Customize Listing Screens Actions with Plugins

We've already shown you how the powerful new listing screens in Movable Type 3.2 let you easily select any item or range of items, just by clicking anywhere on a row. And you can even shift-click to select a range of items such as comments, TrackBacks, entries, weblogs or authors. But once you've selected your items, you're not just limited to the menu options built into the application.

With the new plugin functionality built into Movable Type 3.2, any plugin can add its own menu items to the list of available actions on a listings screen. For example, we can demonstrate a simple plugin which allows you to transfer an entry from one blog to another with just a few clicks. This function isn't part of Movable Type by default, but by enabling the plugin that creates this menu option, we can add this handy new feature.

We've created a 600KB Flash animation showing off this new ability, and if you want to check out some of the thoughts behind writing such a plugin, Ben Trott has a brief blog post describing how easy it is to take advantage of this new functionality.

[This is part twenty in a series called "Our 32 Favorite Features of Movable Type 3.2".]