If you liked our original RW 3.1 Shadow Red and Shadow Blue themes, you'll really like our new Shadow Colors 3.5 theme. We've completely reworked the original Shadow theme from the ground floor up adding in new colors and variations. Look for more information and a release later this week.

Thanks to everyone who has purchased the MaxLight theme. We will be continuing to update this theme as needed and are working on the Hide Sidebar variation now.

Be sure to check out this site that uses MaxLight that uses the newly introduced theme functionality of a 2nd custom image location and banner ad variations. Go to http://www.shuffleskins.de/ This is a very well designed site and kudos to the developer Matthias Ficht for an excellent job on the site layout and content.

Watch our blog page for upcoming new theme releases later this week and next.

We have had several recent theme buyers use emails that were not valid so their theme download emails could not be delivered, and we could not follow up with them on their theme support requests that we received. If you have recently purchased our themes and did not receive your email download, please contact us using another email address so we can get you your theme files. This affects only 3 recent buyers. We want to get you your themes that you purchased from us but until you contact us we have no way to make this happen. Thanks!

We have emailed out the version 3 update of the MaxLight theme to everyone who has bought the theme so far.

MaxLight now works correctly with Blocks and Collage (*Note: you must select the Image Border OFF variation when using these 2 page plug-ins for the images to retain their transparency). Both of the 2 custom image locations now display correctly.

The MaxLight demo website has been updated adding in a Blocks page and the file sharing page's MaxLight Readme files now download correctly.

A quick production tip to offer everyone if you are using MaxLight with your site - use the Edit mode to select all your theme variations in for the page you are working on and then hit Preview to view your page. This will speed up your site production.

We are happy to announce our newest theme MaxLight is finally released. This theme introduces several firsts for RW themes - 10 Custom image variations each for 2 different image locations, 2 built-in horizontal banner ad variations that can be turned on and off for each page, rounded corners to divs generated just using javascript (thanks to a modified curvy corners script), and tons of theme variations, beginners and pros alike will find very helpful in their site development. If you develop websites with RW, this is the theme you've been waiting for. Check it out here on the MaxLight page or go to the live MaxLight Demo Site.

Although we do not have the site page up for MaxLight and the live preview site in place yet (that'll be tomorrow afternoon), we wanted to give everyone who's been so patience with us while we got this theme wrapped up and out the door an advance look at the new theme. It's also available now for purchase using these links for those who would like to go ahead and get it now: Buy PAYPAL  | Buy ESELLERATE


We tried not to hype this theme much (although we got some unwanted attention when we missed the first release date) and as you know the styleswitcher did not make it into the theme. But here's some partial info on what's included in MaxLight:

"This Blueball original simple, functional, and unique theme's design is loaded with the most requested variations from RW users. It also includes several firsts for RW themes - 10 Custom image variations for 2 different locations in the theme (pageheader background and area where you see the image above the menu), 2 built-in horizontal banner ad variations, rounded corners on multiple divs using javascript, and all the theme variations asked for most by RW users, beginners and pros alike. Did we mention that it is very easy to customize the theme too and we tell you how? If you develop websites with RW, this is the theme you've been waiting for."

Anyway, that's part of the release info. And the price is very affordable at just $10. MaxLight works with IE6, Safari, and Firefox (Mac/PC). Watch here and on the Realmac forum for the rest tomorrow afternoon. Thanks and have fun with MaxLight!

I recently found out about what I would call a bug with RW 3.5 that has made me rethink whether to include a styleswitcher variation with our new MaxLight theme. I had never known of this bug as our themes validate strict so they were for the most part not affected by this. Seems that if a page is not strict in validation, i.e. transitional for example, that RW 3.5 strips the doctype lines out of the exported page file. This causes major display issues with IE6.

So now we are trying to rewrite a new script that will allow the exported pages using the styleswitcher variation to validate strict so that RW will leave in the doctype lines. Or just let me ask all you RW users - how important would a styleswitcher be to you in this theme? If not too much then we may wait and add it back in on a later release of this theme once RW 3.5 has this corrected. Let me know on this when you get a chance. Thanks!

Developing Rapidweaver Themes has not been the main focus or that large a part of our design business to date. Graphic design and website work has been our mainstay and where the bulk of our business has been focused - i.e. this pays the bills. I just returned from working with a client on our last major design project and with most of our clients off on vacation this month, we are going to devote the next 4 weeks to just Rapidweaver Theme development (ok maybe 90% of the time would be more accurate) and see how many of the 9 themes we have in development we can get out the door in that period. If the return on the themes is enough we will continue devoting a significant portion of our production time in the future to just RW theme releases and custom theme work. We will also be spending more time in the Realmac forum which we have not been able to of late.

Although we had every intention of releasing the MaxLight theme yesterday as announced, several things prevented this from happening. First we had to finish up several large design projects for clients which we did wrap up yesterday finally along with some custom theme projects which for the most part are also completed.

Second, 2 of the new features in this theme cause pages to not validate strict. They will validate transitional without any problem. We are working on the strict validation but may go ahead and release the theme and note that pages will validate only as transitional when these 2 variation features are used. We will work today to try to get them to validate strict on exported RW pages but will move on with the theme after this even if we have to leave it as transitional so we can get it out to everyone. We also have to write up the Readme files. Sorry for the delay but I want to make sure it is right before we release it.