Plod

As ProNet members, we wanted you to be the first to know that Movable Type 3.16 is scheduled to be released next week. This new release is a significant update to the platform, focused more on bug fixes and improvements than on user-facing features. Mena will be posting more about the motivations behind this release on Mena's Corner, (http://www.sixapart.com/about/corner/) so this message is focused on the details of the new version.

WHAT'S 3.16 ABOUT?
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What we've done with 3.16 is some heavy lifting in quality assurance and
gone back and reviewed the code for the entire platform, fixing bugs and
making tweaks to some inconsistencies or flaws in the app that were
either created in the big steps forward the platform took in versions
3.0 or 3.1 or in some cases date back to the earliest versions of
Movable Type.

There's a couple high-level areas that we focused on:
* Platform support
* Security improvements, random bugs, and annoying glitches
* Long awaited fixes, which are documented in full on the changelog:
http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/members/2005/04/changes_updates.html

THE DETAILS
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Platform support:

Most of you run Movable Type on more than one platform, particularly if
you develop on a local machine and then deploy to a public server.
Movable Type now runs a lot more consistently between platforms, with a
huge improvement on Windows servers, especially for plugins. We've also
added documentation specifically for setting up MT on Windows servers,
which might save you a few grey hairs.

Security improvements, random bugs, and annoying glitches:

There's over 100 improvements in the new release. For example, many of
you noticed that email notifications for comments or entries broke in
some environments in 3.15, that's fixed. There's also significant
security improvements. We don't have a Homeland Security-style color
coding chart, but if we did, this would be an Orange Elevated-level
release: update your install, get your clients or friends to update
their installs, and generally Spread The Word. Updating to 3.16 doesn't
even require an upgrade script if you're on a 3.1x version of MT.

Long awaited fixes:

The alternate template path configuration variable that was introduced
some time ago now works properly. What's that mean? You can now specify
an alternate user interface template for any part of Movable Type in a
clean way, without blowing away your changes every time you update a new
version. Plus, Creative Commons support is now upgraded to support
version 2.0 licenses. MT was the first web publishing tool to support CC
licenses, and it just makes sense to keep pace with the momentum that CC
licenses have been gaining.

WHAT'S NEXT
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We've got a lot on the slate for Movable Type this year, but before we
started adding functionality, we wanted to have a really solid base to
build on. After 3.16 is released next week, we'll be following up with
some examples of how to use the tons of functionality that's living in
Movable Type right now but hasn't always been taken advantage of.

Keep your eyes peeled for those posts either on the ProNet site or on
the Movable Type site, and we'll update again once the new version is
out. And just a note, a number of you had asked if you could get
packages which only include changed files, but in this update almost
every file's touched in some way, so that wouldn't be practical.

Keep your eyes open for the release on Monday, and we're expecting that
the changes in this release, though not being very visible, will have
the most impact for those of you who are relying on the Movable Type
platform every day.