Microthemer Version 2 – Thoughts?

Author Posts

Sebastian May 8, 2013 at 3:38 pm

Notice: this information was written when Microthemer version 2 was current. On Dec 26th, 2014 version 3 was released with a completely new interface. Some of the information may be redundant, but as much of the functionality remains the same in version 3 we haven't deleted this post.

Version 2 has just been made available to existing customers as a pre-release (the docs haven’t been updated yet). For those trying out version 2, please post any thoughts you’d like to share here.

Many Thanks,

Sebastian

Abland May 8, 2013 at 5:00 pm

Hi, Sebastian,

Congratulations on the new version 🙂 I’m very much looking forward to giving it a run.

I did wonder how the updates will appear. I’ve logged in the admin but no notices show yet and a manual check doesn’t appear to do anything.

Sebastian May 8, 2013 at 5:07 pm

Hi Abland,

I’m currently just emailing it to customers that respond to the mass email I just sent. Perhaps you didn’t join the Themeover Customers mailing list when you purchased Microthemer.

You won’t be able to update via Microthemer until it’s officially released (with updated docs).

I know your email address so I’ll send you version 2 now.

Cheers,

Sebastian

Abland May 8, 2013 at 5:37 pm

Hi, Sebastian,

Thanks for sending that to me. On first run my initial feedback is: Bravo!!

The visual editor is quite friendly, and the tooltips are helpful. But the clicking an element in order to add new selectors is a real leap – this makes customizing the microthemes much easier to do. Well done!

A question I have – do new customers get to try the 2.0 version, too?

universalnyc May 8, 2013 at 5:42 pm

Hi,

I reviewed the updates they sound cool and seems to load fast! I will use it in my next project. I can already see how much time it will save me in the future.

Here are some features that if you can have it added soon, it will be the best thing ever:
1) Add some more CSS options, like: min-width, min-height, max-width, max-height. etc. (I’m using it often).
2) Instead of having only 1 place to add custom CSS, there should be a textarea at the end of every selector to add some custom CSS to the current class. This will keep my custom CSS more organized.
3) It would be better if I can upload the background image right where I can choose it. (Maybe even let me choose images that I uploaded from the regular WP media library page)
4) Allow us to upload and select a “list-style-image”
5) And the “most important” request is for responsive design: Make it possible to set selectors to be applied only to certain screen sizes. Currently I have to add the following code to the custom CSS section, in order to control the how the site looks on smaller screens: @media only screen and (max-width: 768px) { /* CSS Codes Go Here */ }
I know that you suggest to not touch the ‘width’ in order to keep the responsive design, but I always need to do other layout changes specifically for mobile devices.

Thank you so much for your great work!

Sebastian May 8, 2013 at 6:17 pm

Abland – Anyone that has purchased Microthemer is welcome to try out version 2. They just need to email me from their PayPal email address. Before long, version 2 will be available as an automatic update. I’m just holding off doing it now as the visual view has changed quite a lot and I think it could be confusing for some users if there is no documentation to explain the new interface.

universalnyc – Thank you very much for your feedback.
1. Min/max width and height will be added soon. I know you (or someone else) asked for this in the past.
2. I’ve considered the custom CSS issue myself. I think to keep things simple I will allow the use of curly braces and styles in the CSS Selector text area. So you can essentially use that as a custom CSS textarea.
3. The uploading BG image right from the UI will be quite involved for me to implement but I agree that it would be very useful.
4. List-style-image should be possible, with or without number 3 above.
5. I agree that Microthemer would do very well to make Responsive design a focus point. I’m going to think very hard on how exactly Microthemer can serve as an aid in Responsive Web Design.

Other imminent (major) developments include:
1. An API-based method for very easily inserting Google Fonts
2. An option for showing what CSS style values are already acting on elements targeted by a Microthemer selector.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Sebastian

universalnyc May 8, 2013 at 6:38 pm

Thank you for the fast reply.

Curly braces in the CSS selector area is a “great” solution.

The google fonts is good news too, I forgot to mention it here, but it crossed my mind many times.

Thank again.

universalnyc May 9, 2013 at 4:43 am

I had some time to get to work with the new features, it is very impressive. I rarely used the visual selector, now I don’t want to use the standard view… I love the way I can easily add new selectors by just double clicking on the site preview.

Now there is 1 more thing that I missed from my list above: To be able to control the CSS opacity/transparency of the class/id.

I think this is everything that I came across, while using your plugin on a daily basis within the past few months.

Thanks

Sebastian May 9, 2013 at 9:37 am

I’m with you. As a developer I found it quite annoying having to switch between the standard and visual view to complete certain tasks. I’m glad you like the new features, I do too!

Opacity – good shout. I’ll add that to the behaviour style options group when I add min/max width and height. Microthemer will generate cross-browser opacity definitions.

Cheers,

Sebastian

Sebastian July 16, 2013 at 9:10 pm

Hey,

Just to let you know, I’ve added the following features you requested:

– Support for Google Web Fonts
– Custom CSS in selector text area too. Curly braces are permitted. The Label for the selector will automatically have {} at start to remind you of the custom CSS.
– min/max dimention properties have been added
– Opacity property has been added to the behaviour group

I’m not sure it’s worth adding the list-style-image feature as you can achieve the same result by simply giving the list items a background image. So that just leaves responsiveness and the ability to upload background images from the Microthemer UI. I’ve decided the background image option is worth pursuing . And I’ve come up with a way to support media queries:

1. You can set media queries via the preferences page e.g. @media (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 979px)
2. You give each media query a label, like you do a selector e.g. “Wide Tablets & Desktop”
3. In the Microthemer UI, when you expand a property group e.g. “Font”, there is a button beneath the fields for “Wide Desktop”, ” Wide Tablets & Desktop”, “Wide Phones & Tablets”, “Phone”. If you click one of the buttons, Microthemer loads the property options same as above, but the values will be inserted in the corresponding media query when Microthemer creates the stylesheet.
4. As an added bonus, the labels could be used as buttons beneath the site preview to quickly adjust the screen width of the preview (Microthemer would look for min or max width values in the media queries to enable this functionality).

By default, Microthemer would suggest the media queries used by BootStrap:

/* Large desktop */
@media (min-width: 1200px) { … }

/* Portrait tablet to landscape and desktop */
@media (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 979px) { … }

/* Landscape phone to portrait tablet */
@media (max-width: 767px) { … }

/* Landscape phones and down */
@media (max-width: 480px) { … }

If you have any thoughts on this proposal before I get started, I’d love to hear them!

Cheers,

Sebastian

universalnyc July 17, 2013 at 2:17 pm

Thank you so much Sab, for adding these new features! Are they already available in the latest version, or will it be available in the next version?

Good point about the list-style-image.
If you don’t come up with a way to upload background images in the selector section. It would also help if we can at least upload a few images at a time from the ‘manage theme’ page. Currently we need to upload each image separately.

The solution for media queries is a genius idea! And I also like the idea that we we’ll be able to preview the changes… Go for it!

Thank you very much for implementing these requests, I now feel much more confident using this tool that I know I have great people behind it!


Sebastian July 17, 2013 at 2:58 pm

Hey,

Yes the new features are available in the latest version of Microthemer, currently 2.2.9.

When I focus on improving image uploading I will do it properly and allow multiple uploads. I will also look into the feasibility of hooking into WordPress’ native media manager. For the time being, you can upload multiple images by adding them directly to a Micro theme via FTP (you’ll need to fresh the UI after uploading – the “SpeedUp” button in the right-hand menu might be handy for that – F5 refreshing can sometimes been dangerous if you’ve previously reset or imported settings etc)

I’m glad you like the media query idea, that’s the next major feature on the list.

Cheers,

Seb

universalnyc July 17, 2013 at 8:31 pm

Great, Thank you!

You must login or register to reply to this topic.