This user guide can be viewed online, printed or saved as a PDF. Go to www.themeflood.com and click on the support link. Choose Composition from the user guide archive.
System And User Requirements
This theme is developed and tested to work with the latest version of RapidWeaver. The theme is also backwards compatible with RapidWeaver 3.6. You will need to already have a licensed version of RapidWeaver installed on your computer before installing Composition. It’s assumed that users of this theme have a good understanding of how RapidWeaver works, in relation to aspects such as creating a new projects, changing theme settings, adding pages, changing website settings and publishing sites to the internet. Some third-party RapidWeaver plugins are mentioned in this user guide, but generally no extra plugins are required to build basic websites using this theme. Advanced features like search bars may require the purchase of additional plugins.
Theme Compatibility
Plugin Compatibility
Composition has been extensively tested with all of the standard plugins (page styles) included with RapidWeaver. In addition, testing has also been done with a wide range of third party plugins by various developers including Loghound, Cosculture, Yourhead, YabDab, Weaverplugins and SymphonIP. It should be assumed that Composition will work with other third-party plugins as well. However, some third-party plugins do not use valid XHTML or CSS code and may not be compatible with certain web browsers. In such instances, you will need to contact the plugin developer for updates or support or use alternative plugins. Demo versions of Composition are available for free download, so you can test and fully evaluate specific plugins yourself before purchasing the theme. Plugin developers also have access to the demo version.
Theme Colour Settings
Composition has a wide range of theme colour settings, available for use under the style tab in the theme settings. Most main colour settings are listed under the 'Colors' disclosure tab. Other groups of theme settings may also include colour settings, relating to that particular element. Clicking on a coloured square reveals the Mac OS X colour picker window, where you can select new colours using a range of different palette tools.
Header Background Settings
The large image container at the top of the theme is referred to as the header. This container hosts the site title, site slogan, optional logo images and the sidebar. You can customise the image background of this container using any one of the example images supplied with the theme. Or you can import your own images -- Composition has 40 placeholders for standard JPG images and 10 placeholders for semi-transparent PNG images. You can either choose to have the same header image on every page, or have different header images across different pages to add some variety to your website. Alternatively there is a solid colour fill option or the possibility of using Flash (SWF) or a slideshow via another plugin. Example header images supplied with the theme were all produced by myself, and you are welcome to reuse any of them in your own web site.
Header Layout Settings
Composition gives you a broad range of header layout settings, enabling you to carefully customise this vital part of the theme. Alongside a wide range of header heights, you can opt to choose an integrated or standalone header. An integrated header will sit seamlessly above the content container, with no corners or gap between your content container and the header container. A standalone header container creates more of a poster-style design, by applying rounded corners on all sides of the header and content containers. In addition, a standalone header will insert a 25 pixel gap between the header and content containers. Selecting ‘none’ under the theme settings will remove the header container altogether.
Header Font Settings
A choice of 20 web-safe and semi web-safe font face options are provided in the theme. Header font settings are applicable to the site title, site slogan, sidebar title, blog entry titles, photo album titles, video album titles and header tags. A ‘sprite’ system is used for the font settings, ensuring that if a person viewing a site does not have a particular font installed, their web browser will default to a close alternative. For example, if Palatino is not available, Times New Roman will be used instead.
Horizontal Navigation Settings
If you have a larger number of parent links or you want to keep links together, opting for a ‘block navigation’ layout will place all links together in the content container. Several colour settings are provided, allowing you to customise links and dividers.
Note: In Internet Explorer 6, an extra divider border will be appended onto the end of horizontal navigation links (if dividers are used). This is because this browser has limited CSS support and is unable to distinguish where the last navigation item falls.
Block Navigation Settings
These settings can be used to customise the block navigation container which is presented within the content container. Normally this container is host to sub page links, presented in an indented nested style. Both the width and position of the block navigation links can be changed, together with several colour settings. If you have no sub pages to display, click the ‘none’ option to clear the surplus container and whitespace -- content will then span 100%.
Content Font Settings
A choice of 20 web-safe and semi web-safe font face options are provided in the theme. Content font settings are applicable to all elements of a page not covered by header font settings. A ‘sprite’ system is used for the font settings, ensuring that if a person viewing a site does not have a particular font installed, their web browser will default to a close alternative. For example, if Palatino is not available, Times New Roman will be used instead.
Note: Some RapidWeaver plugins will force their own font settings into a page. Sometimes these may not match your preferred fonts. In such cases, you may need to change plugin settings or use custom CSS to obtain a more desirable style. Contact the plugin developer for further information. In addition, some web browsers do not permit elements like form fields or buttons to have their font face changed.
Line Height and Font Size Settings
These settings allow you to carefully customise the appearance of text within the theme. This enables you to customise text in areas such as content or sidebar. Letter spacing controls the distance between individual letters or character. Line height controls the distance between lines of text. Font size controls the height of lettering. Some web designs recommend that light text on a dark background should be presented in a slightly larger font size and line space than normal to help aid clarity. Larger text sizes can look particular effective in some designs.
Logo and Logo Links
Logo images can be inserted into the site setup window as normal in RapidWeaver. Logo images will automatically link back to your homepage. The homepage address is the same address you provide in the ‘web address’ box within the Site Setup window. If you need a logo to link somewhere else, open the index.html file within the theme contents and find the logo tags. Change the ‘base_url’ tag to a URL of your choice. Composition supports multiple logo placement options including fixed screen badges, upper areas of the header and the header container itself. -- the logo is placed above the site slogan and will automatically push content down if you opt to use a larger logo image.
Note: In Internet Explorer 6, logo images which are placed using the ‘fixed’ options will instead behave as absolutely-positioned elements. This is because this browser has limited CSS support and does not support fixed placement for objects. In addition, semi-transparent PNG logo images are non-supported in IE6 and will be rendered with a solid grey background instead.
Sidebar Settings
Composition has a sidebar located within the header container and has numerous sidebar options. This makes the sidebar region easily customisable to your requirements. All sidebar settings can be accessed under the theme settings. Alongside some colour settings, you can pick a sidebar width or position based on the type of content you wish to display. Settings exist for a single sidebar floated left or right. All sidebar position settings are available in a choice of widths. Care should be taken that any wide items inserted into a sidebar or extra content container do not extend outside the sidebar boundary -- which could potentially cause layout problems (container wrapping) in Internet Explorer.
Theme Width
Several theme width settings exist in this theme, enabling you to customise the main container width. Some users prefer narrower widths, whereas others prefer wider page widths to fit more content in. Your choice of theme width should be governed by the type of content you wish to display and plugins you want to use (plugins such as WeaverPix and RapidAlbum require wider pages). When designing your website, remember that quite a large proportion of internet users have screen sizes of no more than 1024px by 768px. This is a trend which has stabilised since the introduction of new devices such as netbooks and tablet PC's. Theme width settings are specified in increments of 50px and a couple of other specialist widths are included for those familiar with the concept of grid systems. A custom theme width option is also included -- this can be edited in the css/width/ folder within the theme contents to include your own width setting.
Search Bar (Miscellaneous Settings)
Swap Navigation Bar Alignment (Miscellaneous Settings)
This setting will make parent page links within the navigation bar align right and align an option search bar on the left. So in effect, the alignment of both page elements is swapped over.
Remove Navigation Bar Background (Miscellaneous Settings)
Use this setting to remove the background image and solid colour fill from the navigation bar. Ticking this option will give you an appearance similar to earlier versions of Composition and Aperture, whereby parent page links are rendered directly on the body background.
Remove Borders From Header Tags (Miscellaneous Settings)
By default, Composition will insert a horizontal line after header tags. This improves the appearance of pages and can add to the professionalism of an overall website. But in some third-party plugins like Kwix, the presentation of horizontal lines under header tags can be a hinderance. Ticking this option will safely remove borders from under header tags.
Bookmark Bar (Miscellaneous Settings)
A growing number of websites feature a horizontal bar at the top of a page, containing special links, announcements or icons to popular bookmarking or social networking services. Composition is one of the first RapidWeaver themes to include this functionality, and it’s a great feature for artists or photographers looking to promote products or services organically. Either EC1 or EC2 (Extra Content) can be used to place content into the bookmark bar -- depending on whether you want content left or right aligned (or both). Text or images in this bar can be assigned links if required. Several web design websites and blogs like Smashing Magazine host a number of free icon collections which may be used.
Parent Page Links Replace Breadcrumbs (Miscellaneous Settings)
Normally breadcrumb links will be placed in the bottom left of a footer container within Composition. But on smaller websites, the use of breadcrumb links may seem rather pointless. Instead, this theme option can be used to replace the standard breadcrumb links with a list of your parent pages. In some websites this may be a more practical solution and give end users another method of navigation -- particularly useful after they have scrolled down to the bottom of a page.
Splash Screen Style (Miscellaneous Settings)
This theme setting will remove the page content, footer and navigation bar containers from the theme. This will leave just the header container and sidebar on display. Splash screens are particularly useful in some websites for creating an eye-catching welcome or introduction page. Alternatively the Splash screen style can be used to make a special announcement like the upcoming launch of a new website, product or service. Links from the splash page onto other pages would need to be created manually. Third-party plugins like PlusKit (not included) can be used to import content from other pages into the sidebar like contact forms or slideshows.
Blank Page Style (Miscellaneous Settings)
Similar to the ‘splash screen style’ setting, this setting will remove all elements from a page, accept for a transparent content container. This setting is ideal for building your own slideshows or video pages without the general clutter of other page elements. This setting works particularly well with Stacks and Blocks plugins (not included). Like the splash screen style, links off of the page would need to be created manually. This type of page style supports use of the PlusKit plugin (not included) to import content from other pages.
Preview Extra Content Containers (Miscellaneous Settings)
Composition has support for several EC (Extra Content) containers. EC is becoming a popular method in third-party RapidWeaver themes for allowing the placement of content outside of the normal editable regions of a page. See details below for further information on how to use EC. This option to preview EC containers offers RapidWeaver users an excellent insight into where EC containers will be rendered. The names and numbers of each EC container are displayed for easier reference.
Extra Content
Composition includes basic support for EC (Extra Content). Ten EC containers are available in this theme -- their positions and placement can be seen by using the Preview Extra Content Containers option under the theme settings. To embed content within your EC containers, use the standard EC code snippet or the Stacks plugin. Text colour settings for all ten EC containers can be found under the theme colour settings. More information on using extra content (including free snippets and stacks) can be obtained from this website: http://extracontent.info/
Adding icons to external links
Styling Header Tags
The header tags can be styled using CSS. You can ether style individual levels of headers, or style them all collectively as a group. To style individual headers, the CSS code you would use would look like this:
h3 {
text-transform: lowercase;
font: 200% "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;
color: #5e5e5e;
}
This code above would convert all h3 tags to lowercase, increase the font size to 200% and convert the font face to a Helvetica font family with an iron grey colour. If you wanted to style all of your header tags the same, multiple selector names can be used in the CSS code, separated by commas like this:
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
text-transform: lowercase;
font: 200% "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;
color: #5e5e5e;
}
The text size of header tags will still vary in size, depending on the specific header tag used. But all header tags would have lowercase lettering, a standardised font face and the same colour throughout. This custom CSS code can either go into the custom.css file within the theme contents, or you can enter it in the normal custom CSS box within the page inspector in RapidWeaver.
Duplicating Themes
If you are planning on making any modifications to the Composition theme, it is highly recommended that you duplicate the theme -- that means making a copy of the theme to customise, leaving an original version in RapidWeaver unedited. Working from a duplicated theme ensures you can always return back to an original version at anytime. Themes can be easily duplicated by right-clicking (or control and clicking) the theme preview icon in RapidWeaver and selecting 'Duplicate' from the popup menu. Give the duplicated theme a new name and work from that version. Duplicated themes will not be effected by future theme updates.
Saving Styles
Theme Contents
Code, settings, files and graphics required by a theme live inside a package called Composition.rwtheme or similar. If you are planning to modify the theme or add new elements to it, the 'theme contents' (package) is where you normally need to go. RapidWeaver themes are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/RapidWeaver/ where "~" is the name of your home directory. But you can also easily access the theme contents from within RapidWeaver. Just right-click (or control and click) the theme preview icon and select 'Reveal theme contents in Finder' from the pup window. The theme contents is revealed in a Finder window, from where you can access all the files which make-up the theme.
Adding Custom Header Images Using Finder
Header images used by the theme are stored inside the theme contents. This ensures that the images become an embedded part of the theme and can be selected for use under the theme settings. For example, you may want to have a different image displayed on different pages of your website to add some variety.
The theme contents can be accessed by CTRL + Clicking (or right clicking) on the theme preview icon in RapidWeaver (the small picture of Composition which appears in your theme drawer). From the popup menu, select the 'Reveal theme contents in Finder' option. A new Finder window opens which contains a selection of files and folders. Open the folder marked 'images'. Then inside, open the folder marked 'editable_images'. This editable_images folder contains all of the images used by the theme, including placeholder images. Placeholder images are typically blank and named or numbered sequentially like header-01.jpg, header-02.jpg, header-3.jpg for example.
Any of these placeholder images can be replaced using your own images. When you add new custom images, name them so that they replace placeholder images. By replacing the placeholder images supplied in the theme, your custom images will be available for selection under the theme settings. When creating new images, it is advisable that these are optimised for the internet - typically this means that should not have any specific colour profiling applied and be of 72 DPI with a file size no greater that 75KB.
Adding Custom Header Images Using RapidWeaver MultiTool
RapidWeaver MultiTool is a third party application which runs seperate to RapidWeaver. Both a free and premium version of this software is available. When open, RapidWeaver MultiTool presents a list of themes installed on your computer. Themes which are compatible with RapidWeaver MultiTool store all of their images inside a folder called editable_images. RapidWeaver MultiTool enables you to edit any of these images. The orgional images are safely backed-up within the theme so they can be retrieved at a later date if required.
It is recommended you start by editing placeholder images. Placeholder images are typically blank and named or numbered sequentially like header-01.jpg, header-02.jpg, header-3.jpg for example. Using RapidWeaver MultiTool, you can drag and drop new images onto the canvases. Many basic image editing techniques can also be performed on these images and text can be applied. Use the save button in RapidWeaver MultiTool to apply the customsied image to your theme. RapidWeaver MultiTool is developed by a separate software company and support documentation is provided on the website.
Adding Custom Header Images using Extra Content
Extra Content enables you to place content outside the normal editable regions of a RapidWeaver website. In this theme, you can add EC to the header container, making this perfect for adding custom images. Start by creating your images in an external editor and use a utility like PixelStick to measure the size of your header container. Create the custom images to this size of your header container. You will need to apply aspects of styling like rounded corners in your image editor. Images should be optimised for the internet - typically this means that should not have any specific colour profiling applied and be of 72 DPI with a file size no greater that 75KB. When ready, enter this HTML code into the sidebar or use an EC Stack:
<div id="myExtraContent6"> </div>
Drag and drop your image into the code, placing it between the opening and closing tag. When you website is previewed, the image will be added to the header. You may need to use the 'Preview Extra Content Containers' option under the theme settings to check you're using the correct EC container. EC also has some support for the @import function in PlusKit, so it may be possible to import images, Stacks or slideshows from other pages.
More information on using EC, including downloads of free Stacks and Snippets can be found here: http://extracontent.info/
Adding custom header images using plugins
If you are using plugins such as SYMimages, there is an option to move generated content in EC containers. Similar, to the approack above, you should use the 'Preview Extra Content Containers' option under the theme settings to check you're using the correct EC container. Then in the plugin, select the correct EC container from the menu.
Adding custom header images from a warehouse
If your images are already scaled to size and stored on the internet, it is possible to import them into the theme using CSS or jQuery Javascript. To use CSS, copy and paste this code into the Custom CSS box in the page inspector:
#header {
background-image: url(http://www.example.com/image1.jpg);
}
Change the URL to point to your image stored on the internet. There are other CSS attributes you can add to this code to change image alignment and background repeat. Search on the internet for further details of this.
If you are using Stacks like the XML Randomiser Stack, this can be used to pull in warehoused images at random to display within a page. You would need to use the @import function in PlusKit (not included) to import the Randomiser Stack code into your header container using Extra Content. There are other Stacks and code snippets available for RapidWeaver to import images into a page.
Embedding Flash Banners Within The Header
The header container in Composition can accept Flash banners generated using software such as Bannerzest. Bannerzest is arguably the best application available on Mac OS X for creating basic Flash slideshows and other animations made from images and text. After you have created and published a Flash banner from Bannerzest, copy the embed code and paste it into the Custom Header box under the RapidWeaver Page Inspector. The animation will then be shown within the header container. RapidWeaver needs to be listed as a trusted application before a Flash file can be previewed -- this is an option found under the preferences in Bannerzest and similar software.
Note: The images inside an animation are an integral part of the Flash file and cannot be modified by RapidWeaver or a theme. You will need to make sure the images used in a Flash animation are already scaled to the correct size. You may also wish to apply rounded corners to your images and save them as PNG images if rounded corners are desired.
If embedding Flash generated by another application, follow the same instructions as above. To embed them in the header, use this standard HTML Flash embed code:
<object width="550" height="400">
<param name="wmode" value="transparent">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.example.com/somefilename.swf">
<embed src="http://www.example.com/somefilename.swf" width="550" height="400" wmode="transparent">
</embed>
</object>
In this code above, the WMODE attribute has been added, which will enable other elements like a site title, slogan, logo or sidebar container to be layered over a Flash file. It is recommended that the Flash files are published separately to the RapidWeaver project, rather than trying to embed one within the other. The advantage of using the page inspector to embed you Flash is that you can have a different Flash animation of different pages if required.
Animate Anchor Tags
A popular trend in modern showcase and portfolio website designs is to condense a whole website onto a single page or to create a series of pages hosting different content or galleries. Anchor links (internal page links) can then be used, enabling a visitor to navigate larger webpages and jump to particular sections. The Composition theme contains a short jQuery (Javascript) script which will animate anchor links and scroll the page smoothly.
Ideally you should start by creating a menu or table of contents (TOC) somewhere in the page, normally at the top or in a sidebar. Each link should be formed using code smilar to this:
<a href="#about" class="anchorLink">About</a>
<a href="#gallery" class="anchorLink">Gallery</a>
<a href="#contact" class="anchorLink">Contact</a>
To assign the point in a page where link should 'jump' to, use this HTML code as an anchor:
<a name="contact">Contact</a>
The link address and anchor name should always match. The link must contain a class selector of "anchorLink" in order for the smoothscroll effect to work. If a user viewing the page does not have Javascript enabled, the links will still work, but will not be animated. Speed settings for the animation can be found in the javascript.js file within the theme contents. To prevent anchor links being animated, omit the class selector name from your code. As well as scrolling users down a page, you can also include anchor links to scroll them back to the top of a page - this is quite useful on longer pages. More information on using anchor tags can be found online.
Making Theme Customisations Using CSS
All elements in the Composition theme have either class or ID names. These names can be used as selectors, to apply custom CSS code to. The best method is to preview your website in a web browser such as Firefox or Safari. With developer tools installed or enabled, right click a particular element and choose to open or inspect it. This will give details of the element such as its selector name and and CSS code already applied to it. From this point, you can use the selector name and custom CSS code to change the style or appearance of an item. For example, padding can be changed, borders applied or background images added onto element. CSS gives you the potential to make many style changes to a theme. Composition has been designed and structured to make this as easy as possible. Some third-party RapidWeaver plugins also come supplied with details on how to modify styles using CSS. A lot of information regarding CSS can be sourced from the internet.
Applying Custom CSS
This theme features a very useful 'custom.css' file within the theme contents. Into this file, you can enter custom CSS code. Unlike the Custom CSS box under the Page Inspector in RapidWeaver, code entered into the custom.css file gets applied to all pages and enables you to edit CSS using a preferred editor like CSSedit or Text Wrangler. These types of editors often feature useful features like syntax colouring, auto-completion and validation, which combined make CSS editing much easier and safer. There are many free resources on the internet which cover CSS in detail. To open the custom.css file, right click (or CTRL + Click) the theme preview icon in RapidWeaver and select 'Reveal Theme Contents in Finder'. Open the custom.css file in your preferred code editor. If you only need to apply custom CSS code to a single page, enter this code under the Page Inspector custom CSS box as normal.
Upgrading From Previous Versions Of Composition And Aperture
The latest version of Composition will install itself alongside any older versions of Composition or Aperture you already have installed on your computer. RapidWeaver treats each version as a separate theme, so you can gradually migrate individual projects from one theme to another without destructive results! To apply a new theme to a project, select the theme under the theme chooser in RapidWeaver. It is wise to mark all pages as changed and perform a complete re-upload of your website after changing themes. Some users also take advantage of a theme change to delete existing files on a web server using FTP software and starting from afresh again. Saved theme styles are non-transferable to new themes unfortunately. Renewed sets of saved theme styles can be created instead, taking advantage of new features in the theme.
Note: Existing purchasers of this theme can upgrade to the latest version for free at no extra charge. See the ThemeFlood website for details about obtaining your theme update.
Important Code Details
In this theme, jQuery is sourced from Google API's. This reduces your bandwidth (page size) by about 50KB. There are other benefits of using hosted versions of jQuery which are outlined on this website: http://encosia.com/2008/12/10/3-reasons-why-you-should-let-google-host-jquery-for-you/
While editing websites offline, you may find it more convenient to use the version of jQuery included within the theme contents. This can be applied to a theme by opening the theme contents and then opening the index.html file in a code editor. Replace the existing jQuery call links with this code instead:
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="%pathto(scripts/jquery-1.4.2.min.js)%"></script>
Because RapidWeaver cleares its cache everytime you preview a page, a fresh version of jQuery is downloaded from the intent each time. This may add a slight delay to the RapidWeaver preview, particularly if your internet or network connection is slow. This time-delay issue is often resolved once a website is published online.
To support the use of Flash banners, the Custom Header tag within the index.html file has been moved from the head section down into the theme header to facilitate the use of embedded Flash headers. If you are adding special effects or code to a web page like modal windows (e.g. lightbox), you may not be able to use the custom header box within the page inspector. To overcome this issue, you can either embed your code directly into the index.html file within the theme contents, or move the custom header tag back to its original position (again within the index.html file).
Customer Support
You can find links to various resources on the ThemeFlood website. Official RapidWeaver support resources such as the user manual, help desk and forums are available under the help menu in RapidWeaver. For issues relating to this theme or other problems, please don't hesitate to get in contact via the ThemeFlood website. Unlike some other theme companies, customer support is free and is extended to cover themes which have been customised or modified. Facilities are available for you to upload customised themes and RapidWeaver sandwich (project) files. A custom theme and modification service is also available on request.