Fargo Blog
  

August 2

Fargo 1.01

menubar.opml in Firefox

  • There was a problem in our implementation of menubar.opml that didn't show up in Chrome, but did in Firefox. Thanks to James Petry for spotting the problem and suggesting the fix.

Unspecified fonts

  • There was a problem in the new Outline settings dialog when displaying an outline with the font, size and/or line height not specified. We now check much more carefully for the presence of these value.

  • There was also a report of the description not "sticking" but I have not been able to reproduce it here.

08/02/13; 09:42AM
Fargo 1.00

1.00 ==> nothing special

  • In the version numbering system we use, 1.00 means nothing special. It's just a serial number. It's no more earth shaking than 0.99 or 1.01. That said, I did try to do something special for this release, knowing that it would have this number.

New command in File menu

  • There's a new Outline settings command in the File menu that replaces the Set titles command. If you recall, the old command launched a dialog that allows you to set the short and long titles of an outline, as well as its description. These values are available when the outline is rendering through macros.

  • The Outline settings command brings up a tabbed dialog. The first panel of that dialog is a replica of the dialog in Set titles, and does exactly the same thing. There's a second panel that lets you change the font, size and line height on a per-outline basis. I found that when I was editing code in menubar.opml, I wanted to use a different font from the one I use to edit blog posts.

  • If you leave the font, size and line height blank, the defaults, set in the main settings dialog, will rule. (The main settings dialog is located in the System menu, the menu that's under your Dropbox username in the right edge of the menu bar.)

  • Now each outline can have its own font, size and lineheight.

  • And there's lots of room to add new per-outline settings, should the need arise.

  • Screen shot.

08/02/13; 06:59AM
Experiment: Customizing the outline template

People want to customize the default templates without having to replace them.

CSS, scripting and the glossary make this possible.

The experiment

  • I've added a feature to the default template for the outline type. If it works, we'll add it to all the types. It will become a standard feature of the CMS.

  • There's a new macro, <%customStylesScripts%> that's defined in the global glossary to be empty.

  • The macro is referenced at the end of the <head> section of the outline template.

  • You can add this to your glossary. Anything that's contained within it will appear at the end of the <head> section in all pages on that site that use the outline template. If you haven't done any template customization this will be most of the pages on your site.

Example

  • I've added this macro to the glossary on the docs site (the one you're reading now).

    • If it worked this text will be green.

  • It worked, because the text is in a span with a class of greenText, and my glossary entry defined greenText as green bold text.

  • Here's a screen shot of the definition of <%customStylesScripts%> in my glossary.

The plan

  • If it works, I want to make this a standard feature of all the default templates, and welcome other template designers to include it as well.

What do you think?

  • Personally, I think it's a very neat solution, low tech, and makes a nice use of a feature we already have. The glossary is perfect for this application. But there may be problems, or ways to make it rock much more. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.
08/02/13; 08:50AM

Last built: Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:39 PM

By Dave Winer, Friday, August 2, 2013 at 6:59 AM.