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Re: Why Textpattern
Biofobico, it’s hard to tell if TXP is aimed to you as a designer. It depends on the way you like working. TXP isn’t “visual” in the way it works, but it’s easy to do any visual layout you need. But if you want to work “drag&drop”, it’s not for you. If you are comfortable working with html/css and are keen to learn a very simple tag language (far simpler than php, to say), it can reward you with unlimited design power.
The problem with txp is that it need you to work textually, to produce visuals. Some people don’t like that. CSS work like that, too. And some “visual” people have hard time getting CSS.
It’s not a matter of how much you can do (a lot!) or if the basic theme is outdated (it is, but no one use the basic theme), of if it is “niche”. It’s a matter of understanding how it works, and if it fits to you. I never felt limited on visual design, as I’m good at working with very simple textual code and markup, even if I think visually and I’m not a programmer. So it really depends on that, I think. Maybe you have to try to tell.
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#17 2011-06-11 12:11:57
- Biofobico
- New Member
- Registered: 2011-06-10
- Posts: 8
Re: Why Textpattern
philwareham wrote:
bq. Also when i ask around about the system, a lot of folks said that textpattern is outdated
Not sure what that means, since Textpattern essentially is a collection of logical and easy to use tags which you use a building blocks within your website, the final website is as up-to-date as you want to make it. Think of it as lego for PHP.
I always code my sites in the latest HTML5 standards and TXP has never had a problem with that. For example, this site is powered by Textpattern.
Very clean design. Like it a lot :)
And that brings me to my next question; “Textpattern best practices”
Im enjoying textpattern a lot but i always find myself working on the backend and making code changes there. I know we should do what works for us, but i always use textmate/espresso for all of my coding, and its a strange feeling do the copy/paste thing and then work only in textpattern.
Its the same with you guys or you have a secret? :)
Also im going to convert all my designs to HTML5 using the awesome HTML5 boilerplate and i want to ask your advices on best way to convert my actual code to HTML5 and then make it “work” with textpattern.
Thanks all for the patience.
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Re: Why Textpattern
To work with text editors you may try this. Never tried personally (yes, I work from inside textpattern) but I think lot of people use it happily. Follow also last pages of the thread.
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#19 2011-06-11 12:44:24
- redbot
- Plugin Author
- Registered: 2006-02-14
- Posts: 1,410
Re: Why Textpattern
Zanza wrote:
To work with text editors you may try this. Never tried personally (yes, I work from inside textpattern) but I think lot of people use it happily. Follow also last pages of the thread.
Or, for a lighter approach, install the itsalltext extension for firefox.
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Re: Why Textpattern
If you can wait until tomorrow, I’ll send you this theme which us based on h5bp. It’s in no way an end product bit a good starting point for editing into your own site. You might also like my brand new hive theme which makes the admin side a bit easier on the eye.
As for coding, I use coda which has a few txp plugins available, along with subversion, finally copy/paste to textpattern.
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#21 2011-06-11 15:11:19
- Biofobico
- New Member
- Registered: 2011-06-10
- Posts: 8
Re: Why Textpattern
philwareham wrote:
If you can wait until tomorrow, I’ll send you this theme which us based on h5bp. It’s in no way an end product bit a good starting point for editing into your own site. You might also like my brand new hive theme which makes the admin side a bit easier on the eye.
As for coding, I use coda which has a few txp plugins available, along with subversion, finally copy/paste to textpattern.
Of course i’ll wait :) thanks. I have coda also but im unaware of anything useful related to textpattern.
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Re: Why Textpattern
There’s a coda book for textpattern, txp syntax highlighting and a collection of txp related clips all available online. I’ll post links to where to download them when I’m next near my computer.
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Re: Why Textpattern
cnk_versioning (Zanza already suggested it) is a must-have for TXP development, imo, particularly if you want to use some versioning system like Git, Mercurial, Fossil, or SVN.
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Re: Why Textpattern
Righto, I’ve bundled up some Panic Coda files that help make writing TXP stuff a little bit more streamlined. Included are the Textpattern Book, Textpattern Syntax Mode and a collection of Textpattern Clips – the readme.txt contains info about how to install. Enjoy…
…use that in conjunction with cnk_versioning as mentioned and you’ll have a great coding environment.
PS. to take full advantage of the syntax mode your files should have .txp as the file extension.
Last edited by philwareham (2011-06-11 18:32:10)
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Re: Why Textpattern
And here is the start of a basic theme I knocked together a few months ago based on the HTML5 Boiler Plate by Paul Irish and friends. It was made as a proposal to replace the old default theme in Textpattern so new users got a better bit of eye candy when they first install Textpattern.
It’s fully responsive CSS too so it will scale right down to a iPhone portrait screen.
Also, I’ve commented a lot throughout the code to give new users some indications of what the code actually does – something that is sorely lacking in the old default theme IMHO.
I’ve not had a chance to work more on it due to heavy work commitments – a few of the practices might have changed slightly with newer releases of boilerplate since I wrote it so be aware. If I get significant interest from users I may proceed further with this project.
PS. I’ve not included the javascript so you’ll need a copy of Modernizr, go to the modernizr site to grab a copy
Last edited by philwareham (2011-06-11 19:18:34)
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Re: Why Textpattern
philwareham wrote:
Nice, I like it. It’s a good starting point for building a site.
Quick question, on view source, everything is left aligned, no spaces or blank lines. Yet the pages and forms do have indents and blank lines. Do you run the site through something before output?
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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Re: Why Textpattern
@hcgtv
Yes, I use Google’s Page Speed Tools on my server, collapses whitespace, lines etc to speed up delivery of webpages.
Crikey, from a simple question about ‘Why Textpattern’ this thread has turned into a bit of a beast!
Last edited by philwareham (2011-06-11 19:21:14)
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Re: Why Textpattern
philwareham wrote:
Yes, I use Google’s Page Speed Tools on my server, collapses whitespace, lines etc to speed up delivery of webpages.
Ah, I see now. I usually left align everything on the backend, but Textpattern will insert blank lines whenever it encounters some conditionals, unless if you put all the logic on one line, which makes the code a bit unreadable. Thanks for the tip.
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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#29 2011-06-11 22:57:55
- Biofobico
- New Member
- Registered: 2011-06-10
- Posts: 8
Re: Why Textpattern
Can’t thank you enough Phil :) I think im all set now to dive into Textpattern :)
One thing is certain, you guys make justice that the Textpattern community is amazing. And i have to agree you you Phil. A simple question turned out a good reference for starters like me :)
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#30 2011-06-11 23:12:14
- els
- Moderator
- From: The Netherlands
- Registered: 2004-06-06
- Posts: 7,458
Re: Why Textpattern
Biofobico, you might want to read the contributions that were written following this topic :) It’s a nice overview, because they’re written from developer/designers as well as from users perspective.
You can read the thread to find them, but here they are anyway (in random order): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
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