Member Update - September 2016
Hi Everyone,
Thanks for being a part of the MuseThemes community! We thought it might be valuable to share with you some of the upcoming projects we are working on in September, and recap the benefits we added to your membership over the last month.
August Recap
New Products & Benefits
- Profile - single-page resume theme
- OnLoad Animator - element animation widget
- Hover Reveal - content areas revealed on hover
- Mapbox 2.0 - complete rebuild to capture changes to the Mapbox platform
- IDX / MLS Feeds in Adobe Muse - blog post
- 4 widget overview tutorials
Existing Product Improvements:
- Randomizer - fixed issue causing image to break when crossing breakpoints
- Cinch Slideshow - multiple improvements: addressed a pinning issue, device orientation bug, and layout/appearance issues seen in IE and Edge browsers
- Twitter Feed Pro - improved breakpoint support
- Headliner 2.0 - fixed issues some users reported of muse objects and text becoming misaligned when previewed or published
- MP3 Audio Player - improved playback when crossing breakpoints while resizing browser window
September Projects & Priorities
(please note priorities and projects are subject to change)
New Projects:
- SVG Paint - A new widget developed to animate SVG elements. Available in Beta for existing members.
- Contractor Theme - A fantastic new theme designed for users new to Muse. Simple to update, and based on fixed-width breakpoints (responsive, but not fluid).
- SnipCart - We've been working with Snipcart to build an official Muse integration widget. It's awesome, and a great ecommerce option for Muse sites.
- New Stacks - We're planning a beautiful new set of Stacks focused on page content blocks. Stay tuned!
- MuseThemes Anniversary - Our site is turning 5 years old on September 21st! To celebrate we are going to re-release one of our favorite existing themes, overhauled to be beautifully responsive.
We've also been working hard behind the scenes to rebuild the entire MuseThemes site. After 5 years in business, it needed a refresh and code cleanup. When our new site launches you'll find it faster, better to navigate, and easy on the eyes.
Final Thoughts
Responsive Complexity
Many users have reported trouble building fully fluid responsive websites due to breakpoint complexity, constant shuffling of elements, etc. If this sounds like you, you're not alone!
We just want to remind Muse designers that it's absolutely fine to use alternate layouts or simplified fixed-width breakpoints. Although Google does recommend using Responsive Web Design (RWD), it doesn't mean you're necessarily going to see a hit in rankings by sticking with alternate layouts.
More than anything Google stresses making your site EASY for users to navigate and understand. If you're better able to accomplish this using alternate layouts, this is the right strategy for you. Focusing your SEO efforts on quality content and generating good backlinks can yield more results than spending hours on a responsive conversion.
Combining Widgets
With the latest release of Muse, we're seeing more and more sites come into support that are overloaded with widgets. Due to the endless design possibilities a Muse site can present, developers like us need to build widgets to support as many situations as possible. With that said, introducing too many widgets (or elements) into a Muse site can cause unexpected widget behavior and frustration.
We recommend users think carefully about which widgets are essential to the design, and try to limit their site to a few select widgets. Combining too many widgets (especially from different vendors) could introduce headaches and burn up your valuable time troubleshooting.
Thanks again for supporting MuseThemes.com!
Cheers
SH
*Update - Agent CMS*
Thanks for all your comments below regarding Agent! Let's continue the discussion on the MuseThemes forum. Here's a thread we've been using to communicate with members: http://forum.musethemes.com/threads/agent-eta-please.956/page-3#post-6745
Comments
So are you closing the book on Agent CMS?
Please tell me you’re still working on agent cms.
Thanks Steve.. Any news on Agent?
Would you guys be working on a widget that would lock the orientation of a site being viewed on a tablet and/or phone?
AGENT CMS?
Please address this one way or the other. I have told multiple clients that it’s “coming soon”.
Hi,
I’d really like to be able to add 360 photos or videos into a site page- I see Google have information on how to do this for their developers- I just want to drag and drop, any chance you guys can look into this?
Seems like you embed and iframe but I have no idea how to get that far!
Btw the updates recently have been awesome ;)
MuseThemes is doing a great job with making our jobs easier. The one additional widget that I do wish was available was an on-line form widget that would include the capability of user of form to submit/upload a graphic , word file, sound file etc when hitting the submit button. At the moment I need to use another program to create such a form and load it into Muse as an html code. It would be nice to do it all within Muse.
You really need to address the elephant in the room: Agent CMS.
It has been coming soon for 5 months and there has been no update for 4. Even the article on it is no longer there.
Can you just say that it is either going to happen, or not going to happen?
AGENT CMS??
What about AGENT CMS? Is it going to happen? I really muse-themes you guys make great widgets, i am paying to other venedors for cms solutions & their widgets suck and you guys know is not recommended to use widgets from different venedors.
JEFF ONEIL, what form solution are u using? I am using jotform so far its not so bad.
Hi everyone, this is my personal Top-5 Wish-List:
1/ CMS (secret Agent: maybe he’s here and we don’t see him)
2/ A gallery for an infinite amount of pictures to drop into, yeah!
3/ Some kind of Gateway in order to implement third-party hosted Type services like Webtype/TypeNetwork into MUSE projects.
4/ A real Log-in Area
5/ Definitely CMS
:)
Regarding SnipCart, having the ability to create subscriptions/memberships would be great. In addition, then only allowing logged in users to access certain pages. This is probably a multi-widget solution (with some PHP conversions) where pages that contain a certain widget can only be accessed by those logged in, while pages that do not contain the widget can be accessed by everyone.
Develop a basic MuseThemes checking tool widget or App !
It’s ok saying combining too many widgets could cause Muse update headaches but his could be made a lot easy if you guys simply constructed an easy use MuseThemes URL checking App.
We use the APP find bugs and solve them quicker feeding back any fix needs as we use it… rather cool.
The idea being the Muse users build their page add Muse Them widgets as required and then upload or view in browser.
We then click on the MuseThemes URL page checker APP !
The new App should read the Number of MuseThemes Widgets present a conduct validity checks and present the results.
These could just be pass / fail to start with but as the system grows you could develop it further to post warnings such as Widget out of date, or Widget combination Issues may apply
Just a Pass Fail result would be helpful so end users could at least eliminate MuseThemes widgets combos during debug
Best Idea Today or Not
AGENT CMS??
Defintly great work – but like 1000 before me – whats about the Agent CMS?!
Please give a statement about that!
So exciting! You guys are awesome. I was curious if there was a way to provide an option to forward your “results” or the answers to an Adobe Muse form after it is completed. I am creating a website for a client that provides questionnaires to their viewers. I created the questionaires using the general Adobe Muse form widget. I would like to give the form filler an option to view their answers and share them after they submit them. A widget that would allow this would be awesome!
Thanks Steve for those closing comments. Fluid site building has become a nightmare for me. I spent 3 days trying to fix one page. eventually, rather than throw my computer out of the window, I completed the desktop, pad and phone pages in 3 hours the old way and it looks just fine.
You are so right about unexpected reactions between widgets and text formatting. It seems many of the widgets from MT are not updated to 2015.2 just yet, it must be an ongoing challenge to keep up. Even so, I love the stuff you guys produce.
Hi Muse Themes team. Thank you for all the work you do… Something that constantly comes up for me is blogging. I am desperately seeking a easy to use blogging widget for business catalyst blog integration. Is something coming soon?
Great work over there guys! But to add to the chorus, what about Agent CMS?
Sorry to beat a dead horse but… Agent CMS?
Great stuff, big efforts, quick service and kind interaction! That’s my impression of your work and I would like to say thanks for this offer and attitude.
Thanks for all of your hard work!
Can we get a little Mailchimp love? I’ve had to remove their code from 2 sites already because of incompatibility issues. It’s a pain.
Also…about that map..it’s not easy to use and can actually get to be quite confusing for anyone who might not be very technical. It would be awesome if we could develop a widget where we just place our info in and boom map comes out. Lol
If I had to pick though…mailchimp first. :)
Hey guys, thanks for all the great comments!!
I’m seeing a trend here… Agent. We’ve been fielding some questions about it on the forum, let’s move this discussion over there (it’s a little easier to see replies). Here’s the thread, I’ll ad it in the blog post above too!
http://forum.musethemes.com/threads/agent-eta-please.956/page-3#post-6745
Cheers!
Hi Muse Themes team.
Thank you for all the work you do. Your themes and widgets are very helpful, and saving a lot of our time.
I think a real widget that missing from here except of course the Agent is a real Form widget. With all the features that a form widget must have. For example dates (open up a calendar to choose date) and time, the ability the user to upload a document, and more.
I mean a mini Jot Forms that should manipulate real users data such as booking or appointments or reservations, etc. But of course into Muse.
Thank you for your great work.
@ Gary
360 Panorama Widget….
https://codecanyon.net/item/3dpanorama-pack-for-adobe-muse/15693834
Hi, are you planning on making a tablewidget where the content can be updated via csv/txt file? Like the Tablesmith widget from Muse Supply co.
Can’t wait for the new updates. Thanks guys for keeping me informed.
Hi just a word of support, love everything you guys do, and speaking as a non-coder, youve made it possible for me to create clients websites which actually turn out like the visual! keep up the great work!!
Hi folks…new improvements etc look good! I asked a while back about needing a FTP front end page for my clients files. As it is now I have them download directly from the ftp site. I’d like to be able to give them the ability to open up their folder via password etc directly from my website with a cookie to remember login details.
Any chance of this being in the development projects?
jeff