seydoggy, support, theme, update, version

The Beatles once said, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” That is definitely the case with the technology behind the latest theme from seyDoggy, Gotem. Our latest RapidWeaver theme is a sophisticated, contemporary RapidWeaver theme of extraordinary beauty and capability. But it also sports a new technology called ExtraContent.

ExtraContent came about when a handful of 3rd party developers got together to address the need for more content spaces in RapidWeaver. While the content area and sidebar are ample space for the vast majority of RapidWeaver users, there are some who want more flexibility to add content in ways keeping with todays modern web designs.

ExtraContent was the solution agreed upon by these developers as an easy means of end users adding more content to their site, in developer designated areas of ExtraContent enabled themes. While these areas will vary from theme to theme, the process will be very much the same. These developers worked closely to come up with a solution that would give all users a common experience.

I want to give a special thanks to Guiseppe from (((Bonsai Studios))) and Gary from RWT for sharing a common vision with me. You can look for new ExtraContent enabled themes from them VERY soon.

Features at a glance:

• ExtraContent enabled
• Two ExtraContent areas
• 10 Custom headers
• RWmultitool Ready
• Split navigation
• Width control
• Header height control
• 3 background textures
• Dual sidebar control
• Choice of font style
• Color control
• and more…

Learn more about Gotem (Ultimate).

See the live preview.

Learn more about ExtraContent.

Tags: design, developer, graphic, help, new, rapidweaver, rwt, seydesign, seydoggy, snippet, studio, support, theme