Movable Type Beta Weblog - Blogging in style with Movable Type

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Blogging in style with Movable Type

by Jay Allen

This is an archived entry from the Movable Type 3.2 beta test.
Entries from the current beta release (v3.3) can be found here.

When we introduced the new default templates in beta-2, many of you wondered why we bothered greatly simplifying the template tag structure at all given the more intricate HTML structure they introduced. Nearly all of you were gracious in allowing us to escape explanation until we were ready and we thank you for that.

But now, we'd like to let you in on the "secret": We've unified the HTML structure used across all Six Apart products (Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal) to allow styles and designs to flow back and forth between our millions of customers.

This gives designers the ability to create designs which can be used seamlessly across over 10 million blogs. On the flip-side, Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal users will soon be able to pick from a huge variety of different styles and simply drop it in to completely transform the look and feel of their published blogs.

You can read more about all of this in our latest post in the "Favorite 32 features of Movable Type 3.2" series.

Once again, I thank you for your patience in allowing us to get our ducks in a row. We'll be talking more about all of this in the future and pumping out some great documentation for it, but in the meantime, you can check out the previously-created TypePad styles documentation upon which the new documentation will be based.

Posted on August 9, 2005 1:30 PM in Features

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Blogging in style with Movable Type:

» Movable Type 3.2 Beta from Dan Tepper's Weblog
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I've just upgraded my site to the latest beta version of MT 3.2, beta 3. I'll be doing a lot of playing around with this beta and checking out all of the new features, etc. So if you land on... [Read More]

» MT 3.2 - towards a TypePad utopia! from Drake.org.uk
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» MT 3.2 Beta 1 Released from Webdiva
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Comments

Now it's starting to make a bit of sense (At least some of it).

Posted by: Sara | August 9, 2005 1:47 PM

Are the default templates going to be distributed with the tarball of Movable Type so that one can change the theme via the configuration pages? Or will users require downloading files from the Six Apart website?

Posted by: Jacques | August 9, 2005 2:40 PM

"On the flip-side, Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal users will soon be able to pick from a huge variety of different styles and simply drop it in to completely transform the look and feel of their published blogs."

:o Oh my!!!

I LOVE YOU GUYS! :D :D :D

Posted by: Maya | August 9, 2005 3:27 PM

OK, I've updated my wife's blog with these new templates. I do like the new default look, although I prefer the colours I had there earlier.

Here's what I had there before as I felt the pinkish look fit her. I'm hoping you guys will have a "pink" default template for some women who would want that.

Posted by: dopefish | August 9, 2005 3:45 PM

dopefish,

You can change the color to whatever you or your wife's heart desires. Just go into the CSS sheet, and alter the colors.

You might find the following website helpful for picking color coorindated schemes: http://www.siteprocentral.com/htmlcolorcode.html.

Just use the current colors as a starting point and then customize to suit.

Hope this helps.

Best regards, Kevin

Posted by: Kevin H. Stecyk | August 9, 2005 4:11 PM

Vicksburg has, in fact, only 7 colors:

36414d link, subhead left rule, body background, banner text shadow
a3b8cc link hover, subhead background, banner background, trackback info border, 'powered by' module border
292e33 'page' border (the fake shadow), trackback info color, 'powered by' module color
e6ecf2 module column background, trackback info background
dae0e6 entry header left rule, entry footer top rule, module background
f3f6f9 module border bottom
cfd4d9 module border top

And there will be more variations on Vickburg, I can assure you.

Posted by: Jay Allen | August 9, 2005 4:26 PM

I was working on a client's TypePad setup (I'd never used it before) the other day and noticed the HTML had some of the same classes and IDs as the new MT 3.2 templates.

At that point it dawned on me what was happening (and I no longer kept wondering why everything seemed so overcoded).

Most excellent move to merge the templates together.

Posted by: dw | August 9, 2005 4:31 PM

Is there a chance for those of us who doesn't use TP to get a sneakpeak at what is currently done with the templates/styles?

Posted by: Sara | August 9, 2005 4:34 PM

The more integration, the better. Now I'm just waiting for comment integration!

Posted by: Kai | August 9, 2005 5:57 PM

Sara, you can sign up with the free Friendster blogs (which are powered by TypePad) if you want to get a look at some of the design options that are available on that platform.

Posted by: Anil Dash | August 9, 2005 7:14 PM

Thanks Anil,

That does indeed look interesting. I can see a quite a few new features in the future development of MT, and gives me a few ideas for the wishlist.

Posted by: Sara | August 9, 2005 7:55 PM

Jay, yer teasin' us with all this '...will soon be able to pick from a huge variety of different styles' stuff.

When, man, WHEN? B^)

Posted by: Karl Elvis MacRae | August 10, 2005 8:22 AM