Design

Trying out StyleCatcher 1.01, the bug fix version - and it works. This makes applying or switching styles very easy indeed if you don’t want to (or don’t know how to) edit your templates and style sheets to create a different look-and-feel.

I’m certainly not at the stage yet of creating my own blog design so a tool like StyleCatcher is extremely useful. A very similar concept to the way you do this in TypePad where you can create a particular look by simply selecting a design template and applying it with a couple of clicks.

So the appearance of this blog will likely change in the coming days as I experiment with different styles (the one I’ve just switched to is called Bryant).

I would imagine this feature will be very popular indeed with the type of MT user who looks for styles to apply rather than try and build them him or herself. Someone like me, in fact!

You can read the full details about StyleCatcher 1.01 to learn about its capabilities, and take a look at the MT 3.2 style library to see what styles are currently available. Most of these are what you have in TypePad, too. No doubt more will come in time as more users start using this handy plugin and more people develop new styles.

At last - some guidance on how to include tags in your sidebar!

Add Links to Sidebar - updated page in the MT 3.2 Knowledge Base.

As you can see on the right, I can now do it. Thanks, MT Support!

I’ve spent quite a bit of time today editing templates and style sheets, all to do with the look-and-feel of this blog.

It’s certainly more appealing to my eye now to look at! New banner, changed the default typeface in the CSS, added some things to the right-hand sidebar and created an About page so that visitors will at least get a clue about me and what I do.

All this is just transitional, though, mostly to make this place just a bit easier to find your way around and read the content. So expect more changes.

Some small things I want to do asap:

• Get the item headings in the right column to range left and not be centered.
• Perhaps change the size of the post headings (these seem a bit small for headings).
• Maybe make the hyperlink underlining dotted rather than solid.
• Make a template edit so that the RSS feed includes extended post content: currently, the feed will include content only in the entry body field.
• Take a good look through the CSS re font sizes: it seems that on some pages, bulleted text is smaller than the body text.

I also added a link for subscribing to the RSS feed via FeedBurner. This is the only visible RSS link although RSS readers will auto-discover the Atom, RSS 1 and 2 feeds that are present. However, I think offering only one visible option to get the feed is much better. One thing I find on my current primary blog is that offering so many RSS subscription options adds to one’s difficulty in measuring where your visitors are coming from.

Also added the Technorati stuff so that the blog will get listed and ranked over time.

So much to do… and so much time