It’s about high time we tackled the 3rd Party Plug-Ins that are available for use with RapidWeaver.
So get ready because this is the pre-announcement for what’s to come.
Lets see if we can make deciding which one, or ones, to get a bit easier.
3rd Party Plug-Ins – An Introduction
iWeb and BannerZest – Flash Banner How To
It has been a while since we have offered a free show over at SupportCasts.com so here we go for today , yay.
This time we have taken a different direction and offered a show covering for what is generally the first website creation application you get when you buy/switch to a Mac and that is iWeb.
Whilst most people can use iWeb for their general needs , we have covered integrating a Flash Banner into iWeb for fun and to show that it is possible to just push iWeb a bit further :)
Basic requirements are iWeb 08 from Apple iLife Suite and Bannerzest from Aquafadas.
Enjoy and watch out for more shows on additional Mac applications
Shadowbox Take 2 – screencast and demo
Shadowbox Take 2 – screencast and demo (approx 13minutes)

ShadowBox – advanced integration
Developers Site: http://mjijackson.com/shadowbox/ (no relation to the singer :) )
So what ?
This readme covers the hard coded integration for ShadowBox and to have this available in all your pages, if you require :)
Here you can see the demo page with the finished result. This also works with Blocks, Accordion and Carousel (well partially :( ) and even Pluskit import.. how cool is that!
Integrating to RapidWeaver!
After my first try, I though I needed to do something a bit more integrated so it is used on all pages (thanks to seemore for the hint). just to recap some basics, shadowbox will use the Mootools 1.11 framework which should keep things tidy with all the other Mootools related plugins that are produced by YourHead.
I will walk though all this in the screencast …. so please watch (feel free to pause at any time) read through compare notes and what is actually happening on the screencast and then finally you can use this in your Theme of choice :)
First of all
- Duplicate your Theme (Ctrl- Click Duplicate) and give it a name
- download(see below download files in the comments) the files that we are going to add in the Theme contents , add all the files (except the readme) from the Shadowbox folder into the duplicated Theme contents, this includes the javascript, the images and Jeroens FLV player.
Open the Themes.plist in your text editor (I’m using Textmate)
Things to add to the Theme.plist see image below
loading.gif
overlay-85.png
mootools.js
shadowbox-mootools.js
shadowbox.js
shadowbox.css
flvplayer.swf
Figure 1.

Add the javascript Header information following RapidWeaver conventions. This includes the relevant information for your pages to find the mootools, shadowbox javascript and shadowbox css. In addition it also initialises the shadowbox with extra path information to find the images and flvplayer as you can see below.
<script type=“text/javascript” src=“%pathto(mootools.js)%”>script>
<script type=“text/javascript” src=“%pathto(shadowbox-mootools.js)%”>script>
<script type=“text/javascript” src=“%pathto(shadowbox.js)%”>script>
<script type=“text/javascript”>
window.addEvent(‘domready’,function(){
var options = {
loadingImage:‘%pathto(loading.gif)%’,
flvPlayer:‘%pathto(flvplayer.swf)%’,
overlayBgImage:‘%pathto(overlay-85.png)%’,
};
window.addEvent(Shadowbox.init(options));
});
script>
Screenshot of what it should look like
figure 2.

Add the following to find the shadowbox css
rel=“stylesheet” type=“text/css” media=“screen” href=“%pathto(shadowbox.css)%” />
Screenshot again
Figure 3.

-Install the snippets I have created first of all from the download pack
Create a new project or Test Page
- Add the ShadowBox JS Header to the Header Section in the Page Inspector
Looks like we are good to go so lets add a page to our ShadowBox modified Theme and see if it works.
As a note this will work in preview mode and export also.
To call a Shadowbox (without going into too much detail) just add shadowbox to the rel tag. You can see more at the developers site :)
Some examples… it is worth noting you can change the default size at initialisation. Web page content goes full size :)
Figure 4.

Change size of Shadowbox, using a FLV asset
Figure 5.

Forms to Go – build a contact form for RapidWeaver
Forms to Go – build a contact form for RapidWeaver

Well it has been a while but here is a new screencast (and a new Flash format) for demonstrating how to use Forms to Go with RapidWeaver.
The screencast will show you the basics on creating a contact form with error validation and a CAPTCHA
Enjoy the show
Importing with Pluskit – A cool page in under 3 minutes
FontSizer snippet – change font size in RapidWeaver pages
FontSizer snippet – change font size in RapidWeaver pages

FontSizer – snippet
If you find this useful donations are welcome at the Developers Site:
What’s included?
Download the snippet pack
Two snippets for adding to the page inspector Custom Header and one for adding to the Sidebar. In addition there are two example graphic files that can be added to the page assets. These can be replaced by your own.
Note: this version will only work in Theme styles that have fonts defined by px. In this case the snippets will modify the size of Text contained by the body css tag.
The developer has stated that this can be modified easily to accommodate any tag and em defined fonts.
Integrating to RapidWeaver!
Add the header snippet

Add the Sidebar Snippet too. and also clear the formatting (Apple Key – Full Stop)

Add the graphics to the page assets

Make a Button Builder Theme Tutorial
Mediabox Integration with RapidWeaver pages
Mediabox Integration with RapidWeaver pages

Another cool videobox plug in using Mootools framework to play back video content, Mediabox also supports web content too. This is what I use on the site here :)
To accompany the RW forum article here
Videobox integration with RapidWeaver
Videobox integration with RapidWeaver

The original videobox built with Mootools framework and how to integrate with your RW Pages.
To accompany the RW forum article here
Embed Apple Quicktime into RapidWeaver pages
Embed Apple Quicktime into RapidWeaver pages

Using QuickTime Pro ‘export for web’ function to playback your video files (to accompany the RW Forum article)
The former screencast page was built using this
See the accompanying RW forum article here
Shadowbox screencast integration and RapidWeaver
Shadowbox screencast integration

A pretty cool lightbox (that does everything from web, mov, flv, wmv…)… check out the demo page for more information on how to integrate to RapidWeaver and my test examples online





