A couple of users have alerted me to the fact that the Style Images editor doesn't work quite as it should under Internet Explorer, with differing problems arising depending on whether you're using IE6 or IE7.

I'll be doing additional testing and fixing those problems very soon.  In the meantime, if you need to create Style Images, I highly recommend the Firefox browser.

A Note On Browser Support

Minx (the blogging application that runs mee.nu) is developed against Firefox and then tested under Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari.  Usually you only need to make sure that pages render correctly; however, active user interface pages require more testing and problems can slip through.

We intend to fully support all four major browsers on all platforms.  Currently, there are major issues with the WYSIWYG editor on both Opera and Safari; we will shortly be adding an alternative editor that supports all four browsers.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:03 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Minx doesn't email you when new comments or private messages arrive.  It could - it would be easy to do - but I don't want to be sending out thousands (and eventually millions) of emails a day.  There are all sorts of problems with being a high-volume email source, and I'd rather simply not go there.

But it's very useful to be alerted to incoming comments (and private messages!) without having to visit your site every ten minutes.  So how else can this be achieved?

Well, there's RSS.  Minx already supports automatic RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds (and you can customise it to support other formats).  Why not add an RSS feed of comments?

Comments are public, so an RSS feed of them isn't an issue.  (Not true of private messages, but we'll get to that.)  But maybe you don't want everyone to see spam or unapproved comments.  Well, you can set up a hidden feed.  Or the system can do that automatically for you.  If your public comment feed is at http://mysite.mee.nu/feed/comments, and your private comment feed is at, say, http://mysite.mee.nu/feed/comments/aj69c0, you'd have to try an average of a billion combinations before getting access to someone's private comment feed. 

There would be a link in the editing interface so you could subscribe with one click, and easy-peasy, comment notification.

I could certainly do the same with private messages.  If you're sensitive about those and worried about that 1 in a billion chance, I can have an option where the RSS feed only shows the arrival of a new message, and not the sender or contents.

I could also do secured feeds, but that's more fiddly and many popular readers don't support them.

So, what do you think?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:50 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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So, you may have noticed that we have these wonderful new banners and layouts and stuff.  And you may be asking how do you use this?

Here's how!

Converting to 1.1

If you have an original style blog - if your banner doesn't look something like the above - the first thing you'll need to do is update your site to 1.1. 

This is very easy to do.  In your edit menu, got to Styles.  You will see an option Choose a theme... Update to 1.1.  All the themes are similar, varying only in the banner image and some colours.  You can see the basic images used to produce the banners here.  If you want to customise your starter banner, you can grab the images from that page.



Click the button, and your blog will be transformed!

(Note: You may need to do a forced reload of your site to pick up changes immediately when you are working with styles.  In most browsers, you can do this by holding down the shift key and clicking the reload (refresh) button.)


more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:31 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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These are the images used by the standard Minx 1.1 themes.  If you want to modify a "Starter Banner" generated by the theme builder, grab the matching photo from here (or whatever photo you like), upload it to your images directory, and select it in the Style Images editor.

Just right-click on the image you want, and choose "Save link as...", and take it from there.

Photos







(These photos courtesy PD Photo.org.)


Gradients





(These images courtesy me.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You may have noticed an odd problem with individual entry pages in the 1.1 templates with multi-column layouts on sites with long sidebars when browsing with Firefox.

This has been fixed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've just put in place an updated version of the comment listing and moderation screen.  The new version lets you see the full (HTML) text of the comment and the commenter's email (if supplied).  Let me know what you think, and definitely let me know if you have any problems using this (or any other) screen.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sorry about that.  We were down for five or six minutes due to an error in an update file.

Fortunately the automatic notification system worked: I received nearly three hundred emails from the software telling me there was a problem...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Version 1.1 is live!

You should have two new options in your edit menu, under Manage: Styles and Images.  This is where you can play with styles (you can have more than one style, and switch between them), and styled images (banners and footers, plus things like lolcats, motivators, and captions).

It's now after after 11:50 PM here at Pixy Labs, so I'll leave posting all the details until the morning.

Oh, and registrations are back for those of you waiting patiently to join up.  New users automatically get the full 1.1 treatment.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:56 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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Hi everyone.

We're currently in the process of activating the Minx 1.1 upgrade.  Registrations are temporarily disabled while we do this.  Registration should be back later today.

If you have an existing blog, you'll have a new button to update your blog to use the 1.1 theme system.  This backs up your existing templates before switching over, so you can always switch back if you have any problems.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'll be updating the software today - to version 1.1.  Officially this is a beta, though only the 1.1 functions are in beta; existing features shouldn't be affected.

After I've checked that all is well with the new style/layout and image wizards, I'll be enabling those for everyone. 

Applets

Shared applets are also in this update, with an initial set of applets ready for your sidebars: recent comments, recent posts, topic list, category list, archive list, search function and site statistics.

Applets work very much like included templates, with two exceptions: They don't change your template context (tags and variables), and you can share them with other users.  If I set up a nice applet on mysite.mee.nu, you can use it with the code [applet mysite.mee.nu:niceapplet].  With your own applets and the standard applet set, you don't need to specify the site.

Update: 1.1b is now live.  I'll be testing it tonight, and then I'll activate the features for everyone tomorrow morning.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:07 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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