Rodent Regatta

Now there’s a Web Standards Award contest that attempts to encourage and draw attention to designing with web standards. [from webgraphics]

The noise level about alternative platforms for content management has picked up recently. Alternatives to Movable Type are beginning to find their ways to market, however Movable Type has a share of mind and usage that will be hard to overtake.

Some of the interest in the ”other” tools is built on curiosity, tinkering and the ever-present desire to try something new. We’ll see if there’s enough sustained interest to take any significant number of users from Movable Type.

It would suit me just fine for about six months or even a year if I could somehow earn a (meager) living learning Movable Type, CSS, Atom, RSS, XHTML, validation, etc.

Every time I begin to scratch the surface of this stuff and peak at what’s underneath, my enthusiasm for it soars. I’m no graphic arts person. I’m no programmer. I’m not a software developer. I do enjoy learning how the various pieces and techniques fit together.

I’ve got at least a hundred ideas for how Movable Type could be applied where conventional web sites have been designed and developed at far higher costs. It would be great to know how to do something about all of those. I could work until I was eighty!

I think I’m going to add an Atom feed to this weblog. I’ve got to go prowling around and make sure I find the proper template that can be copied and pasted into a new MT template. I’m also wondering if there’s an icon for Atom feeds.

I still haven’t figured out how to show full posts in my RSS feeds when part of the post is in the extended entry portion of the Movable Type text entry box.

If any of you kind souls know of an existing tutorial about where to find and how to add an Atom feed and an Atom icon for syndication, your pointer would be welcome.

• * * UPDATE * * * Done, Saturday, February 7, 2004, 8:30p.m.

Yesterday we talked about the questions surrounding how to begin making this weblog validate. I pointed to tools. Perhaps lack of know-how is the single biggest cause of the 800 plus validation errors.

Whatever the cause and whatever the ultimate solution, Brad Choate certainly manages to make MT-Textile 2 sound inviting.