Frequently Asked Questions

Why can't I see any of the extra templates?

The extra templates are shipped in a separate folder in the RapidAlbum DMG image so that users can install only the templates that they want. The easiest way to install a template is to use the "Install Templates..." action menu on the Template panel of a RapidAlbum page.

ActionMenu

When selected, this menu item will show a standard Finder browser panel. Just select the template(s) that you want to install and hit the "Install" button. RapidAlbum will then copy the templates to the correct location. You can find a video showing how this works on the Tutorials page.

RapidAlbum looks in the Library/Application Support/RapidWeaver/RapidAlbum folder of your user (or home) directory for additional templates. Any templates found in this folder will be available to use for RapidAlbum pages. You can copy in templates to this folder using the Finder but please be careful to make sure that all of the template .bundle files end up in the folder above.

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Why doesn't the Styled Page template align my pictures properly?

I originally intended the Styled Page template to be a starting point for folks who wanted to edit their own templates and CSS so that they could create photo pages with sidebars and other navigation elements. The Photo HTML fragment for the Styled Page template leverages the CSS div names of the standard photo album page (so that you get the same colors and basic styles) but the layout defaults for the non-styled page often cause problems when used in a styled page. This is the bit that I'd expected folks to code for themselves to suit the theme that they were using.

However, not unreasonably, a lot of folks expected the template to work straight out of the box and the caveats I've added to the documentation don't seem to be putting people off. The simplest solution to this problem is for me to create a new version of the Styled Page template with a local CSS file to override all of the positional css properties. This should be more robust and useful for folks who don't want to delve into the CSS.

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Why doesn't the Slimbox template work with my site?

The Slimbox template leverages some of the new plugin interfaces and theme features in RapidWeaver 3.6. If you're running RapidWeaver 3.5, you'll have to add some manual configuration to the page header to get everything to work.

RapidWeaver 3.5

If you're using RapidWeaver 3.5, you'll need to add the following lines to the header for the Slimbox template. To do this, open the Page Inspector and select the Code tab. In the Custom CSS box, enter these lines

</style>
                    

                    < link rel="stylesheet"
                    href="{pageFilePath}/slimbox.css"
                    type="text/css" media="screen"/>
                    

                    < style>

In the Custom Javascript box, enter these lines

</script>
                    

                    < script type="text/javascript"
                    src="{pageFilePath}/mootools.js"></script>
                    

                    < script type="text/javascript"
                    src="{pageFilePath}/slimbox.js">

These two entries cause RapidWeaver 3.5 to generate the same header info that RapidWeaver 3.6 generates directly from the RapidAlbum plugin.

RapidWeaver 3.6

If you're using RapidWeaver 3.6 and it's still not working, the problem is usually in the theme file. RapidWeaver 3.6 relies on a few new tokens to be present in the theme file in order for the new plugin features to work correctly. If those tokens are missing, the plugin header information isn't inserted correctly. To check this, find the package of the theme that you're using and open it ("Show Package Contents"). Open the "Contents" folder and then open the Index.html file in your favorite text editor. The header *should* have three lines that look like this

%user_javascript%
                    

                    %plugin_header%
                    

                    %user_header%

between the <head></head> tags. If the header is missing the %plugin\_header% token then RapidAlbum won't work correctly when generating headers. To fix this, add a %plugin_header% line in your index.html file between the headers (you'll probably want to make sure the others are there too). If you do have to do this, please let me know as it's probably worth compiling a list of the themes that are missing these tokens.
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How do I set the number of thumbnail columns?

RapidAlbum, like the standard RapidWeaver photo page, doesn't use an HTML table to build it's thumbnail index page. Instead, it "flows" the layout of the thumbnails into the space that's available for them. This allows the thumbnails to take as much width as they're allowed by the CSS for a page - this is usually set by the RapidWeaver theme you've picked. By doing this, the layout adapts automatically if when you enable and disable the sidebar (for example).

To adjust the number of thumbnail columns you see on your page, you need to fix the width of the thumbnail container in css. For most albums, this is a css div called ".album-wrapper". For example, if you want three columns of 144 pixel wide thumbnails, you want an album-wrapper width of around 470 pixels (to account for the default gaps between thumbnails). In the Custom CSS box of the Page Inspector for an album page, you can enter

.album-wrapper { width: 470px; }

to set this.

If you want to float the thumbnails so that they're centered within a page, you need to set width and the left and right margins to be automatic. So, if you wanted a centered block of thumbnails with three columns (and 144px thumbnails), you would do this

.album-wrapper { width: 470px;
                    margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; }

in the Custom CSS box.

You can see a video example of this in the Tutorials page.
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