Minx June Update

Okay, brief rundown on the state of play for Minx:

It's up and running here.

You can make it work for your blog (or any munu blog) just by changing the blog= number. You can find your blog number by looking at the address bar when you're logged into Movable Type; it should say something like: http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=14

For example, here's Ace of Spades in Minx. Note that for anything other than Munuviana, Minx is running off the default template set, which isn't as pretty or as well-tested. I'll be pushing some of the Munuviana template features back into the default set over the next few days.

You can view your blog as a forum - though that's only set up for Munuviana right now. All that is, is a different page template; the form= option selects the alternate template.

The Minx user interface is also entirely template-driven. If you don't like it, you can overrride everything.

Minx recognises Movable Type users, MT login cookies, and MT comment cookies. Well, there might be a glitch with the MT comment cookies, but that will get sorted out, and they mostly work.

Posts and comments entered in MT show up immediately in Minx. Comments entered in Minx don't show up until something triggers a rebuild in MT. I have a database table set up to record Minx activity so that MT will know when to rebuild, but it's not live yet.

Comments in Minx have very simple spam protection, and don't use MT Blacklist at all. I'll be applying the same sort of automatic statistical filtering as I have with Snark, which nailed something like 99.5% of spam with almost no false positives before it died during the DOS attack. What will happen is that comments will be accepted with just a simple IP/name filter, and then the statistical filter will come along once a minute and zap anything that turns out to have been spam.

We'll also have registration for commenters - this is nearly ready now. If you already have a munu Movable Type login, that will work for comments as well. If you're registered, you'll be able to edit your comments - though I may set a time limit on this to prevent abuse. You'll still be able to edit comments left on your blog, of course. Posts and comments that belong to you, on your blog or elsewhere on munu, will have a little edit link next to them. Click on the link, edit away, and you're done!

Format Format Format!

You can still enter HTML by hand if you want to, or the good old mix of HTML and blank lines. Minx handles that just fine.

You also have a fancy-pants WYSIWYG editor, though it needs to be smacked around the head until it stops using bloody <span> tags. The editor works in Firefox/Mozilla (except that it uses span tags), Internet Explorer, and Opera 9. Under Safari, Konqueror, older versions of Opera, and other browsers, you'll get the standard text box.

I'm also adding three (maybe more, but at least three) markup languages: BBCode, WikiText, and Textile. BBCode is up first, and will probably be in place today (though not complete). All of these do automatic filtering of your tags to make sure that the resulting HTML is valid. If you forget a closing tag in BBCode, for example, it will automatically fix it for you.

BBCode will also be supported for comments.

BBCode in posts can also be used to process simple template tags into the body of the post. I don't know exactly why you'd want to do that, but you can. You can do that with macros too (remember macros?) And you can mix HTML and BBCode (and macros), and you can use BBCode (and macros) in the WYSIWYG editor, though they won't be very WYSIWYG then.

Oops, gotta run, back later.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:09 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 so what does that mean in English? Sorry, I have been wrestling with a grant all day, and the switch between science-ese and computer-ese is too much for my brain today.

Posted by: caltechgirl @ at June 28, 2006 02:27 AM

2 It means that we get to stop using Movable Type and use neato-keen Minx - without having to do any messy exporty/importy stuff.

With about 30,000 shiny new features! Some of which I don't understand!

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 28, 2006 04:03 AM

3 I'm going to convert Ambient Irony to minx.

Unfortunately, I'm on MT3, so I have to either convert back or convert Minx to MT3.

Ehn.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 28, 2006 05:04 AM

4 Just took a look at BBCode. I don't get it, it looks just as hard as HTML. What's its added value?

Posted by: David Boxenhorn @ at June 28, 2006 07:25 AM

5 1. Square brackets are easier to type than angle brackets.
2. It's a markup code for a single post, not a page layout language. So there are a lot less ways to screw things up.
3. Magic tags like [spoiler] [footnote] and [wiki].
4. HTML is a mess.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 28, 2006 08:14 AM

6 I did the blog number switch thing. I'm guessing the fact that it didn't show things like my side bar and banner and other little decorative touches that are near and dear to me is just a matter of the templates not matching up?

I am very interested in making the switch. How much work is it going to take to move Hold the Mayo over? I am more than willing to do the work I just need to get mentally prepared.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin @ at June 28, 2006 12:16 PM

7 How does the switch happen exactly? If someone visits my blog, how does he see the Minx version instead of the MT version?

Posted by: Andrew @ at June 29, 2006 09:16 AM

8 I did the blog number switch thing. I'm guessing the fact that it
didn't show things like my side bar and banner and other little
decorative touches that are near and dear to me is just a matter of the
templates not matching up?

Right. Minx uses an entirely different template system to MT. That's the one drawback, but no way in hell am I going to make that part MT compatible.

I might be able to do a converstion program, though.


I am very interested in making the switch. How much work is it going to take to move Hold the Mayo over?

It's just a question of reworking templates. Minx templates tend to be a lot simpler than MT ones, so it shouldn't be too hard. You can (of course) keep your existing stylesheet and images.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 29, 2006 11:53 AM

9 How does the switch happen exactly? If someone visits my blog, how does he see the Minx version instead of the MT version?

I'll explain this in more detail in my next post. Right now I'm kind of dead.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 29, 2006 11:55 AM

10 It sounds like the best approach, at least for someone with my level of skills, is pick a template then tweak it until it looks like I want it to look. From every thing I've read about how quick Minx is the 3,000 rebuilds I'll have to do until I get it just right won't take very long!

Posted by: Stephen Macklin @ at June 29, 2006 02:54 PM

11 Pixy: Thanks for all your work on this =)

Posted by: Andrew @ at June 30, 2006 01:26 AM

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