Picto Synthesis

I could not stand the default behavior of drop down menus in Movable Type 4 interface within 10 minutes of first using it. I want drop down menus that drop when I click on them, not when I mouse over them. So I came up with a simple hack to replace the default behavior of drop down menus by something safer for my sanity.

Continue reading "Quiet menus for MT 4.0" »

The upgrade to Movable Type 4.0 didn't go as smoothly as some people have reported soon after the release of the final version, but it wasn't all that bad either compared to past versions.

Upgrading, in itself, was an easy task. I just followed the Recommended upgrade instructions, starting with a migration of the database from DB::Berkeley to MySQL.

I only ran into some minor issues:

The database migration script was taking too long when it came to handling a large amount of junk trackback pings I never had the patience to delete. I had to edit the script to skip that kind of class when migrating database objects.

The CGI scripts in the main installation folder of MT 4.0 returned a message about invalid headers. I had to edit the scripts with the proper includes for the perl installation on my server :

use strict;
use File::Basename;
use File::Spec;
use lib File::Spec->catdir(dirname($0), "lib");

Once the scripts were running correctly, I was missing all CSS formatting on the admin interface of MT 4.0. It turned out that was because I used to have my 'mt-static' folder outside of the 'cgi-bin' folder. Moving the folder where it belongs solved that problem.

The last problem was trickier. Although I could see recent entries on the dashboard page and the Entries RSS feed, the 'Manage -> Entries' page returned no entries whatsoever. A message on the forum and an official support ticket later, I came across a solution by accident - setting the number of rows to display from 5 to another value brought the entries back. 

Very strange.

I was not able to reproduce the problem, except by opening the admin interface for the first time, on a different browser and different machine. I don't know if this is an issue with CSS, cookies or browsers. At least, there's a workaround.

Now the only issue remaining is the update of templates and plugins, but that is not really related to the installation process. So far, it seems to be working pretty well except for the missing QuickPost wizard. It looks like the convenient wizard from MT 3.3 was replaced by a single link for Quickpost on the Entry form.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone came with a plugin to restore that missing wizard.

The migration to Gallery 2.0 is now complete. I spent some time over the last couple of days to find ways to integrate Movable Type and Gallery. In both cases, lack of time to delve into APIs forced me to take some shortcuts.

These examples rely on the use of Cold Fusion as a scripting language. They could probably be adapted to PHP instead, but then again, I don't have much time to learn PHP beyond simple editing of existing code.

Displaying Gallery content from Movable Type

Gallery offers a nice way to embed images from remote pages. By simply looking at the URLs used by the image-block option of Gallery, I came up with the following modules for Movable Type :

    <CFOUTPUT>
        <CFHTTP url="#gallery2url#?g2_view=imageblock.External&g2_blocks=randomImage" resolveurl="no" />
        #CFHTTP.FileContent#
    </CFOUTPUT>

This module displays a random image from the Gallery. Change the value of 'g2block=' by 'viewedImage' to display the most view image. '#gallery2url#' is a cold fusion variable to the URL of the 'main.php' page of your gallery.

Continue reading "MT 3.2 / Gallery 2.0 Integration" »

The switch of this site to the new 3.2 version of Movable Type took a little longer than expected but it was well worth the wait !

After using it for a couple of days, I keep finding little changes here and there, interface improvements, better icons... overall, the new Administration is clean and streamlined. More importantly, it makes sense.

I won't go into the main features of this new version. Other sites such as Planet Movable Type are doing that in a much better way than I would.

One word of warning though if you are using IIS6 and Perl 5.6 on Windows like I am. Some Perl scripts included in the new version simply refused to run.

That can be a problem if the script you are trying to run is 'mt-upgrade.cgi' or even 'mt.cgi'.

It turns out the path to the new perl libraries was not defined properly. Thanks to a quick email to Six Apart's support line (answered by Brad Choates no less :) ), a solution magically appeared in my inbox.

Simply add these 3 lines to the '.cgi' files using the new 'Boostrap' method :

use File::Basename;
use File::Spec;
use lib File::Spec->catdir(dirname($0), "lib");

(These lines should be added right after 'use strict;').

Now I just have to find enough time to study the new system of styles and the StyleCatcher plugin.

In answer to the initial criticisms about their new licenses, Six Apart has announced the following changes :

• There are now no limits on the number of weblogs you can create with a paid license of Movable Type. The free license remains limited.
• All paid options include support directly from us, through our online ticket system.
• Our licenses are perpetual, meaning there are no annual subscription fees. Larger commercial licenses require a 20% maintenance fee after the first year if continued support is desired.
• Paid licenses will include free updates and bug fixes. For example: 3.x release are free to any 3.x licensee. Paid licenses are also eligible for discounts on major upgrades to the software, so 3.x paid licensees will receive a discount on 4.x versions of Movable Type.
• All of the pricing mentioned below is the standard price, so the numbers published on our site are no longer introductory pricing.
• In the next couple of months we are planning a general release of Movable Type 3.x with compelling new features, which will be a free update for Developer Edition users.

Check out the full announcement about MT3.0 licenses for more details.

They have made impressive concessions and showed that they are not only willing to listen to their customers, but they are also acting based on their suggestions. They should be commended for that.

This is my contribution to the informal survey started by Six Apart about the ways people are using Movable Type in the real world. It is rare enough to see a company listen to its users so quickly and be wiling to make changes where other companies would just have ignored the outcry and told everyone to just live with it.

So... how are we using MT ?

Not as frequently or as extensively as I would like I am afraid.

We are using 2 blogs with 2 authors (my brother and myself). Each blog is made up of a main blog and a secondary one to keep track of lists of links.

I also customized a couple of templates in the source code itself to replace the default editor by an HTML embedded editor (FCKedit). This is not working a 100% (still getting odd ’timeout’ messages from MT from time to time on long entries) but it is enough to get the job done.

I would not mind paying for a personal license as long as it covered more than 1 author (I can see that being a recurring theme on blogs shared by multiple members of the same family) and allowed tinkering with the source code.

I really hope this survey will result in changes to the terms of licenses.

Like many others, I was looking forward with excitement to see what the new version of Movable Type had to offer. Since the announcement was made a few days ago of a new version, Movable Type 3.0,  and a new licensing scheme, ’disappointment’ and ’confusion’ are more applicable to the situation.

In the middle of the outcry (amplified by a recent feature in Slashdot), some popular blogs are trying to keep a cool view of what is happening. Check out Brad Choates answer to the debacle..

For those who have not heard yet (and who still care), Six Apart announced their free version of MT3 will be restricted to 1 author and 3 blogs. To their credit, they have answered to the outcry following the announcement with a detailed clarification about MT3 pricing change  where they announced a revision of the license already (5 blogs instead of 3).

I came late to using a blog for my website, and although I am not posting frequently enough to justify calling this site a real blog, I can easily understand how people who are already paying for their internet access and their hosting are upset to find out they have to pay for an upgrade to something that was free when they first got it.

The answer may look simple - keep the existing version or move to another blog system altogether. The first solution means keep using a software that will become more and more obsolete each day. The other solution means accepting  to go through setting up yet again and migrating past data into a new system.

I will probably keep this version (still free) until the dust settles, and switch to a personal license when I have a chance.

I have been trying to replace the default entry textarea by an HTML editor such as this one ( FCK Editor  - FREE web based HTML editor )

Getting the editor to work is relatively straight forward. Just install the zip files in their destination on your website, edit the editor javascript (or .htc) files to point to the new location and copy/paste the HTML code from the test pages into the ’edit_entry.tmpl’ template (MT/tmpl/cms folder).

Problems showed up when I tried to edit an entry : all HTML codes were replaced by their escaped equivalent.

For example :   </A> becomes & lt ;/A & gt ;

This makes WYSIWYG editing completely useless.   But the good news is - I finally got it to work...  

Continue reading "How to replace the default entry textarea by an HTML editor" »