So we have gotten a lot of emails asking whether or not RAGE MapDesign can easily be used with Rapidweaver. It definitely can be, and it is actually quite easy. We have created a short movie to show exactly how it is done.
The point where most users were have trouble was due to specifying the correct paths to your image files. The following tutorial will show how to add your interactive image maps to Rapidweaver. Although this shows how to add Effects based (CSS) image maps, adding purely HTML image maps can also be done easily. If you are having trouble with that, please feel free to contact support and we will be more than happy to walk you through it, and if necessary create an accompanying video.
Update: As of version 1.2 you no longer need to edit the files to rename the images directory to assets. Just go to the Preferences in RAGE MapDesign and select ‘Create Rapidweaver compatible image maps’. This will automatically use an assets folder instead of an images folder.
Recently Google updated their Webmaster Tools account with more data and a revamped Interface. Personally I find the new interface to be much easier to use.
The biggest addition is a web site feed subscriber stats section. You can see the subscriber stats from the Statistics tab.
The all new subscriber stats give you details about how many people subscribe to your web site feeds, such as RSS and atom feeds, through Google services. Although this won’t give you the total number of subscribers since not everyone is using Google tools to subscribe to your feeds, it does provide a nice overview and a gauge at how popular your feed actually is.
If you are unsure what a feed actually is, or you are interested in learning how to get more subscribers to your feeds through Google, there is a Google help page describing how to set up and track site feeds
If you don’t yet have a Google Webmaster Tools account, or have your XML sitemap up, do so now with RAGE Google Sitemap Automator. XML Sitemaps help you get your web site indexed faster and more thoroughly, giving you much more control on how search engines find and index your web site.
Recently Yahoo performed a number of tests to determine what are the major factors to slow loading web pages and provides 13 useful tips to help improve your web page load time. Having fast loading web pages is important for a variety of reasons including;
1. It has been estimated that visitors will spend less than 8 seconds waiting for a page to load before going somewhere else
2. Search engine bots will be able to scan and index your web site faster
How does this relate to RAGE MapDesign? Well Yahoo found that the number one factor to speeding up page load time is too reduce the number of HTTP requests sent to your web server. A web browser sends a request to a web server for each image it must load according to your HTML code. Yahoo actually recommends creating one large image map instead of splitting up your images manually. And of course RAGE MapDesign is the faster and easiest way to create web site image maps.
This reduces the number of requests sent to your server and in return helps speed up your web page load time. You can read the 13 Tips To Faster Loading Web Pages at Yahoo’s developer web site.
Some tips get very creative so go through them to see what else you can do to help reduce the amount of time it takes web browsers to display your web site.
So we’ve been working really hard all summer on some great new updates AND some awesome new products. First and foremost, we have an update on the way for RAGE WebDesign, which I mentioned earlier and RAGE Google Sitemap Automator.
To give you some clues on what’s new, we are going to have to redo all the screen shots on for both products! 🙂
Aside from that, we have been working on two amazing new apps. These applications are one of a kind on the Mac. There are no other tools that can do what they do!
So keep checking back and make sure you get our newsletter so you’ll know what’s coming up. If you run a web site, you’ll love these products!
We recently released an update to RAGE MapDesign which adds support for transparent PNGs in image maps. This means that you can easily overlay any mouse over or mouse down effect in your image map by using png images. This make it really easy to make beautiful transitions using only CSS and XHTML.
I created an example to show off what you can do with the new transparency features. Check out this sample CSS Based Image Map with transparency. The image will overlay the background image with a transparent PNG as the mouse moves over the specified hot spots. This example took about 10 minutes to make including creating the PNGs and putting it up online.
In contrast, when I used version 1.0 to create this image map, it took a while to fake the transparency by using the same section of the main image as the background image for the mouse over effects.
We have some great new features already planned for the next free update of RAGE MapDesign, so keep checking back!
We have just posted two new beta updates for RAGE MapDesign and RAGE WebDesign.
Firstly, RAGE WebDesign, which a lot of users have been waiting for, now includes the new text engine we have been promising for a while now. It did take us some time to work out all the issues and get it ready for Intel Macs. But it is here now and works beautifully on both Intel and PPC Macs. It also provides better support for double byte languages such as Japanese and Chinese, among many other improvements.
We have also released a beta version of MapDesign which adds support for transparent PNGs. Now you can create beautiful, interactive image maps with transparent images.
We’ve just released RAGE MapDesign 1.0 today. RAGE MapDesign lets you create image maps that response to user actions such as when users click their mouse down or when their mouse hovers over a certain part of an image. It uses only standards based CSS and HTML so you can be certain that it will work with virtually all major web browsers.
RAGE MapDesign is very easy to use since it is fully WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). You don’t have to know CSS or HTML.
We have included some sample maps and media that you can easily create on the RAGE MapDesign product page. We put a lot of effort into making it as easy to use and possible and giving it a beautiful Mac interface. We look forward to hearing what you think and how you use it.
Last week we also released 15 beautifully designed, CSS and HTML templates. If you have not already seen them, be sure to check them out. Prices range from $14.95 USD to $24.95 USD for a pack of 5.
We’ve got some great products coming and some amazing updates due out this summer. Stay tuned, July will be a big month!
We know a lot of your have been looking forward to a Universal Binary version of RAGE WebDesign. We have been working really hard on this and I just wanted to post an update on its status.
We have a version of RAGE WebDesign running on Intel Macs. It’s running very nicely, much faster than before, as a Universal Binary.
We have upgraded to a totally new text engine so working with double-byte characters such as Japanese or Chinese will also work much better than before. In addition, working with any unicode files will also see improvements.
We have also made a few additions, interface tweaks, and added new features. This version of RAGE WebDesign will be FREE for registered 2.x users and we will be posting a beta version for you to try real soon.
After this release, we will start working on version 3.0. We have some really great features planned, some that you will not have seen in any other web page editor. If you think you love RAGE WebDesign now, wait until you see what we have in store for you.
Plus, we are working on some great new applications to help with designing, promoting and managing web sites. Stay tuned, we have so many exciting announcements coming soon!
We have just posted an update to RAGE Macintosh Explorer. This free update to registered users is now a Universal Binary so it runs really fast on your Intel based Macs. Plus we’ve added a few more features including grouping folders together when sorting files, all new toolbar icons, and faster file browsing.
Our second Universal Binary application, RAGE ButtonDesign has just been released. Now you can run it natively on your Intel based Mac as a Universal Binary.
We are also offering a 45% one-day-discount on new purchases through the Mac Update Promo web site. Purchase RAGE ButtonDesign for just $10.95 USD. Start creating professional looking buttons at a fraction of the regular $19.95 USD price.
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