Hells Kitchen now seen in Movable Type on Steriods
The expression - _________ on steroids - generally means that something is in overdrive. But steroids have gotten a very bad reputation with regard to behavior, i.e., that behavior on steroids is, at best, anti-social.
And that's how I feel about MT 4.
If you look at the footer on this page, you will see that I haven't changed the MT version number. That's because, while the engine that runs this blog is now MT 4, my templates are from MT 3.3. Ha! The system changed it for me.
MT 4 has changed too much too fast. If I wanted my blog to look, act, and feel like MT 4's templates, I'd be in heaven. But I don't. I designed my blog page to look the way I wanted it, to act the way I wanted it. The problem isn't so much this blog, but other projects that I work on.
For other people, I have used MT 3.3 as a content management system to create a webpage. The MT 3.3 and earlier templates were easy to understand and manipulate. MT 4 templates are a nightmare.
I am more than computer literate, but I am not a genius or a whizz. Normally, when you change the digital landscape on me it takes me weeks over a period of months to adjust. I try something. It works . . . it works partially . . . it doesn't work, so I go away for the new processes to germinate in my brain and them come back and try it again.
Right now, I feel like it will take me years to grasp MT4.
Believe it or not, I was once a computer programmer, but my skill is top-down, not bottom-up. And I can see what may have happened here, because I don't believe Six Apart would have deliberately made the system so difficult for its non-technical users.
I assume that they generally wanted to make the system easier to use and, theoretically, the module approach cuts down the amount of code that has to be edited. In 3.3, if you use the same patch of code in several files, you have to edit several files if you need to change the code. In MT 4, the code that is repeated is put instead into a module or a widget which is included in the main and archive templates. This means that if you change the code, you only edit the module or widget.
The ideal would have been to translate 3.3's templates into shells with includes, perhaps offering up some additional features. And then to gradually change the setup over time, with each new version of MT 4 moving the digital landscape to a new horizon.
I would guess that in the process of developing MT 4, they felt that a gradual change was going to be too expensive or too difficult to do that way. And that's too bad.
Movable Type was never great on documentation for people whose first preference is for literature over technology, but did I tell you that MT 4 documentation - I hate this word - sucks? They have more pages of documentation that tell me nothing.
Just before MT 4 came out, someone wrote a Movable Type Bible, actually
I sure hope someone is writing a book on MT4 for people with MT 3 mindsets.
MT 4 has changed too much too fast. If I wanted my blog to look, act, and feel like MT 4's templates, I'd be in heaven. But I don't. I designed my blog page to look the way I wanted it, to act the way I wanted it. The problem isn't so much this blog, but other projects that I work on.
For other people, I have used MT 3.3 as a content management system to create a webpage. The MT 3.3 and earlier templates were easy to understand and manipulate. MT 4 templates are a nightmare.
I am more than computer literate, but I am not a genius or a whizz. Normally, when you change the digital landscape on me it takes me weeks over a period of months to adjust. I try something. It works . . . it works partially . . . it doesn't work, so I go away for the new processes to germinate in my brain and them come back and try it again.
Right now, I feel like it will take me years to grasp MT4.
Believe it or not, I was once a computer programmer, but my skill is top-down, not bottom-up. And I can see what may have happened here, because I don't believe Six Apart would have deliberately made the system so difficult for its non-technical users.
I assume that they generally wanted to make the system easier to use and, theoretically, the module approach cuts down the amount of code that has to be edited. In 3.3, if you use the same patch of code in several files, you have to edit several files if you need to change the code. In MT 4, the code that is repeated is put instead into a module or a widget which is included in the main and archive templates. This means that if you change the code, you only edit the module or widget.
The ideal would have been to translate 3.3's templates into shells with includes, perhaps offering up some additional features. And then to gradually change the setup over time, with each new version of MT 4 moving the digital landscape to a new horizon.
I would guess that in the process of developing MT 4, they felt that a gradual change was going to be too expensive or too difficult to do that way. And that's too bad.
Movable Type was never great on documentation for people whose first preference is for literature over technology, but did I tell you that MT 4 documentation - I hate this word - sucks? They have more pages of documentation that tell me nothing.
Just before MT 4 came out, someone wrote a Movable Type Bible, actually
Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition by Rogers Cadenhead.
I sure hope someone is writing a book on MT4 for people with MT 3 mindsets.