By Randall Parker 
   http://www.techiepundit.com 
   techiepundit@futurepundit.com
I am also:
   http://www.futurepundit.com 
   http://www.parapundit.com 
   http://www.storypundit.com 

   
Current version 2002-Sept-03 Tues.

I've collected together a set of changes I made to MovableType's 
administration pages to make it easier to make new blog posts and new blog 
sites. Note that your style of usage may be different and not all these 
changes will necessarily be to everyone's liking. However, I expect these 
changes will be beneficial to most bloggers. 

The Edit Entry form 
=========================

When creating a new blog this widens the controls for the form that gets 
the set of paths and URLS. It also widens other controls elsewhere in the 
admin menus:

styles.css:

change 292 to 392:
	input.text {
	width: 392px;  
	height: 20px;
	} 
	
   This widens the title control of a new post on the Edit Entry form.
styles.css:
change 175 to 375:
	input.text-short {
	width: 375px;  
	height: 20px;
	}

For this next change it also helps to follow this link on the Edit Entry 
Page:
   [Customize the display of this page]
 and to choose 
   Custom: show the following fields:
 and to check only these fields:
   Category Selection Menu
   Allow Comments option
   Convert Breaks option
   Editable Authored on Date (Edit Entry Screen only)

The field for making a new blog post has such a small control 
for putting the post into. Well, can't have that. This is a pair of 
changes to two files that get done together. They increase the size of the 
form control for writing a new blog post: 
/tmpl/cms/edit_entry.tmpl line 353: 
changes:
   class="width500" 
 to: 
   class="width750"
   
   rows="10" 
 to:
   rows="50"
 
 These changes take place in this line:
 
      <tr>
      <td colspan="2" width="100%" valign="top"><textarea<TMPL_IF NAME=AGENT_MOZILLA> cols=""</TMPL_IF> class="width500" name="text" rows="10" wrap="virtual"><TMPL_VAR NAME=TEXT></textarea><p></td>
      <tr>
 to:
      <tr>
      <td colspan="2" width="100%" valign="top"><textarea<TMPL_IF NAME=AGENT_MOZILLA> cols=""</TMPL_IF> class="width750" name="text" rows="50" wrap="virtual"><TMPL_VAR NAME=TEXT></textarea><p></td>
      <tr>

styles.css:
 This change to the style sheet allows the reference you added above to 
width750 to work. So you can't make the width750 change above without 
making this change too. Copy the width500 entry down to a new entry 
called width750 and make the width750 as this (or just paste this into the 
styles.css):
	
   textarea.width750 {
	font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif; 
	color:#333; 
	background-color:#FFF; 
	font-size:11px;	
	width:736px; 
	} 
	


List & Edit Entries form.
=========================
   This is the form that shows existing entries so that you can choose one 
can go back and make editing changes to an exist draft or published post. 
The problem with it in my experience is that the Entry Name column is too 
narrow. Some of my entries have long names. So if you want a wider Entry 
Name column:

/tmpl/cms/list_entry.tmpl
   change all instances of:
      width="150" 
   to 
      width="250"
   In MT 2.21 they occur on lines 254 (twice), 268, 287, and 302.
      
   To use the wider area to get the full title change all occurences of 
TITLE_SHORT to TITLE. There will be two instances on the same line of:
   <TMPL_VAR NAME=TITLE_SHORT>
 to change to:
   <TMPL_VAR NAME=TITLE>


Index.html Template Popup Comments Dialog 
==========================================

When a user is viewing the site and pops up a comments dialogn the dialog 
is not resizable. So if other users have posted a large number of comments 
and the latest user wants to read them all then the latest user has to 
page down often in order to gradually read thru it all. To make it easier 
for the user to read the comments one can make the comments window pop up 
in resizable mode. 

In index.html template find the OpenComments Javascript function. Its 
about 15 lines down from the top. Find this line:
				  'width=480,height=480,scrollbars=yes,status=yes');
           and change it to:
				  'width=480,height=480,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,resizable=yes');

You can also do the same exact change for the OpenTrackback function which 
is the next function after OpenComments.

Index.html Template Popup Comments replace with Full Page
=========================================================

When clicking on Comments on a blog post if you want the replace the 
pop-up comments dialog with a fulle regular web page as with any 
normal page click thru then make the following change in the 
index.html template:

	| <A HREF="<$MTCGIPath$>mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=<$MTEntryID$>" onclick="OpenComments(this.href); return false">Comments 
 to:
	| <A HREF="<$MTCGIPath$>mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=<$MTEntryID$>">Comments 
 so this part gets deleted:
    onclick="OpenComments(this.href); return false"




The Edit Entry form 
=========================
Add a button that updates the "Authored On" Date control to the current 
date/time. That way when saving drafts when one finally goes to Publish one can 
easily get the latest date/time filled in just by clicking to publish.

First of all add this pair of Javascript functions. I put them at the end 
of the second pair of script tags:
   <script language="javascript">
   </script>
So put these routines before the final </script> in:
   /tmpl/cms/edit_entry.tmpl 
   

  function convToTwoDigitsStr(num){
			if (num<10) {
					return "0" + num.toString();
			}
			else return num.toString();
	}
  function doSetAuthoredDate() {
    ThisDate = new Date();
		this.created_on_manual = "Dog";
		this.created_on_manual.value = "Dog";
		document.forms[2].created_on_manual = "Dog";
		document.forms[2].created_on_manual.value = 
				ThisDate.getFullYear() + "-" +
				convToTwoDigitsStr(ThisDate.getMonth()+1) + "-" +
				convToTwoDigitsStr(ThisDate.getDay()+1) + " " +
				convToTwoDigitsStr(ThisDate.getHours()) + ":" +
				convToTwoDigitsStr(ThisDate.getMinutes()) + ":" +
				convToTwoDigitsStr(ThisDate.getSeconds());
	}

Then go down further in the file and find
		<input class="text-short" name="created_on_manual" value="<TMPL_VAR NAME=CREATED_ON_FORMATTED>"><p></td>
  Insert 
      <input class="button-big" onClick="doSetAuthoredDate()" type="button" value="Current Date/Time">
  before the <p></td> at the end of the line. THe result should look like:
 		<input class="text-short" name="created_on_manual" value="<TMPL_VAR NAME=CREATED_ON_FORMATTED>">
   	<input class="button-big" onClick="doSetAuthoredDate()" type="button" value="Current Date/Time"><p></td>




Future Improvements:
=========================

   The Edit Entry form 
   =========================

   1) Tweak the CSS to cut back on margin space to make more space 
available for writing a post.