08/22/10 11:26 Filed in: Blueball News
This has made the use of Rapidweaver themes in general much more difficult for the average to new Rapidweaver users then it should be. For advanced users who have the knowledge to fine tune and adjust the code to get it to work like they want for their sites it's not been a problem. But we've seen more and more support questions and posts about problems with these types of themes in the Realmac support forums.
So a couple of observations and comments on Rapidweaver themes:
1. There's a reason the stock Rapidweaver themes are kept simple. They just work with minimal effort required. The only thing they really need added to them are some custom image slots.2. More is not better especially where web sites are concerned. The more javascripts you use on a site page, the greater the chance your pages will not load correctly, especially in IE6 and IE7. Also the chance for a conflict happening with a third party page plugin or stack is much greater.
3. There's a limit to the number of css files that IE6, IE7, and IE8 can apply to a site page. Currently these browsers can only apply up to a maximum number of 31 css files to a single site page. So if the theme you are using has more than 31 theme variations, any css file past the 31st css file listed in your web page will not be applied to style your page.
4. With web sites the simplest solution is always the best one. If someone goes to your web site and has to wait for the page to load, guess what? They go somewhere else. If someone goes to your web site and focuses on how nice the layout looks before seeing your site content and images, how effective is that theme layout? The viewer's focus should always go to your site content and images first before anything else. If the theme layout overwhelms your content instead of enhancing the content, you may want to review how effective your site is and if the layout used is acheiving your current goals.
This is not meant to detract from other theme developer's efforts as many outstanding themes have come out, but rather just some observations from us on the current state of Rapidweaver theme development, and that MAYBE an effort should be started to bring back simpler and easier to use Rapidweaver themes for the average and new Rapidweaver users.
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