Editor's Note: The following technique accomplishes its goals by using a few markup elements that lack innate semantic value. For some of you, that may place this means of achieving cross-column pull-outs beyond the pale. For the rest of you, bon appetit.

Print designers have long relied on the ability to wrap text around anything - most commonly around a picture centered between two columns. This design option has not been available for web designers ... until now.

Basic two-column layout

To use this technique, we must first set the stage.

XHTML:

<div id="overall"> <div class="col"> <p>…</p>...

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Page: 1 2 2 Pages.

Publishing Custom Pages with Movable Type

MT has had the ability to output any content in a template since version 1.0 in 2001, however it doesn't have the "push button" simplicity of Wordpress' Pages feature. For those of you unfamiliar with Wordpress, its Pages feature allows...

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Posted on 08/02/2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ajax Archive Drop Downs

In this thread, Gary highlighted how to have drop downs of archives that basically redirected to the appropriate page once an archive was chosen. With this tutorial, I'll take that one step further and use...

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0.06 (2001.10.01)

• Fixed the built-in RSS template so that it validates with RSS version 0.91. • Fixed bug with previewing entry introduced by convert paragraph breaks option and code. (Adam Gerstein, Sara Flemming, Matt Haughey, Jeremy W) • Check that version of installed HTML::Template is greater than 2, because we need certain features that were only added later on. (TW Walsh) • Actually include mt-import.cgi in the distribution this time. (Caroline van Oosten de Boer) • Fixed a bug where the conditional settings for MTEntryIfAllowComments...

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11.29.2001

MT-Search Release

Jay Allen has released MT-Search, an add-on module that will enable users to perform end-user searches on MT-powered weblogs.

Some features: • Easy install and setup • Completely template driven • Multiple template support • Multiple blog search • Configurable search • Editing links if logged in

While MT-Search is not an "official" Movable Type release, we wholeheartedly support Jay's work and recommend this add-on to our users.

If you have any MT-Search related questions or comments, please direct them to Jay.

Posted by Mena at 03:36 PM | Permalink

11.29.2001

Donors List Update

The Movable Type donor list...

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2.21 (2002.06.28)

• Very important bug fix to MySQL schema: Changed all *_created_on columns to the datetime type instead of the timestamp type. The latter could have very bad effects if used within the MySQL shell (although through MT's libraries it is not a problem). Thanks to shanson for finding this. • The plugin framework can now create container tags (thanks to Adam Kalsey for pointing out that it couldn't before). • Added encode_xml global tag attribute to escape special XML characters. • Changed default RSS templates to use encode_xml=``1'' rather than...

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This article was prompted by the growing crop of CSS "tips and tricks" articles that have surfaced in the last two years. Typical of these are the three column design making use of left and right fixed columns hanging on their margins; and the use of @import, instead of JavaScript, to feed appropriate style sheets to differently enabled browsers.

These ideas are very cool and their authors should rightly be heaped with praise, but I can't help feeling we've been here before.

Remember when you figured out how to make a table of images display without the gap? Or how about when you worked out the browser's table rendering algorithm and started using...

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Hot on the heels of v1.0, here's version 1.1. The only new feature is the availability of dynamic tags, i.e. those of you that wanted to use MT Protect on dynamic templates now can!

Download MT-Protect_1.1.zip and follow the installation instructions. If you installed any older version of MT Protect, you will need to disable and re-enable protection on all your blogs via the global configuration so that the new files get downloaded.

The template markup is identical for both static and dynamic templates!

If you experience a bug or a problem, please file a ticket.

The campaign has not yet reached its target, if you find this plugin useful people consider donating to the campaign.

On a sidenote, Movalog is now...

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Version 2.63 of Movable Type is now released. This is a bug fix release, fixing various localization, XML-RPC, Postgres, and Creative Commons errors. This update is also recommended using MT for private weblogs; your IncludeBlogs and ExcludeBlogs settings will now be applied to the experimental mt-view.cgi script. If you are using 2.62 and not experiencing any problems, there is no urgent need to ugprade. If you are having problems with 2.62, the changelog lists the changes and fixes in 2.63.

If you hadn't yet upgraded to 2.6, see the Guide to Movable Type 2.6 for explanations of the above features, and for instructions on adding these features to your existing weblog if you...

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05.22.2002

Wisdom Wanted

Want to contribute to Essential Blogging, the O'Reilly book that Ben and I co-authored along with Cory Doctorow, Rael Dornfest, Shelly Powers and Scott Johnson?

Rael has issued a call for submissions from webloggers who have pearls of wisdom and anecdotes to share with the weblogging community.

Not up to writing? Well, Essential Blogging is holding a public review where you, the readers, can constructively comment on the book's content. Read more about the public review on the O'Reilly weblog of our editor, Nat Torkington.

Posted by Mena at 04:39 PM | Permalink

05.14.2002

Default Templates and...

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UPDATE: I've released v1.01 due to bugs faced with the paths to the plugin being incorrect on pre-3.16 systems. Download MT-RebuildBlogs_1.01.zip and follow the installation instructions.

I often need to rebuild many blogs on my system because I make system wide changes (for example renaming the comment script) and the way MT currently works, I need to go around, blog-to-blog hitting rebuild.

The previous script did work but it was too much of a security risk, anyone could hit the script multiple times bringing the server crashing down. As a result, I whipped up a quick plugin so that I could quickly rebuild multiple blogs (since it is a proper plugin, it uses MT's authentication so...

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This is a question I've seen a lot, through emails, bug reports and on the forums. First a little general background information.

The 'Plugin Envelope' method was something introduced with v3.0 and one of the first plugins to use it was MT-Blacklist. This is where a plugin creates its own subdirectory within the main plugins/ directory, for example MT Blacklist has plugins/Blacklist, MT Protect has plugins/Protect and so on.

The problem many people are facing are the hundreds of errors that these plugins spit out and look similar to this: Plugin error: /home/.../.../cgi-bin/plugins/Blogroll/Blogroll.pl Can't locate Blogroll/Blogroll.pm in @INC (@INC contains: plugins/Blogroll/lib...

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The past few days, I've been working hard on a new version of MT Blogroll that will be feature packed. Some of the features I have either written or plan to write include: • Integration with del.icio.us - MT Blogroll is now capable of completely synching with del.icio.us. This means that links you add to MT Blogroll will get added to del.icio.us and vice-versa. • Tagging - to complement the above, I've implemented the ability to tag links just like del.icio.us. The template tags are also powerful enough for you to generate your own tag cloud. • Export to OPML - one of the biggest feature requests I've received was to have an export mechanism and I've finally gotten around to implementing that. • Direct import from Bloglines - Simply enter your Bloglines username and your folders and links are imported. I'm investigating similar integration with Blogrolling and Newsgator....

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0.08 (2001.10.03)

• Added mininav to left side of all system pages (once you have selected a blog to edit, that is). Items in nav are dependent upon permissions, of course. (Josh Buchanan) • Added activity log; currently it records logins, logouts, unsuccessful authentications/password recoveries, etc. because that seems most useful from a system maintenance perspective. • Added ability to rebuild just a single set of pages from a particular archive type, eg. all Weekly archives. Also, split up ``Rebuild all files'' so that it rebuilds in steps: Individual...

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Seeing the flurry of activity around Inline Editing on Wordpress ever since Jay Allen mentioned it on his panel at SXSW, I thought it was time us MT'ers had something similar. Download the plugin. This animation better highlights what this plugin does (600kb)

Preserve the directories in the zip starting from your root MT directory (therefore files in the extlib/ folder in the zip go into MT's extlib/ directory and mt-ie-cookiecheck.php goes into your root mt directory etc.)

I'll need to talk you through installing this. For every blog you want this enabled on, you will need to create two index templates of the two text files in the zip (mt-inlineeditor.php and mt-inlineeditor.js) I've...

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In the past few weeks I've managed to make MT Blogroll work on a Windows/IIS environment. I have only tested this plugin on one server so I'm not entirely sure how well this works. So Download MT-Blogroll_2.02.zip and follow the installation instructions. The only difference for you Windows users is that the contents of the lib/ folder in the distribution must go into the extlib/ directory hence you get extlib/Blogroll etc.

The only requirement is that you have MT 3.16 installed as important bugs were fixed.

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2.2 (2002.06.26)

• Added TrackBack, a peer-to-peer framework for communication between weblogs. Can track cross-weblog conversations/discussions, provides remote content repositories. Has password protection, IP banning, automatic RSS output, and email notification. • Added MySQL backend support. • Added the <$MTBlogRelativeURL$> tag to produce a relative URL to your main blog. • Added <link> tag navigation (prev, next, start) to Individual and Date-based archive templates. Thanks to Mark Pilgrim. • Strip HTML from author, email, and...

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In the old days, before we thought much about web standards or the importance of accessibility, web designers used image maps to quickly divide a single image into regions, and link those regions to separate URLs. Traditional image maps, though, don't work well with text-only browsers, and they aren't as efficient or versatile as many newer techniques. You might still find them in use on an old web page or perhaps some kind of complex map, but most web designers would consider it an old technique. A dead one.

While collaborating on a horror fiction web project, I decided early on that I'd do my best to code the site using only standards-based XHTML...

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UPDATE: EnhancedEntryEditing has been bumped up to v1.01 to fix a bug where popup windows wouldn't disappear after you were done with them. Grab the update, you only need to upload EnhancedEntryEditing.pl

Ajaxify is a series of BigPAPI plugins that adds various javascript and AJAX widgets into Movable Type's interface. It has, of course, been built for Movable Type 3.2. The first of which is EnhancedEntryEditing. This plugin adds two widgets into the entry screen: • Resizable Textareas - I personally find the textareas on the entry screen too small and find it annoying to hack the stylesheet everytime I upgrade Movable Type. This plugin now adds "Increase Size" and...

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Yes, I realize Movable Type is not a general-purpose content management system, but if you're in a pinch it can do wonders. Especially with this plugin, which allows you to associate other bits of data with your entries which can be extracted conviently in your templates. (Click the more link for more information.)

Availability

You can download this plugin here: mtkeyvalues-1_53.zip

Installation

To install, place the...

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We'll be starting the Movable Type 3.0 public beta test next week, the week of April 19. It's taken longer to get to this public beta because we made the decision to extend the alpha process to catch as many bugs as possible before introducing MT3b to the general public.

The alpha testing started about one month ago on March 17, 2004. As anticipated, the alpha uncovered a number of issues that are now fixed, and we thank our alpha testers for their hard work in testing out the software.

If you had applied to be part of the alpha and we missed you, we apologize. As a result of the kinks we encountered during the alpha tester selection process, we've made improvements to the...

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