Microthemer – What Do You Like? What Could Be Better?

Hi Yazo,

Yes I was expecting someone might give me a friendly nudge soon. You’re right I have been a bit quiet (on the surface of things). To update you:

1. I’ve actually implemented the new feature for showing the current CSS values a theme has now. I need to thoroughly test this in all modern browsers though. I’m currently on holiday in Poland until the 29th so will only be responding to support request until I return. I’m keen to roll out this new feature as soon as possible though so you can expect to see it in the first week of July. Was it you that first requested this feature!?

2. The new interface has been fully completed in PSD form. This is my top priority after releasing the CSS inspection feature. It will be more than a lick of paint, but I’m hoping to get this finished by the end of July.

3. There are a number of other features I will release as 3.x updates such as better custom font support, easy image upload from the UI page, media query editiing from the UI page and better default media queries (there will be “sets” of media queries users can choose to start with). And I will also be looking at integrating support for CSS pre-processors.

I have taken a note of all other previous customer feature requests and will be implementing most of them in time too.

Cheers!

Sebastian

Hi Abland,

Thanks for the feedback. Yes I think the reporting is a really useful feature. For the reason you suggest and because it gives people something to anchor from. If they want to increase the space between paragraphs for instance, and they know that the current bottom margin value is 16px, they also know that applying any value greater than 16 will increase the space. It saves potential guess work.

I’m now going to be working solidly on the new UI, which is leagues ahead of the current UI in terms appearance and usability. Still lots do to, but I will get there!

Thanks for all of your support Abland.

Sebastian

Hi Paul,

I’m getting a 403 forbidden error when I try to access your website: http://www.pinknbluewebsites.com/. Is this the correct link? It seems Galen has managed to view your site and analyse the HTML. I tried googling pinknbluewebsites.com but couldn’t find an alternative link.

Galen is correct that Microthemer will not help you edit the raw HTML. Microthemer cannot be used to add or edit existing content on the page – only restyle how content on the page looks. It follows the HTML-CSS separation in this respect.

But you should be able to use it to change the appearance of your pink navigation bar. Galen suggests manually creating a selector with “.navbar” as the value in the CSS code field. However, you shouldn’t normally need to manually enter in CSS selector code with Microthemer. You can normally double-click the things you want to restyle and then just give them a descriptive label using the selector wizard.

Sometimes the selector wizard doesn’t target exactly the element you’re after – because elements are sometimes nested inside each other with 0 margin so they appear as one element. Yet the style you’re trying to override may be set on the obscured parent element. Clicking the up arrow on the selector wizard directional controls can often reveal obscured parent elements (if the suggested code in the selector wizard dropdown menu changes but the highlighting appears not to change).

I can provide more specific instructions once I’ve been able to view your website.

Cheers,

Sebastian

Hi Yazo,

Sorry for the delayed reply. I opened your message late on Monday and forgot to mark it unread for the morning.

We’re almost at the testing stage now. I’ve been working solely on version 3 for the past 3 months – I realised that I wasn’t making enough progress when trying to balance it with other things. And although I’m close, I still need to redo all of the documentation after the testing stage as the interface has changed quite a lot.

I can’t say exactly when it will be ready for release. I tend to constantly underestimate. But I can say that I will continue working on it solidly until it is ready so it shouldn’t be too long. I may also release a beta version when testing is complete but before the new docs are out.

You can expect a newsletter when there’s some proper news 🙂 I’m very exciting about version 3 and all of the features I will continue to release as 3.x updates.

Thanks!

Sebastian

Hi Yazo,

Sorry for the delayed reply. Your request wasn’t urgent and I wanted to provide a proper reply, here is a quick list some of the main features.

– Much nicer icon-based UI with far more space available for seeing the site your designing and NO overlap of editing options.
– Everything is accessible from the Microthemer UI page (e.g. design pack installation and management, updating global preferences and media queries)
– Much easier management of sections (renamed folders) and selectors. You can copy and move selectors between folders with drag and drop too.
– Code editor with syntax highlighting for those that still like to program. You can still see the frontend site while you write your code. Clicking control+S to save means that you see your changes instantly. It’s a nice way to work on a site if you’re a die CSS hard coder. And this feature won’t be restricted on the free trial version.
– Some new style options (e.g. box-sizing, background-size) with more (animation/transition) options on the way in a later release.
– Background images are now managed via the wordpress media manager. On installing a pack with images, they are extracted to the library and image paths are updated automatically. When you download a pack, linked imaged are downloaded from the image library. It should make working with background images much easier.
– The selector wizard is now easier to use. It has a slider for tweaking your targeting instead of the dropdown menu. And computed CSS is reported at the wizard stage too. In a later release the HTML inspection will be improved further.
– Import/Export of settings has been improved too.
– And possibly some other things I’ve forgotten.

The beta release (working but without updated docs) will be ready soon!

Thanks for your patience, I think it will be worth the wait. And of course the upgrade will be free for all customers.

Sebastian