At long last I've made some updates to the Style Generator to better fit with Six Apart's standard. This means that you can finally apply the tips discussed in this tutorial to stylesheets created using the style gen. Most of the other changes are mostly on the backend code so that it's easier for me to build on it in the future. The only real change on the frontend is the addition of a splash page that allows you to select the number of columns - as cool as the on-the-fly capability was it was a major pain to support. A big thank you to Six Apart for letting me use their images, I'm a terrible graphics designer!

The biggest feature I am working on right now is the ability to load...

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Jason Kottke has written a thoughtful piece on the difference between standards and semantics, and if you're just learning this stuff by way of my site (heaven forbid) or some of the many others out there, it's worth your time to read it and consider his points.

Let me start out by saying that Jason is absolutely correct. You are allowed to use <font> tags in your valid XHTML. You are allowed to continue designing with tables. As long as you lowercase your tags and watch your nesting, there is nothing stopping you from building your XHTML sites without a lick of CSS.

But if this is all you're doing, you are like the driver of the VW Beetle carefully pulling...

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UPDATE: Donors check the email address through which you donated, you have a surprise waiting!

a Dropcash campaign

MT Blogroll 2.0

$102 of $100 raised so far

donate now »

I've almost finished up work on MT Blogroll 2.0 and have fixed most (if not all) issues raised with the beta. I've created a dropcash campaign for MT Blogroll 2.0's release. Once the campaign's target has been reached I will release the plugin to public. If you've found version 1.0 or version 2.0b useful consider donating to the campaign. Those that donate to the campaign get priority for support.

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0.03 (2001.09.26)

• Added Bookmarklet posting functionality, with a link to setup on the main project administration menu. • In List Entries, if a post does not have a title display [No title] instead as a link. • Changed login cookie path from / to /path/to/mt/. For example, if you installed MT at /my/mt/mt.cgi, the path for the cookie would now be /my/mt/. • MT::Util::send_mt_mail now checks for more default locations of sendmail, instead of giving up, until it finds one that works. It now checks /usr/lib/sendmail, /usr/sbin/sendmail, and /usr/ucblib/sendmail...

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06.30.2005

New in Movable Type 3.2: A home for administrators

One of Movable Type's biggest strengths is the platform's support for an unlimited number of weblogs. Once you've got a thriving community of bloggers creating entries and publishing their thoughts, though, it quickly becomes necessary to manage the weblogs on your system.

To meet this need, we've introduced an entire new area of functionality in Movable Type 3.2: The System Overview. We've chosen the System Overview as the first feature to highlight in this new release because it represents a single home for administrators. It's one place to go to oversee everything that's happening across your...

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Sometimes it's nice to get a lot for a little. Macros let you do that. Instead of typing laborious HTML as you write your entries, a macro can do all the work for you so you can concentrate on writing. Perhaps you want to use a set of icons within your posts but don't care to write <img> tags all day long. Or maybe you'd like to link up to Google queries without having to type out the full URL. This plugin allows you to do that and much more.

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This is a journey from six years of conventional web design practice to the way we'll build sites in the future. Only it's not set in the future. You're soaking in it.

From the beginning, we've done whatever we had to do to make our sites work in every browser. In the world of non-standard HTML Design, we bolt every word, every image into place by manipulating table cells.

And we solve problems by replacing them with new ones. Netscape 4 ignores the CSS {margin: 0;} declaration? Extend the BODY tag with the Four Horsemen of Non-Validation: LEFTMARGIN, TOPMARGIN, MARGINWIDTH, MARGINHEIGHT. IE4 doesn't fully support the CSS border property? Fake it by...

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08.31.2005

Simple Example Templates for Movable Type 3.2

Chris Vannoy has posted some simple Movable Type templates based on the new default templates in Movable Type, but with much of the XHTML structure stripped out so they're easier to read. As Chris explains in his following post, they're not designed to be used on an actual site, since the styling would be pretty ugly by default, but they're a useful basis for creating your own completely custom design if you just need a place to get started.

We'll be producing additional documentation about all the new abilities that templates and styles have in Movable Type 3.2, but this is a great place to start if you...

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09.29.2004

Behind the Scenes - Brenna Koch

Behind The Scenes is a new series where we here at Six Apart discuss what tools (software, technology, etc.) we use to do our work.

I'm Brenna Koch and I work in technical support for Six Apart. If you're curious, "Cook" is how you pronounce my last name. I usually hear "Cotch" since that's how it is said in some areas and I also hear more ah... interesting variations. But now you know.

We have many browsers around in the support department but my favorite is Safari. I utilize keyboard commands with my bookmarks bar for fast access on the sites I use all the time like my test weblogs and pages in the help system...

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