xScape Theme Framework 1.2

I was very busy over the weekend improving the framework, and as a result a lot is changed and many more new features are added or existing improved mostly in menu designer and layouts manager. Both are much more powerful now, allowing some great modifications.

Menus Designer

New items are added to menus including Admin options (dashboard, profile, new post) and Login options (login, logout, register). But, more importantly, menus are nested by design. Previously you could add elements that are going to make drop down, but now you can move any element deeper within the menu.So, if you compare xScape Menus to WooNavigation or WordPress 3.0 native NavMenus, you will see that xScape is much more powerful and flexible with more options you can use to create wide range of items. A tutorial covering more aspects of menus coming later today.

New mapping desinger

Layouts Manager

As you can see, middle blocks got new buttons for moving blocks left and right. This will allow you to move sidebar from left to right. Also, master templates introduced in xScape 1.1, are now functional. Many more things are changed in layouts code allowing some of the things planned for next two themes (multiple sidebars is one of them).

Two tutorials covering all the changes and use of master template will be published later today.

Author Widget

Author Widget

Another new widget is added. This one allows you to set up About Author area to display some info about the author, gravatar and a read more link.

Both current themes are updated with new framework. Next theme is eScape and this one will be released by the end of the week. After that we are planning one news styles theme and long overdue starScape II.

Also, I can confirm that by the end of this week, or over next weekend, lite version of baseScape will be released. Making lite version of the framework wasn’t easy, but it’s almost done now. Lite framework will not get any new features any more, and only, if needed will be fixed from time to time.

Beside new themes, we have planned few more things for the framework, including 3 more widgets, but more on that soon. Stay tuned for number of new tutorials this week, and more improvements to Central Documentation.