June 2007 Archives

I don't like being the type of blogger that writes a post that simply links to someone elses post.  Today though, I'm doing just that because:

• I'm way too busy at the moment to write original content
• I just think this is awesome

If you're an ASP.NET developer and you're not already reading Scott Guthrie's blog, start.  Seriously, go add the RSS feed to your reader right now.

His latest post on Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Intellisense is great and very exciting if you're like me and don't particularly like writing javascript.  I honestly never learned javascript as well as I should have and until recently have avoided it wherever possible. Now that AJAX has taken the dev world by storm, avoiding javascript is no longer really possible.  Thankfully, VS2008 promises to make the learning curve a lot easier by providing the same type of helpful intellisense that we already know and love from writing .NET code.

It will work for in-line scripts as well as external .js files.  Writing and debugging javascript is about to get a whole lot easier.

Last week SixApart announced the release of the Movable Type 4 Beta and it looks to be well worth the wait. Code Scene runs on Movable Type 3.3 and I've been a long time advocate. It's excellent as a blogging platform and with a little tweaking, it can also be used as a CMS for projects with a limited budget.

I've previously blogged about the problems with Content Management Systems and also about extending Movable Type with plugins. Movable Type 4 seems like it could be the solution to many of the current issues. The new version has a lot of the most popular plugins functinality built in, such as WYSIWYG editing, file and photo management, and member registration. It's also comparitively inexpensive and very easy to use.  For smaller sites, or site/blog combos, Movable Type 4 looks to be a great way to offer your client's a CMS without shelling out thousands of dollars or spending countless hours writing your own.

Read the full list of Movable Type 4's new features or download the beta. There's no official release date yet but hopefully we'll have a final release sometime this summer.