And that concludes all the theme updates (for now!)
This afternoon I have published updates to the following former-Nimblehost themes. The latest version number is shown in brackets: - Atlas (2.0) - Dexture (2.0) - Flexture (2.0) - Glide (4.0) - Gravity (5.0) - Phelix (4.0) - Unity (10)
Visually I have tried not to change too much in these updated themes and in most cases a majority of the original style / colour variations remain intact. The main focus has been to modernise the codebase to fix various responsive behaviour and RapidWeaver issues.
In Dexture and Flexture, the 'VIP' component has been rewritten, so that it will remember font size and colour changes with tracking cookies, between website visits. This was something a number of people had requested.
All themes now include Bootstrap 4 and Font Awesome Icons. Themes with banners should also let you drag-and-drop your own banner image in, via the box in the RapidWeaver 7 Page Inspector.
Jonathan Head at Nimblehost was the first RapidWeaver developer to bring responsive themes to the marketplace. Unity was the theme that started it all. In the early days of responsive behaviour, a lot of adaptations were done using complicated Javascript. Nowadays (with significant enhancements in CSS, breakpoints and HTML5) Javascript is not the preferred method to target handheld devices with extra code. And indeed, many theme users were seeing problems with responsive behaviour not taking effect in RapidWeaver preview or on their newer smartphones or tablets.
This has meant a lot of work has been put into these themes, to rewrite large portions of the 'responsive behaviour' code. It has not been easy. I estimate that each theme has taken about 6 - 8 hours to ‘repair’. Hence these final themes have taken a lot longer to update, than I would have liked. So thank you for your patience if you have been waiting!
As before, I am offering these updated themes as free updates to existing customers. They are beautiful theme designs, very solidly built and working brilliantly once again. And of these updated themes would be ideal to use in future projects. I have actually been using a couple myself, for some important client web projects in recent weeks.
I don't think these updates will come-in via Sparkle / automatic updates in RapidWeaver. A lot has changed in these themes and RapidWeaver possibly can't recognise them any more. So I instead invite you to contact me direct via email, Twitter or Facebook with previous receipts or download links. I'll gladly issue you coupon codes to get the latest versions.
Parts of the seyDesign website are looking a little tired and neglected. I know that some of the theme demo sites are still out of date - showing older versions of the themes or plugins that are long obsolete. For now, I would encourage you to download the free demo versions of the themes, if you are interested in trying any yourself.
Once we have got the chaos of Black Friday / Cyber Monday out of the way, I am going to be rejuvenating the seyDesign website. This will involve reorganising some information, updating the user guides and making the website easier for us to keep updated.
Incidentally, everything on the seyDesign website is going to be included in our big Black Friday event, starting on Friday 24th November 2017. Keep an eye out on the RapidWeaver forums and RapidDealz for news about this event. There will be a particularly nice "perk" for recent seyDesign customers too!
-Will.
