Pretty, Pretty Things

Notmyself.com recently made a good point about Movable Type:

Dear Six Apart.

I think we're all ready for you to spend some time on your Movable Type default styles. You've created quite the system for TypePad users, and yet the default styles for Movable Type are still really, really ugly.

We all know by now that I love a good complaint. ;) But what I love even more is at the end of the comments thread:

Actually, I think we're all with you about the templates. We do need some new ones and have some cool plans to provide those.

However, as you mentioned, customizing the templates is not only possible but pretty damn easy. You've seen CSS Zen Garden, right? You don't even need to modify the templates, but instead only the CSS to come up with pretty great designs.

So since customizing the templates is easy for customers but adding new functionality (e.g. dynamic publishing, commenter authentication, a ridiculously powerful API to name a few from the past) is not, we've been focusing our efforts on those other things.

I think you'll like what you see in the future. :-)

-Jay Allen

I agree with him that modifying "only the CSS" makes customizing the MT templates "pretty damn easy." However, most of my template modifications end up making more ugly templates. Who needs that? And even the MT templates I find for sale are not nice, just like the default "several colors on the same template" styles for MT. Just give me a few good launching pads to choose from, and I'll mix and match the colors myself.

So I'm glad to even hear rumors about template-related good things in the future. It would be a relief for the lizards, who are forgiving but slightly embarrassed about the appearance of the website that represents them in the world.