I have been working with Isaiah, from YourHead Software, on designing the user interface and icons for his latest RapidWeaver plug-in, Stacks. I’d like to tell you a little about the plug-in and show you some of the icons we developed and a little bit of the process behind developing the icons.

Slices
Each Stacks page is built from slices that are defined by you, the user. Anything from a Styled Text slice to an Image or Columns slice. You can create a complex layout quickly and with ease. Each slice needed a simple, clear icon to represent it. Isaiah had an idea of the sort of icons he was looking for to represent most of these slices. So I took his sketches and turned them into finished icons.

Interface
I also worked with Isaiah on developing the User Interface for Stacks. Below are a few of the initial ideas I came up with for the Library design and main content interface. Some were more ‘out there’ than others.

In the end we settled on the matte black Library. We also added a non-standard, classy library trigger in the lower right corner of the interface. The final UI design came out rather well, I think, and is easy to use and navigate.

Iconic
Isaiah and I were quite lucky in developing the Stacks icon. After sketching some ideas out for myself to start from I jumped right into Cinema 4D to mockup some icon ideas. Luckily these early renders were what Isaiah was looking for and the metaphor fit well with the title and functionality of the plug-in. Some of the early ideas can be seen here:

Here is the final icon we settled upon to represent Isaiah’s wonderful new plug-in.

Tags: Plug-ins, Icons, User Interface

I am pretty excited to announce our latest theme. This one is really stylish and fun to use. It sort of came together without a lot of problems and was really fun to develop. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to our latest addition — Float. Below you’ll find a few of the main features of this new theme, but for a list of everything that Float offers, have a look at the product page.

Beautiful and fluffy
Float is a light, airy design that offers you a classy choice for designing your website. This RapidWeaver theme packs a lot of options. It is a theme that is perfect for creating a website for a small business, portfolio, blog, photo album and more.

Backgrounds & headers

Float offers a huge number professionally designed, stylish background styles. The backgrounds included in this theme serve as both a header and a site background. Included in Float are 27 graphical backgrounds along with the ability to use the color picker to choose your own solid color. Or, simply hide the background altogether. View the live preview site to get an idea of the high quality, background images and watch our demo video to see all of the included backgrounds. There are also 6 blank slots for use with RWmultitool.

Sidebar
Float includes seven sidebar variations. Not only can you place your sidebar on the left or the right, but you can also choose to locate it at the bottom of the site, just above the footer. In addition to normal sidebar styles you can choose to dress up the sidebar as well. We offer an option for a 3D inset look on either the left or the right, as well as a talk-bubble-esque look for the sidebar at the bottom. Check out our demo video or live preview site to get a look at all of these options.

Find it... in style
Float incorporates a very stylish search feature into its menu bar. When a visitor to your site clicks the magnifying glass located on the right-hand side of the menu bar a search field will float up and allow them to use Google to search your site.

Stylish navigation
One of the main highlights of the Float theme is its beautiful floating menu bar. It allows users to navigate your site in style. In setting up your site with RapidWeaver, and our Float theme, you have a wide variety of options available to you.

Float allows you to:
• Change the font style and size
• Modify the background of the selected items
• Change the division lines between menu items

Float offers four fonts to choose from in the menu. It also gives you the option of three font sizes.

When changing the current selected item's appearance you have eight different options.

We've also provided five different menu divider lines.

There’s a lot more to Float, so be sure to checkout the product page.

Tags: New Theme, Float, Themes

Just a quick couple of changes to the site— I’ve fixed a wrong link in the RSS feed in the sidebar the left. You can read our blog via that RSS feed or subscribe via Feedburner.

I also added the Skinny Series of themes back to the theme listing page. I’d mistakenly left it out, even though Paper and Plastic are both available and come in the Ultimate bundle.

I’ve also styled up the Comments pop-up window a bit to dress things up to match the new site design. Click on the Comments link at the end of this post to check it out. Let me know what you think.

Don’t forget to check out our sale.

Tags: elixir, Fixes

To celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday we wanted to offer up a large discount for everyone.

Beginning today and running through Saturday (ending at mid-night EST on Saturday) you can use the code BLACKFRIDAY to receive 40% off your entire order. The code works on orders of $15 or more and discounts the entire cart’s contents.

We truly are thankful for RapidWeaver, the Realmac crew, and especially you all, our wonderful customers.

We hope you have a wonderful, and safe, Thanksgiving holiday.

Update: I forgot to mention this before, but the discount code will also work on our sister site Icon lab.

Tags: Themes, Discounts, Black Friday

I would first like to apologize that it has been quiet around here as of late. The reason may seem obvious now, but it is because we’ve been working to redesign the entire elixir site from the ground up, create a new theme and much, much more.

I'll cover some of the new areas of the site and new theme below. I would love to hear your thoughts on the new site as well and if there are any areas where you think we could improve upon it.

Before I jump into the site redesign, I’d like to introduce you to our latest theme, Candy—

Mmmm... tasty!
Candy is a highly flexible, super stylish RapidWeaver theme, with a gooey, tasty center.

OK, maybe it doesn't have a gooey center, but it is a theme that is perfect for creating a website for a small business, portfolio, blog, photo album and much more.

Candy offers 38 built-in headers, some great sidebar features and more. Drop by the product page to get an in-depth list of all that Candy has to offer.

You can also checkout a live preview site to see it in action.

We're also offering some add-on headers for this new theme, so be sure to check out our new Extras section.


A new home

We figured it was time to spruce up the elixir site a bit, and what better time to do so than when we're releasing a new theme, along with some other goodies.

Our new site features not only an updated look, but also updated content. Our landing page has been further simplified and our interior pages have been expanded. All of our theme product pages were updated to be more stylish and to add more detailed descriptions of the themes as well as extra screenshots.

We've also updated our Help Desk to be more friendly and easy to use.


More goodies
We've added a lot of other new goodies. Some of which include a new set of Collage 2 Styles, Carousel Styles, and Mac and iPhone wallpapers. In addition to our company blog (which you’re reading) I've also added a personal, tumblr blog to post links, photos, quotes and much more.

We've also added a new portfolio section showcasing some of our custom work for clients.


A work in progress
While we're pretty satisfied with the new site, we're always looking for your feedback on how it can be better. If you think of something we should add to the site or something we don't need, or just a better way to do it, let me know via our contact form.


Freebies
Along with adding a new theme to the site we've also taken one of our more popular, classic themes and made it completely free. If you don't already own it, stop by the Ribbon page and download it today.

We’ve also made our Carousel and Accordion extras completely free as well.


Too much goodness
We've simply added too much to the site to mention it all here, whether it is just a case of refining a page, giving more description, or adding new icons. Enjoy the new site. Share it with all of your friends, whether they're RapidWeaver users or not.


Sign up, get discounts
Don’t forget that we have a great newsletter. Each time we send out our newsletter to subscribers, we include a discount or two. So sign up. It’s free and you get discounts on themes, extras and more. Doesn’t get much better, huh?

Tags: New Theme, Site Update, Redesign, Extras

The mailman delivered my copy of Design Meltdown's The Web Designer's Idea Book just the other day. I ordered a copy to check out all of the amazing site designs as well as to see the spots where elixir sites were listed.

I originally thought our sites would merely be shown as thumbnails, like most sites in the book, and didn't expect much more. Boy, was I surprised! Not only did elixir and CSStux make it into the book, but both were touted in the introductions to their respective chapters. The elixir site leads off the Icons section on pages 172-173 and CSStux begins the chapter relating to Shine on pages 205-206. You can also find a site we created long ago for Todd Albertson on page 24.

I was very honored by Patrick's kind words.

One of the funny but great things, I thought, was that on the same pages that list and tout elixir, the e-junkie site is listed. Patrick compares elixir's use of icons to that of e-junkie's. What's great is I designed them both.

The Web Designer's Idea Book is a great book and a must-have for designers looking for a lot of inspiration.

Tags: Design, Ideas, Web

This new theme has been in the works for quite some time. We put a lot of love into this one, and I hope that it shows.

Gallery is a stylish, classy theme with a professional touch. A perfect theme for a small business, portfolio, blog, application site and much more.

This theme provides a very large number of theme variations and options for customization.


The basics
Here's a quick rundown of our Gallery theme's variations. More details are covered on the product page.

• Header type
• Content width
• Sidebar location
• Sidebar border
• Sidebar shine
• Sidebar backgrounds
• Site search toggle
• Site title shadow
• Site title size
• Site slogan size
• Menu font size
• Blog post spacing
• Footer divider

Color Variations
Our Gallery theme makes use of RapidWeaver's Color Picker, allowing you to very easily change the appearance of your site with a couple clicks of the mouse. You can edit these parts of the theme with the color picker:

• Body background
• Site title
• Site slogan
• Links
• Body font
• Sidebar font
• Sidebar title
• Blog title
• File sharing background
• Sidebar border
• Menu bar - Unselected
• Menu bar - Selected
• Menu bar - Hover


Headers
Our Gallery theme has a huge selection of page headers. Thirty to be exact. They range from stylish wood backgrounds to metal, patterned fabrics, gradients and many more.


More information
There is a lot more to learn about our new Gallery theme. Hop on over to the product page and read all about the theme, as well as check out the live preview site and the walk-thru video.


Freebies
RapidWeaver allows you to display EXIF information for each of your photographs. Inspired by MultiTheme's PageMix theme we have created our own set of icons to dress up the EXIF information in the Gallery theme. We thought it might be nice to offer these icons up to everyone as a free download. You can get them at our sister site Icon Lab. Feel free to use them on your web site, in your application, blog, RapidWeaver theme, or for whatever other use you can think up!

Tags: New Theme, Gallery, Release

This week has seen something new from us each day. Today brings something free to all of our users...

Today — Today we're releasing our popular Cloud theme as a free download. Drop by Cloud's product page to get your free download today!

Thursday — Thursday saw the release of our latest RapidWeaver theme — Notebook. This new theme is a real looker. It brings a unique style to your website while remaining classy. It is packed with a ton of theme variations in order for you to customize it and give it your own feel.

Wednesday — We released our first sets of Collage 2 style packs. These stylish Collage 2 packages have been a real hit. They're a great way to dress up your Collage 2 page with just a couple of clicks.

Tuesday — We released a new set of wallpapers for your Mac and iPhone. Two words: Cosmically beautiful!

Monday — We updated our Vanilla theme to fix a small bug with the top sidebar and its background color option.

Tags: Themes, elixir, Free