November 16, 2003
MarkBernstein.org
 

Inhomogeneous Weblogs

Inhomogeneous Weblogs
Kottke observes that most weblog packages make every post look alike. That's unfortunate, because you often want to vary the appearance and layout to meet the needs of different kinds of writing. Your movie reviews, for example, might deserve a different look than your tech briefings.

Doug Miller responds with a nice little tutorial on Fagerjord's approach, which places each post on its own (interlinked) page, using CSS to adapt typography as needed. By using a Tinderbox attribute, Fagerjord can adapt styles to the post as needed.

Even better, though, Tinderbox can easily use different templates for different kinds of post. You can easily set up separate HTML export templates for three prototype blog entries -- movieReview, newsFlash, and personalAdventure. Then, whenever you make a note, you choose which prototype to use. A movieReview might be boxed, with a thumbnail picture, where a personalAdventure might appear in a distinctive typeface.

Bottom line: