Rodent Regatta

Movable Type 3.1 is on the way and some details about it have now been posted.

If you want to read something that will lift your spirits, take a look at Jay Allen’s story of how he came worked to win the Movable Type Developer’s Contest.

A couple of days ago I mentioned how much I liked the design at Sonnenvogel.com.

I’ve just found another site that I’m crazy about. Mike Davidson has all the elements I want to bring into this weblog. Here’s how I see it:

• colors are more muted
• lines are not nearly as heavy as here
• comments are styled well
• there are four styles that you can switch between
• there’s a user-selectable font size
• I like the way the text area sits with drop shadow on the background
• the width of the home page and text area is great
• navigation at the top of each page is well done and simple
• the sidebar is simple, but useful
• the color schemes for links really work
• essays are moved to a link within the navigation bar
• the separation of entries and the timestamp lines are light, but useful

Tonight he’s posted an entry about clean URL’s. It’s been a hot topic and one I want to pursue in the refresh of this site.

How can I get those things done to this site? I know it when I see it, but I don’t have the CSS and XHTML and Movable Type skills to make it happen.

* * * UPDATE * * * Two other things I want to include are determining what it takes to write and entry and post it without causing my site to stop validating. Is this something that MT 3.0 or 3.1 solves? Is it something that a plugin will solve? Is it only solved by composing entries external to MT and then posting them?

Also, I want to resolve the domain issues. Sometimes you are rodentregatta.com, but if you leave a comment, you see stevepilgrim.com. I want to fix that once and for all, but without disrupting past comments. It will take some digging, but I’ve got to believe it can be done.

There’s a beta of TopStyle Pro 3.11.

Here’s the premise: The best native format for a word processor is XHTML plus CSS.

A wiki has been established to debate this notion. All I can add to the concept is the notion of a layout and color guide that allows for proper positioning of the sections of this home page. Let me see what it’s going to look like while insuring that it is valid XHTML, valid CSS and all links are operable.

[Thanks to Marc Pasc for the link.]