It’s good to see ALA publishing new material again! I found the interview with Anil quite nteresting, if a bit of a set-piece. I too would have liked more of a “developer’s story” with some anecdotes about the processes and decisions, but fully support ALA calling attention to companies, products and people who “walk the walk.”
Liked the TypePad story a lot…in part because I’m a late discoverer of blogging and eager to learn as much as I can. Also working on the third edition of Writing for the Web, which will certainly deal with writing blogs. While my emphasis is always on the text and not on the technical means for displaying it, it’s really helpful to know what kinds of tools are out there. I agree that pMachine can create great blogs (see http://www.sarswatch.org), but my hesitant attempts to use it were not very encouraging.
Can you at least give us an idea what quarter we should expect this to happen?
I regret having to press you guys on this but it does seem highly unusual to make any announcement till you were at a further stage of development.
As much as I would love to see you guys do well I hope you can see why others including myself are sceptical about how sixapart have (so far) gone about this.
It seems to me and others (above) that you are manufacturing demand for a product that doesn’t exist.
Larger companies are more able to successfully follow this approach because they can draw on more resources to support a project if things look like they may unravel. Sixapart is not in that league.
From a strategic business perspective can you explain the rationale for this approach?
I’m seeing in this forum a kind of blinkered backlash. I think the article does give the impression of an advertorial but big deal. Not all ALA readers are knowledgable, hip and ..erm..underground and ALA is as much about independent content as about doctype tutorials and style sheet widgets and that should include news about an interesting new blogging tool. And one can deny the valuable contribution to independent content that the makers of this product have made. Good luck to them. Having said that, a complete comparison of TypePad with the major blog/cms software available may have seemed more subjective. But, sometimes we get a bit precious about what is reasonable on the web and what isn’t. Lets all relax a little.
Regarding easy to use software, I’ve used MT, Greymatter and pMachine and found pMachine to be the easiest to install, use and customise. I even dug into my pockets and actually for the pro version. And I’m pretty sure Version 1.0 was xhtml and css valid right out of the box over a year ago and the same could be said of the code it produced (could be wrong). I’d try Textpattern but if Dean Allen can’t stop poncing around the French countryside and add a nice photolog feature like he has on http://www.textism.com then he ain’t getting any of my money.
Sorry about my long post.
Long live the mighty standards-compliant CMS revolution!
Photostack looks excellent. This should get me away from frames which is the only way I’ve managed to get pMachine make my photolog look the way I want. Easy Thumbnails too. Thankyou Matthew.
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Adrian D.
“what I’m trying to communicate is that this new article is a resource that developers can use to demonstrate that companies are deploying standards-based web apps.”
Okay, understood.
“This article on A List Apart doesn’t explain specifics of our CSS files because there already ALA articles on those subjects.”
I’m sorry to harp on but CSS isn’t the only issue in standards-based development. For example, I would have been interested in knowing how you dealt with converting plain text input entries into structural markup. However you have established that this article can be used to demonstrate the commerical value of XHTML/CSS to business decision makers, so I’d agree that such nitty-gritty technological discussions are innaproriate.
In that case, I would argue that the following sample of questions did not help advocate the commerical benefits of standards.
<cite>
…in what special ways does TypePad meet those content producers’ needs
would TypePad be a poor choice for a school, church, or other small organization…
Why should web producers interest themselves in products from a small company like Six Apart? Shouldn’t they wait for a more respectable product from a bigger company like Macromedia or even Microsoft?
What else should we know about TypePad, Movable Type, or Six Apart?
</cite>
Anil, my problem is not with your responses. Its the way most of the interview provided little scope for anything but marketing fluff.
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AdLad
“Would TypePad be a poor choice for a school, church, or other small organization” is marketing fluff?
Funny, that’s exactly the question I would have asked, having small and midsized clients who need an inexpensive CMS that won’t break my templates and is easy to run, so I don’t have to play systems administrator for them.
And the answer was, no, Typepad isn’t the product that will solve my problem at providing a CMS solution for my clients. It was an honest answer, not marketing hype.
I’ve already e-mailed Anil about this directly, but thought it would be worth posting here for comment:
“Every template in TypePad will be standards-compliant markup by default. We haven’t finalized the number of pre-built templates yet, but because the template builder lets people create their own, the total number is essentially limitless. All of the built-in ones are designed by Mena Trott, who designed the default Movable Type templates that people seem very happy with, along with sites like her own Dollarshort.org and Gizmodo, a Movable Type-powered weblog about gadgets. Interestingly, she also designed the Currency template, which seems to have been adopted as an option by nearly every weblog publishing tool that exists, so it appears that even the users of our competitors’ products like her design sense.”
“Anil – how about opening it up and allowing others to contribute?
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Mena’s templates – I mean, I haven’t even seen any of them – but a bit of variety wouldn’t do any harm and you’re in a great position to publicise this.”
I initially thought of an ‘approved by the Web Standards Project’ kind of thing, but it shouldn’t just be WaSP people contributing – if a template looks good and validates, whay not consider it? Dave Shea has had some great stuff over at CSS Zen Garden.
Variety. It’s what life is all about.
BTW, great to see ALA back again! 1 day in and already the forums are busy :-)
Well, not sure what happend to my last post (zapped), so I’m now in ‘can’t be bothered to re-type full post so you get potted version mode’. Hurrah.
My comment – which I’ve e-mailed directly to Anil – is that it would be great to get more contributions for standards-compliant templates. A bit of community collaboration would be cool.
Anyway, great to see ALA back. Let’s hope that it’s back in full steam now that JZ has put down his quill for a while.
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Jim
whew.
I am glad to see ALA back, disappointed to see that its not a technical article. that’s pretty much what I said. I think we’ve become accustomed to the usual tech stuff, so an interview about a particular product does seem off the usual path, and somewhat commercial.
Perhaps what some people are looking for is more of a discaimer about the purpose of the article, in the article itself – not the forum, such as the stated value to show that companies are moving toward standards. Instead, we’re met with “Lately the community has been buzzing about a soon-to-be-released Six Apart product…” So of course some people feel a bit sold, since we’re pretty much a guaranteed audience.
On the other hand I wondered if this site is on the cusp of becoming a full-fledged webzine, in which case, we could probably expect good technical articles and interviews, as well as product reviews. It is a bit underground, what with its indeterminate frequency and topics.
This is, however, free content, and I’m sure Z et al. are well aware that the ‘free’ tag doesn’t stop the complaints, but perhaps anybody with time and good writing skills can request to write an article for ALA, and I doubt the editors would be too unhappy. Free for us costs time and money for them. Not to mention, ALA could likely have more frequent and diverse articles if people are willing to submit, if, of course, ALA is willing to accept.
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kliertje
most of the CMS being talked about here is released onder the GPL. These people put in their free time to deliver a free product… and a damn good one as well. So thank typepad, textpattern, pmachine, photostack and wordpress.
It is good to talk about these type of tools. Tool are efficient and when they create valid xhtml and css files they make my day. Talking about them informs us about choices we have and might not know about.
good to see blogging software working towards standards compliance. this comes a couple of days after Blogger’s new system went live, dumping all browsers except IE6.0 into “simple mode, because your browser doesn’t support standards”. i hope they sort that out…
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kid
Damn – it’s not like they’re getting paid off by some corporate giant… whys everyone so grumpy? Its a good tool developed with good intentions… and it’s an improvement over many of the other available options. Perhaps it’ll even be accessible… which is more than most can say.
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Can anyone get ahold of your code you use here for your forum? I like it but cant seem to figure it out on how you got it working? Is this somehting that you will share with me or not?
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Mr. abrasive
Ok so didnt add a name or nothing so thought I would do a follow up post here, and no I am not trying to get the forum for myself I mean if you want to share the code with everyone cool, but I would like to have it so I could use it. I do like it, simple, clean, and to the point.
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guybo
Is this not the lamest ALA article ever?
If it was open source then I could at least form some semblance of a flimsy link between this and “the Rest of Us”. As it stands there is not even a free version planned so thanks for the recommendation on how to spend my money.
Now, can someone point me to the ALA article about Dreamweaver MX support for XHTML?
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they’d shut up about how wonderful and standards-oriented and all TypePad will be and just work on getting the thing out the door and available, heh. I have a fistful of $$$ waiting to be spent on TypePad, but it sure looks like it’s never going to arrive . . .
an on-topic, free article on a designer/developer site with no ads that finally starts publishing again incurs the wrath of the blogsphere. maybe those with the wrath should find a more underground resource to visit.
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Despite the bit of repetition I noticed in the article, the article was very helpful and I think Six Apart will do very well with TypePad. Though I was a bit unsuccessful in my attempts in install MovableType, I would like to try TypePad someday.
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jo
Could not read this article bexause the lines merge together if I go ALT t-o-e-z to bypass the stylesheet and increase the text to MEDIUM on Win98. If that iis what ‘standard’ means, than heaven help people with reading disabilities.
jo,
to overcome this troubles get yourself the free MyIE2 plugin for Internet Explorer
(http://www.myie2.com, some other plugins do the trick as well)
You’ll be able to zoom in and out using Ctrl/+ and Ctrl/-,
zooming will apply to text and graphics, CSS will get overridden;
Mozilla1+/Netscape6+ offer the same feature.
50 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleLisa
It’s good to see ALA publishing new material again! I found the interview with Anil quite nteresting, if a bit of a set-piece. I too would have liked more of a “developer’s story” with some anecdotes about the processes and decisions, but fully support ALA calling attention to companies, products and people who “walk the walk.”
What’s next?
Crawford Kilian
Liked the TypePad story a lot…in part because I’m a late discoverer of blogging and eager to learn as much as I can. Also working on the third edition of Writing for the Web, which will certainly deal with writing blogs. While my emphasis is always on the text and not on the technical means for displaying it, it’s really helpful to know what kinds of tools are out there. I agree that pMachine can create great blogs (see http://www.sarswatch.org), but my hesitant attempts to use it were not very encouraging.
irritant
Can you at least give us an idea what quarter we should expect this to happen?
I regret having to press you guys on this but it does seem highly unusual to make any announcement till you were at a further stage of development.
As much as I would love to see you guys do well I hope you can see why others including myself are sceptical about how sixapart have (so far) gone about this.
It seems to me and others (above) that you are manufacturing demand for a product that doesn’t exist.
Larger companies are more able to successfully follow this approach because they can draw on more resources to support a project if things look like they may unravel. Sixapart is not in that league.
From a strategic business perspective can you explain the rationale for this approach?
Tim
Smash the capitalist CMS!
I’m seeing in this forum a kind of blinkered backlash. I think the article does give the impression of an advertorial but big deal. Not all ALA readers are knowledgable, hip and ..erm..underground and ALA is as much about independent content as about doctype tutorials and style sheet widgets and that should include news about an interesting new blogging tool. And one can deny the valuable contribution to independent content that the makers of this product have made. Good luck to them. Having said that, a complete comparison of TypePad with the major blog/cms software available may have seemed more subjective. But, sometimes we get a bit precious about what is reasonable on the web and what isn’t. Lets all relax a little.
Regarding easy to use software, I’ve used MT, Greymatter and pMachine and found pMachine to be the easiest to install, use and customise. I even dug into my pockets and actually
for the pro version. And I’m pretty sure Version 1.0 was xhtml and css valid right out of the box over a year ago and the same could be said of the code it produced (could be wrong). I’d try Textpattern but if Dean Allen can’t stop poncing around the French countryside and add a nice photolog feature like he has on http://www.textism.com then he ain’t getting any of my money.
Sorry about my long post.
Long live the mighty standards-compliant CMS revolution!
Matthew Mullenweg
Tim if you’re interested in a photolog like Dean’s with a slant toward standards you might like Noel Jackson’s PhotoStack (http://photostack.org/).
Tim
Photostack looks excellent. This should get me away from frames which is the only way I’ve managed to get pMachine make my photolog look the way I want. Easy Thumbnails too. Thankyou Matthew.
Adrian D.
“what I’m trying to communicate is that this new article is a resource that developers can use to demonstrate that companies are deploying standards-based web apps.”
Okay, understood.
“This article on A List Apart doesn’t explain specifics of our CSS files because there already ALA articles on those subjects.”
I’m sorry to harp on but CSS isn’t the only issue in standards-based development. For example, I would have been interested in knowing how you dealt with converting plain text input entries into structural markup. However you have established that this article can be used to demonstrate the commerical value of XHTML/CSS to business decision makers, so I’d agree that such nitty-gritty technological discussions are innaproriate.
In that case, I would argue that the following sample of questions did not help advocate the commerical benefits of standards.
<cite>
…in what special ways does TypePad meet those content producers’ needs
would TypePad be a poor choice for a school, church, or other small organization…
Why should web producers interest themselves in products from a small company like Six Apart? Shouldn’t they wait for a more respectable product from a bigger company like Macromedia or even Microsoft?
What else should we know about TypePad, Movable Type, or Six Apart?
</cite>
Anil, my problem is not with your responses. Its the way most of the interview provided little scope for anything but marketing fluff.
AdLad
“Would TypePad be a poor choice for a school, church, or other small organization” is marketing fluff?
Funny, that’s exactly the question I would have asked, having small and midsized clients who need an inexpensive CMS that won’t break my templates and is easy to run, so I don’t have to play systems administrator for them.
And the answer was, no, Typepad isn’t the product that will solve my problem at providing a CMS solution for my clients. It was an honest answer, not marketing hype.
John W.
“It was an honest answer, not marketing hype.”
Yes it was an honest answer, but Adrian fealt is was just marketing fluf, lingo, etc. Nothing was mentioned about hype…
I do agree that this article did not provide any useful information, and most of it can be found on TypePad’s website.
Ian Lloyd
I’ve already e-mailed Anil about this directly, but thought it would be worth posting here for comment:
“Anil – how about opening it up and allowing others to contribute?
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Mena’s templates – I mean, I haven’t even seen any of them – but a bit of variety wouldn’t do any harm and you’re in a great position to publicise this.”
I initially thought of an ‘approved by the Web Standards Project’ kind of thing, but it shouldn’t just be WaSP people contributing – if a template looks good and validates, whay not consider it? Dave Shea has had some great stuff over at CSS Zen Garden.
Variety. It’s what life is all about.
BTW, great to see ALA back again! 1 day in and already the forums are busy :-)
Ian Lloyd
Well, not sure what happend to my last post (zapped), so I’m now in ‘can’t be bothered to re-type full post so you get potted version mode’. Hurrah.
My comment – which I’ve e-mailed directly to Anil – is that it would be great to get more contributions for standards-compliant templates. A bit of community collaboration would be cool.
Anyway, great to see ALA back. Let’s hope that it’s back in full steam now that JZ has put down his quill for a while.
Jim
whew.
I am glad to see ALA back, disappointed to see that its not a technical article. that’s pretty much what I said. I think we’ve become accustomed to the usual tech stuff, so an interview about a particular product does seem off the usual path, and somewhat commercial.
Perhaps what some people are looking for is more of a discaimer about the purpose of the article, in the article itself – not the forum, such as the stated value to show that companies are moving toward standards. Instead, we’re met with “Lately the community has been buzzing about a soon-to-be-released Six Apart product…” So of course some people feel a bit sold, since we’re pretty much a guaranteed audience.
On the other hand I wondered if this site is on the cusp of becoming a full-fledged webzine, in which case, we could probably expect good technical articles and interviews, as well as product reviews. It is a bit underground, what with its indeterminate frequency and topics.
This is, however, free content, and I’m sure Z et al. are well aware that the ‘free’ tag doesn’t stop the complaints, but perhaps anybody with time and good writing skills can request to write an article for ALA, and I doubt the editors would be too unhappy. Free for us costs time and money for them. Not to mention, ALA could likely have more frequent and diverse articles if people are willing to submit, if, of course, ALA is willing to accept.
kliertje
most of the CMS being talked about here is released onder the GPL. These people put in their free time to deliver a free product… and a damn good one as well. So thank typepad, textpattern, pmachine, photostack and wordpress.
It is good to talk about these type of tools. Tool are efficient and when they create valid xhtml and css files they make my day. Talking about them informs us about choices we have and might not know about.
kliertje
Tim, all work and no play!! (http://www.alistapart.com/stories/typepad/discuss/#ala-1885) I’ll not work for you mate.
V – keep on poncing
Wexzilla
Does TypePad use Smarty Templates? If not, how would I change the skin and placement of all the different objects?
John W.
“These people put in their free time to deliver a free product… and a damn good one as well. So thank typepad,”
TypePad will not be free, and I’m not sure about the GPL license.
heretic
good to see blogging software working towards standards compliance. this comes a couple of days after Blogger’s new system went live, dumping all browsers except IE6.0 into “simple mode, because your browser doesn’t support standards”. i hope they sort that out…
kid
Damn – it’s not like they’re getting paid off by some corporate giant… whys everyone so grumpy? Its a good tool developed with good intentions… and it’s an improvement over many of the other available options. Perhaps it’ll even be accessible… which is more than most can say.
Can anyone get ahold of your code you use here for your forum? I like it but cant seem to figure it out on how you got it working? Is this somehting that you will share with me or not?
Mr. abrasive
Ok so didnt add a name or nothing so thought I would do a follow up post here, and no I am not trying to get the forum for myself I mean if you want to share the code with everyone cool, but I would like to have it so I could use it. I do like it, simple, clean, and to the point.
Advert? Maybe. But honestly, seeing that ALA hasn’t been updated since November or so I don’t mind seeing anything new on this site, advert or not.
guybo
Is this not the lamest ALA article ever?
If it was open source then I could at least form some semblance of a flimsy link between this and “the Rest of Us”. As it stands there is not even a free version planned so thanks for the recommendation on how to spend my money.
Now, can someone point me to the ALA article about Dreamweaver MX support for XHTML?
they’d shut up about how wonderful and standards-oriented and all TypePad will be and just work on getting the thing out the door and available, heh. I have a fistful of $$$ waiting to be spent on TypePad, but it sure looks like it’s never going to arrive . . .
I want to send them money. Where’s my TypePad?
-b-
an on-topic, free article on a designer/developer site with no ads that finally starts publishing again incurs the wrath of the blogsphere. maybe those with the wrath should find a more underground resource to visit.
If anyone would like to read some actual content, can I suggest you head on over to:
http://www.evolt.org/
A. White
Mena discusses some secret new features of TypePad.
http://www.dollarshort.org/archives/000881.html#more
Despite the bit of repetition I noticed in the article, the article was very helpful and I think Six Apart will do very well with TypePad. Though I was a bit unsuccessful in my attempts in install MovableType, I would like to try TypePad someday.
jo
Could not read this article bexause the lines merge together if I go ALT t-o-e-z to bypass the stylesheet and increase the text to MEDIUM on Win98. If that iis what ‘standard’ means, than heaven help people with reading disabilities.
Marek Moehling
jo,
to overcome this troubles get yourself the free MyIE2 plugin for Internet Explorer
(http://www.myie2.com, some other plugins do the trick as well)
You’ll be able to zoom in and out using Ctrl/+ and Ctrl/-,
zooming will apply to text and graphics, CSS will get overridden;
Mozilla1+/Netscape6+ offer the same feature.
E Logo Design
“These people put in their free time to deliver a free product”
I don`t think TypePad will be free …