The Latest Check-ins
With the public beta for version 3.3, Six Apart created a public repository for Movable Type that would contain the cutting-edge code including the newest bug fixes and features! 2 days ago, selected features from Movable Type Enterprise were merged with Movable Type Vanilla and I thought I would share what I've discovered in playing around with this new version. In total, 209 files were changed!
Authors and Permissions
By far the biggest change has to be with how authors and permissions are handled with the introduction of Roles and Associations. Associations, as the name suggests, allows you to associate an author with a role (default roles include Weblog Administrator, Designer and Editor). You can list all the associations and roles from a new Privileges screen as shown below (roles are greyed out until an author is associated with them):
One of the most exciting new features in this latest check-in is the new dialog boxes complete with (my favourite feature!) a throbber. The entire dialog box is extremely snappy with no page reloads involved and even includes some AJAX (whilst searching).
Settings on the System Level also reveal the ability to create defaults for new authors.
Finally, on the blog level, an authors listing has also been added. This area looks a little incomplete as it lists both commenters and authors (whereas I think it should just list authors as commenters have their own listing):
The previous screenshot highlights a few of what I consider to be rough edges, namely the Custom roles. These custom roles were created when I upgraded Movalog's Movable Type installation and from what I can tell Custom (1) means a Trusted Authenticated Commenter whilst Custom (0) means only an Authenticated Commenter.
You can also add a user to a blog from this screen:
Blog Cloning
This latest check-in also contains a new plugin that allows you to clone weblogs.
Interface Tweaks
As you may have seen in previous screenshots, the interface has changed. The bigest change I can notice is the system plugin listing has been moved into system settings (presumably to make it more consistent with the blog plugin listing which is found under blog settings). A link has also been added to the Plugins Directory
The sidebar on the Main Menu has also been changed slightly to better reflect the new settings and interface tweaks.
Getting this code
If you like to live on the bleeding edge, read these instructions on how to get and build the latest code. However, rather than checking out the trunk, checkout the wheeljack trunk like so
svn co http://code.sixapart.com/svn/movabletype/branches/wheeljack LOCAL_PATHand then continue following the instructions on how to build it!
4 Comments
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salguod said:
on Nov 5, 2006 9:02 AM | Reply
So, is this some kind of early, early preview of where MT 3.4 is going or something? What's a 'trunk' or a 'wheeljack trunk' mean?
I have no desire to live on the bleeding edge, I have a hard enough time keeping up with the production releases. I'm glad there's someone who does, though. :-)
Oh, and there's a link on the system plugins page to the plugin directory now (MT 3.33) and I think there was in MT 3.2 as well.
(BTW - I logged into Typekey to comment here and it says "Thanks for signing in, salguod. Now you can comment." but the Name/Email/URL fields are still visible. Thought you'd like to know.)
Arvind Satyanarayan said:
on Nov 5, 2006 2:21 PM | Reply
It is a preview of some of the newest features that have been added to Movable Type. The exact version numbering I am not sure of.
The 'trunk' essentially refers to the most recent and most stable code. In the context of Movable Type, the trunk would contain all code from MT 3.33. Wheeljack however is a branch from the trunk (I shall correct the typo in my post that referred to Wheeljack as trunk). New features are added to this branch rather than the trunk directly (it makes life easier if you needed to release a bug fix).
There is indeed a link from the Main Menu to the System Plugin Listing in MT 3.33 but I instantly noticed that the positioning changed in Wheeljack because it is a link I use frequently. Wheeljack's Main Menu sidebar also contains a link to the new Privileges screen.
Su said:
on Nov 5, 2006 8:32 PM | Reply
Ha. I spotted these the other day, also. The new user role process is rather nice. It was always tedious having to pick every single permission each time an author was created.
Sara said:
on Nov 7, 2006 1:33 AM | Reply
Ohhh that does look promising indeed, specially the cloning feature.