Microthemer 3.0 – What did we get right? What should we improve?

Author Posts

Sebastian

Hi Antonio,

Are you saying that you liked being able to switch off the WordPress admin bar even when viewing the frontend directly (i.e. not via the Microthemer interface)? That was the effect of turning off the WP admin bar in version 2. It would fully turn it off.

I changed the way things work so that the admin bar is just hidden when the site is being previewed via the Microthemer interface, but still shows when viewing the frontend site normally (if logged in). I think this is most desirable in the majority of cases. The global disabling was sort of a bug. For your case however, I would recommend adding the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

add_filter('show_admin_bar', '__return_false');

This will globally disable the admin bar in the same way that version 2 used to. You can then comment that code out when you want the admin bar back by putting two forward slashes at the start:

// add_filter('show_admin_bar', '__return_false');

If updating your functions.php file is tricky, are you aware that the WP admin bar only displays on the fronted if you are logged in? You could make sure that you are logged out in all the browsers you are testing with if that is easier?

Cheers,
Sebastian


cjseven

Thanks Sebastian


cjseven

Hi Sebastian,

I think I’ve found a small bug. Sometimes selectors don’t show correct information such as name a targeted css code. I have to refresh page to get it ok.

This short video will show what I mean. As you can see all selectors show the same info before refresh.

http://screencast.com/t/2PDvTM2DF

Antonio


Sebastian

Hi Antonio, many thanks indeed for reporting this. And for supplying a video demonstration. I am looking into this now.

Thanks!

Sebastian

ps I may email you requesting access to your site if I cannot recreate the error on my testing server. Just to identify if a particular theme/plugin script on your WordPress install is conflicting with Microthemer.


Sebastian

Hi Antonio, this was a general bug that you identified. Well done! I’ve released a fix now – version 3.0.16.

# Bugs Fixed
* The pre-populated selector name value for all selectors in a folder was overwritten by the most recent selector created via the selector wizard. Thanks for spotting this Antonio!
* Importing a design pack made with Microthemer 1.x (before media query tabs were added) would result in PHP errors.

Get it from β€œMy Downloads”: https://themeover.com/my-downloads/
Or Download the free trial: https://themeover.com/microthemer-free-trial/

Cheers,

Sebastian


cjseven

Hi Sebastian,

Here I am again πŸ™‚

Another suggestion / request. This time about media queries previews.

In version 2.0 we could preview anytime how the webpage responded to different media queries using the bottom bar (as I show below):

http://screencast.com/t/MRqju82WX

From each media querie we could click a selector which needed adjusting and styling it accordingly.

In version 3.0 we have to pick a selector, add media queries and then repeat the process each time we want to see other screen sizes previews. As a result customizing and adjusting responsive design isn’t very user friendly comparing to 2.0 – one click and “voilΓ‘! here it is the media querie”.

Can you understand what I mean? Sometimes it is hard for me to explain my concerns in English ahahah πŸ™‚

Anyway… I miss that media querie bottom bar to adjust responsive design!!! Please think of getting it back or putting that function somewhere.

AntΓ³nio


Sebastian

You know I think you might be right again Antonio. You’ve highlighted another area I questioned many times before changing in version 3. The reasoning behind scrapping the bottom buttons and only displaying the screen width slider when editing a selector was that sometimes the general preview buttons could get out of sync with styling option media query tabs.

If for instance you select the Phone media query tab next to the CSS options, and then click the large desktop general preview button at the bottom, and then start inputting styles on the phone tab (which is already selected so won’t adjust the screen with) it could be a bit confusing – as the styles won’t take effect for the current large preview screen width.

However, the simplicity of removing the general preview buttons at the bottom does have a cost that you have correctly pointed out. It is sometimes useful to be able to quickly switch between the various screen sizes your media queries relate to.

This has been bubbling away at the back of my mind for a while. And now that I’ve discussed this with my designer we’ve come up with an idea that I’d like to hear your (and anyone else watching this thread’s) feedback on.

1. We will make the screen width slider visible at the top right at all times. Not just when selector styling options are present, as it does currently.
2. Instead of the labelled buttons at the bottom of the screen on version 2, the screen width slider will have little pointers underneath it corresponding the the min/max width media query values. When you hover your mouse over a pointer it will reveal the media query name and value (e.g. “Phone: max-width 480px”). When you click a pointer, it will adjust the screen width according to the value. Much like the bottom buttons on version 2 did.
3. If media queries overlap, say if more than one media query has a min or max value of 700px, hovering over a pointer will reveal the various media queries that are applicable to 700px. You can then click the relevant media query.
4. Microthemer currently adjusts the screen width slider min and max range to restrict sliding in accordance with restrictions of the media query. This feature will be maintained, but implemented slightly differently. The start and end point will always be 0 and [max-screen width] respectively but dragging the slider will be prevented between a certain range.
5. The auto-screen width adjustment that happens when you click a tab “e.g. Phone” will also be triggered when a CSS property field gains focus. This should prevent the possibility of the screen width preview falling out of sync with style options defined within a media query tab.

Hopefully that description makes some sense! It may be that we need to implement it and then see what users make of it in practice.

Thanks again for your continuing feedback Antonio. This is gold to us.

Cheers,

Sebastian


cjseven

Hi Sebastian,

The description you pointed out seems to be a good or even a better alternative.

Microthemer is a WP tool very important to my work and workflow. Since I bought it I think I installed it in all my projects (I can’t say that about many plugins). I want it to be the best it can be so I’m more than happy to collaborate and provide user feedback.

Thank you,
Antonio


cjseven

Well… here I am again πŸ™‚ Its just a kind of off-topic wish.

I tried to default frontend preview to “wp-admin” to see if I could use microthemer to customize admin theme. It doesn’t work and it is ok since that is not the purpose of the plugin.

However it could be another unique sale point to MT or even an upsell / extension. There are thousands of frontend themes with customizing options but there are very few admin themes and I don’t know any tool to customize the backend without coding.

Don’t know if it is achievable or if it is to complex to implement but I guess is an idea for you to think about.

Thanks again.
Antonio


Sebastian

That’s great Antonio, you have already been a big help.

As for the admin styling suggestion, that does seem doable and potentially worthwhile. I’ve made a note of the feature request. Once we’ve launched the new website and docs (which are coming very soon by the way) we are probably going to create a “Community Roadmap” which will allow members to see all of the improvements planned for 3.x and vote on which improvements should be completed first by drag and dropping the tasks into their preferred order.

Building this community driven roadmap will probably take about a week, so we’ll ask our members if they have any interest in using such a system the next newsletter.

Thanks!

Sebastian


PatriciaBT

Hello there…

I just bought MicroThemer via the MightyDeal offer (thx btw), and before even to try it, I checked, and am sorry to see your plugin is not internationalized…

I searched your forums and didn’t find any info about translation.

Is this planned for the future? if you need any assistance on this, do not hesitate to ask. Once internationalized, you’ll be surprised at how many people from different languages are eager to localized it (= translate) and handle you the lang files!

Talk to you soon πŸ™‚
Patricia BT


Sebastian

Hi Patrica,

Thanks for raising this. It’s actually something I was discussing with Monika just a few days ago. The main reason it still hasn’t made it to the top of the priority list is that we can only provide support in English. I’m sure it would help with our sales if Microthemer were multi-lingual, but I wouldn’t be comfortable if our non-english speaking customers needed help with something and couldn’t get a response in their native language.

Do you think that’s a reasonable objection or could I be missing an obvious solution?

Cheers,

Sebastian


PatriciaBT

Hi Sebastian and I’m happy you replied so fast.

I began to write, write so much, that I thought it would be better that I write a blog post on one of my sites (not talking about you, but generally about this topic) and give you the link here! there is a lot to cover actually.

but basically I strongly disagree with you πŸ™‚

I let you read a very interesting post by Chris Lema, and … and that’s a great coincidence… my comment to his post, just before I bought your plugin yesterday πŸ™‚
http://chrislema.com/as-the-world-changes/

I’m looking forward to talk more about it with you.
Patricia BT


Sebastian

Hi Patricia,

Thank you very much for setting forth to change my mind. I will have a proper read of the article and get back to you once I’ve dealt with the other support requests in this forum.

Cheers,

Sebastian


batsteek

Hello Sebastian,

Once again, kudos for such a cool tool πŸ™‚
What about having a Microthemer link “Edit with Microthemer” from within the admin bar ?

Quite often I find myself thinking “Oops there is that thing I need to fix, let’s do it now” when I’m viewing a page while logged in. And a direct link would be very welcome !

CheerS.


Sebastian

Good suggestion. It’s on the list now.

It’s nice to get an easy feature request from time to time too!

Cheers,

Sebastian πŸ™‚


batsteek

Excellent.
and as a bonus, a switch in the settings to activate it or not would be welcome too πŸ™‚ (some admin bars are already pretty crowded)

CheerS.


Sebastian

Yep, that’s also easily doable. Cheers!

Sebastian


batsteek

Hi Sebastian,

One of the most important thing where I would love some improvements is the optimization of the CSS that is generated for values like borders, padding and so on where one line could be sufficient instead of a line for each property (left, top, bottom ….)

In my case, the workflow is more of a first step before going in depth in the css file so I can still optimize by hand, but that is a step I would love to forget by getting a smart code first πŸ™‚

What do you think about it ?


Sebastian

Hey,

The reason Microthemer doesn’t output padding, margin, and border properties in shorthand is that this would force users to override all 4 values, when they might only want to override one.

For instance, a theme might set the top and bottom margin of a heading to 30px. If a user wants to increase the top margin of the heading they might increase the value in the top margin field to 60px. Currently, this would increase the top margin to 60px while leaving the bottom margin of 30px unaltered. However, if Microthemer outputs the CSS code in shorthand, and no other margin values are specified, it would default to zero for the other values. You would get:

margin: 60px 0 0 0;

The bottom margin would be unintentionally set to 0. Web designers will understand and expect this. But it would come at a usability cost for other users in exchange for saving characters in the CSS file.

Would you consider this a fair trade-off. If so, I may consider adding an option to output these values in shorthand to the preferences page (turned off by default). This will probably depend on other Microthemer customers agreeing that there is a need for this.

Cheers,
Sebastian

ps we’ll be sending out a survey for customers to vote on priority features in the next newsletter.


batsteek

Sebastian,

I understand the reason, thanks for the detailed answer.
The poll solution seems fair and I will gladly participate of course πŸ˜‰

CheerS.


Sebastian

Excellent.


Galen

This forum needs categories. As Microthemer grows it will be a nightmare to find answers just using the search.


Galen

Suggestion – allow the importation of the existing theme or plugin style sheet for the benefit of those used to the old system who want to create scaffolds.


Galen

Suggestion – Option to remove all existing or default styling from a class.

In Advanced Options Microthemer detects the existing styling for a class or ID. It would be good to be able to check any of those in Advanced and remove or reset them.

That would help in cases where an existing Box Shadow overrides Microthemer and the only way around that is to set the colour to transparent which is not an option in the UI. Only typing the word ‘transparent’ into the colour box and hitting enter does the trick.

Gantry
.gf-menu.l1 > li.active {
background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #e8e8e8;
border: 1px solid #c4c4c4;
border-radius: 4px;
box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) inset, 0 1px 0 #ffffff;
}

Microthemer
.gf-menu > li.active {
background-color: #ffffff !important;
background-image: none !important;
border-bottom-width: 0 !important;
border-left-width: 0 !important;
border-radius: 0 !important;
border-style: none !important;
box-shadow: 0 0 0 transparent !important;
}

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