I’m rolling out another update to my theme for Micro.blog. It took a lot of time and effort on my part. It definitely reminds me of the story about how people paint both the front and back of a fence. I don’t think most will know or use some of the things that I put into this. If you do use or learn anything from this, I would really appreciate you sending me a message.
I’ve been doing small tweaks to the theme for the last couple of weeks as I learn more and more about CSS. I had even posted about how I had started working through the material found in Kevin Powell’s Conquering Responsive Layouts course and got a couple of responses that pointed me to further research.
There are plenty of miscelaneous changes that I put in related to accessibility and adding some
Back on the (code) block
I’ve been working on code blocks for a while. I don’t think there are many blogs on micro.blog that feature code as a regular part of what they publish. It’s very important to me that as someone who is writing about the code of the theme that it can be read.
It haunts me.
I was ok with the fact that the code blocks worked well with Hugo version .91 but, with the availability of .177, I couldn’t ignore the problems that I saw.
The underlining issue is that the default properties for the theme and Hugo is to place the styling inline of the HTML. AND, that I’ve opted to use display: inline-block for the <div> that is the container for my blog posts.
To better explain the issue, I’ll use the following snippet found in the Hugo documentation about code fences and put it in one of my posts, I’d get different results based on the version of Hugo that I’m running.
```go {linenos=table,hl_lines=[1,11,"15-16"],linenostart=199, anchorlinenos=true, lineanchors=small }
// GetTitleFunc returns a func that can be used to transform a string to
// title case.
//
// The supported styles are
//
// - "Go" (strings.Title)
// - "AP" (see https://www.apstylebook.com/)
// - "Chicago" (see https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html)
//
// If an unknown or empty style is provided, AP style is what you get.
func GetTitleFunc(style string) func(s string) string {
switch strings.ToLower(style) {
case "go":
return strings.Title
case "chicago":
return transform.NewTitleConverter(transform.ChicagoStyle)
default:
return transform.NewTitleConverter(transform.APStyle)
}
}
```
Hugo will render this as a series of nested spans in a table in a couple of divs. For example, the span that contains the line number would be div.highlight > div > table > tr > td:first-of-type > pre > code > span.
Each level of this structure may have its own inline styling.
Going back to the code snippet, with version .91, I would get the following output for the highlighted line 213 (the one that with ‘case “go”’). I changed the spacing for legibility.
Note that this version allows use to set anchors for the individual lines as well as a prefix.
At this point, I realized that I needed to have a better way of controlling the behavior of the different elements. Luckily, the documentation for Hugo Highlighting configuration has a noClasses flag that we can set in the config.json of the theme.
With the noClasses set to false1, the line that we’ve been looking at gets rendered to something like below.
The example is legible without the color and inline formatting.
To put the color back into the example, we refer to the documentation on how to generate syntax highlighter CSS to get the colors. I used the example that they provided so that I could compare it to the defaults.
hugo gen chromastyles --style=monokai > syntax.css
Then we add the newly created css file to our site-head.html to represent that syntax color is important but that the style.css is the final say for customization from the theme.
Unfortunately, the lines to do not … um… line up and the colors don’t match up with what we’re expecting.
After some experimenting with Firefox developer tools, I added the following to the style.css to get the lines to match.
The color for the highlight appears to be incorrect for all the styles that I tested, so I went back to an earlier version of Hugo to get the color and then placed it in the style.css as well.
// GetTitleFunc returns a func that can be used to transform a string to
// title case.
//
// The supported styles are
//
// - "Go" (strings.Title)
// - "AP" (see https://www.apstylebook.com/)
// - "Chicago" (see https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html)
//
// If an unknown or empty style is provided, AP style is what you get.
funcGetTitleFunc(stylestring)func(sstring)string{switchstrings.ToLower(style){case"go":returnstrings.Titlecase"chicago":returntransform.NewTitleConverter(transform.ChicagoStyle)default:returntransform.NewTitleConverter(transform.APStyle)}}
You can also link directly to lines (for example, line 213) and it should work. It also scrolls side to side to accommodate the longer lines.
Showing the table of contents
When I get frustrated with code blocks, I look at other aspects of the theme and what’s available in Hugo and Micro.blog. Hugo offers built in table of content short code that can be used in the themes. You can read more about it in the online documentation.
My first idea was that I wanted to have a property that users could turn on to automatically add the table of contents to a post. I came across this feature in the Cards Theme for Micro.blog and thought that it would be a nice feature for those who write a long post.
I create _partial\toc.html with the following code that I would put above the <div> that that contains the contents of an individual post.
Line 2 makes the default state of the table of contents hidden and then line 7 checks to see if Hugo has rendered a <ul> within whatever is in the .TableOfContents class. If it’s true, then line 8 will set the display type to a block; making it visible.
Problem Opportunity
Unfortunately, I ran into a number of issues.
It does not take into account older posts that already have table of contents
Most of my posts about labarum have headers and I do not want to go back and edit all of them. Some users might only want a table of contents that they specify themselves.
It obscures posts that start off with a big “hero” image
I have a couple of posts like this and the floating of the table of contents did not look correct. I will have to come back to this when I’m a little better with CSS.
This technique does not currently work with Firefox
The table of contents does not show up on Firefox. I tried experimenting with different logic to toggle the visibility, but ultimately, I couldn’t get it working. I don’t know how many people are using this theme or how many people come to my site using Firefox, but I really, really want people to be able to read this. NOTE: I wrote this on August 20th, and then the Firefox nightly build enabled the :has flag in build 119. Meaning that this will work soon.
I decided to remove the property and make two different shortcodes for table of contents.
The first one is activated by adding {{ toc }} to your text and will float in the center of the article.
The second one is activated by adding {{ floating-toc }} to your text and will float in the right of the article.
Please note that if you place the short codes at the beginning of the post, it will be part of the .summary.
There were a couple of things that I wanted to add to this release but realized that I was stopping progress. In my last two posts about labarum, I told myself that I wouldn’t wait for perfection to happen.
That being said, here are the things that I have on the roadmap for my next release.
Show the Profile Picture
A couple of the other themes on Micro.blog use the profile picture on the site. I do load this picture in the metadata of the theme’s head and articles but an end user doesn’t see that. Part of this is just me not wanting to show my face and not having it in my initial design for the theme.
Enable Mermaid Diagrams
Hugo natively allows for GoAT diagrams2 which are rendereded as SVGs on the site. To enable mermaid, you have to place something in the theme. I’ll be experimenting with and hopefully find a way so that it doesn’t load the associated javascript library if a user doesn’t want to use it.
I’ll have to read more. I like the idea of having a standard, but I vaguely remember something about why I made the decisions that I did.
CSS responsiveness
Working with my theme makes me appreciate other web developers. Unfortunately, I start comparing my work to others, and comparison is the thief of joy. I’m not happy with a part of the theme that I have. It has to do with how it looks on smaller screens.
The borders on the side complicate the image
Nothing is “wrong” with this, but for some reason, it “does not spark joy”.
I’ll have to take a couple steps back and think about what I want from this.
Break time!
Thank you for getting to the bottom of this article. I certainly hope that you got something out of it.
Please contact me if you have any positive comments or questions!
I have a hard time following “not false” instead of “true”. ↩︎
The name makes it harder than it needs to be to find examples. ↩︎
This is code taken from my theme and wrapped and started with ```go-html-template. This alerts the markdown processor that it needs to highlight the various keywords and variables for that language using pygments.
This is another small paragraph following the example and before the next example.
Code block with highlights
In addition, you can highlight rows of code that your article might want to point out specifically.
This exampl is taken from the documentation found here. This particular example used ```go {linenos=table,hl_lines=[8,“15-17”],linenostart=199} to start the code block.
// GetTitleFunc returns a func that can be used to transform a string to
// title case.
//
// The supported styles are
//
// - "Go" (strings.Title)
// - "AP" (see https://www.apstylebook.com/)
// - "Chicago" (see https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html)
//
// If an unknown or empty style is provided, AP style is what you get.
funcGetTitleFunc(stylestring)func(sstring)string{switchstrings.ToLower(style){case"go":returnstrings.Titlecase"chicago":returntransform.NewTitleConverter(transform.ChicagoStyle)default:returntransform.NewTitleConverter(transform.APStyle)}}
Just a lot of little things got in the way, and I started to sit on changes that I have made. I’m hoping that this post will be me getting back into publishing changes and why I am making them.
Right before Micro Camp, I used MarsEdit to write a post and I used one of the built in alignments to float the image to the left. I was hoping that it would look the way I remember old newspaper articles being.
Although it did have the text wrapped properly, the image “escaped” out of the article and onto the following article.
This was at the same time that there was a discussion about floating images in the help. With this information, I created a little demo post to help me evaluate the preconfigured defaults in MarsEdit.
The way, I got to it was dragging an image onto a post to get to the Upload Utility, but you can also access it from the Window menu.
From there, you can select the options in “Format” or click customize.
Afterwards, you can add more styling to the markup of the image so that future post can use what you’ve been working on.
This works for smaller images, but fell apart when I used a long image with small text. I went on a very long online journey look at grid and flex box until I ultimately, came to the following code that expanded the <div> that I use for the content of the post.
.post-body{display:inline-block;}
Three lines and it only took me hours.
Handling Transcripts
I had some code that would check if the post has a transcript for a podcast associated with it. That’s been removed as micro.blog automatically adds this for you. Thank you, @manton.
No Longer Published
I think people can figure out when this is released
When I first started working with the theme, I thought I would show the modified date and published date so that my users could quickly tell when something had been updated.
Looking at other themes, I don’t see many that have this information and it’s assumed that any date on the post is when it was published. I’m still keeping mine on the bottom for now. Although, I sometimes thinking about how a post might be more comparable to a journal entry or letter to the world.
Center Navigation Menu
Most of the other items on the page are centered. For example, the articles and footer. I centered this and gave it some margin.
Describe me
I’ve been using .Site.Params.description incorrectly. I’ll be using .Site.Params.itunes_description for the description used in the main page meta data.
No Comment
I moved comments from the posts off of the main page and out of the article block that they would normally be in. This meant moving the following code from the partials/article-footer.html to _default/single.html.
I’m thinking about changes in two different areas.
Styles
The next step is to reevaluate the styles that I’m using for the site. I’ve been adding things as I’ve come across different use cases and I want to make sure that the css file while stands at 496 lines currently is easy to read and understand for Future Mandaris 3 months from now. My friend, Michael, told me about Cube CSS so I’ll be looking into using that as a way to organize it.
I’m not happy with the way that comments look. I’ve decided that I’ll only change the style after I’ve implemented Cube CSS otherwise I’ll only have spaghetti code for the rest of this project.
I’d also like to change the margin between images on the site. For example, this post that I made with the sunlit app. That might be a simple fix that I’d slip into a point release.
After that, I’m planning on making the <code> and code blocks look more seamless in posts and change the font such that they stick out more when reading in a paragraph.
Features
On my site, I don’t use any of the plugins. They should work, but I’d like to make sure that the most popular (AKA the ones that people I follow have mentioned) are working properly.
I don’t see there being a problem because of the nature of the theme, but if you know of an issue, please let me know.
Sending your First Webmention from Scratch • Aaron Parecki
So what do you need to walk through this tutorial? We'll use static files and simple command line tools so that you can easily adapt this to any environment or programming language later.
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted1 his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready2 to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked. “What’s happened to me? " he thought. It wasn’t a dream.
His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table - Samsa was a travelling salesman - and above it there3 hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer. Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather.
I ought to just try that with my boss; I’d get kicked out on the spot. But who knows, maybe that would be the best thing for me. If I didn’t have my parents to think about I’d have given in my notice a long time ago, I’d have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He’d fall right off his desk!4 And it’s a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing. Well, there’s still some hope; once I’ve got the money together to pay off my parents’ debt to him - another five or six years I suppose - that’s definitely what I’ll do. That’s when I’ll make the big change. First of all though, I’ve got to get up, my train leaves at five. " And he looked over at the alarm clock, ticking on the chest of drawers. “God in Heaven! " he thought. It was half past six and the hands were quietly moving forwards, it was even later than half past, more like quarter to seven. Had the alarm clock not rung? He could see from the bed that it had been set for four o’clock as it should have been; it certainly must have rung. Yes, but was it possible to quietly sleep through that furniture-rattling noise?
The Second Thing
Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. Several fabulous dixieland jazz groups played with quick tempo. Back in my quaint garden, jaunty zinnias vie with flaunting phlox5. Five or six big jet planes zoomed quickly by the new tower. Exploring the zoo, we saw every kangaroo jump and quite a few carried babies. I quickly explained that many big jobs involve few hazards. Jay Wolf is quite an expert on the bass violin, guitar, dulcimer, ukulele and zither. Expect skilled signwriters to use many jazzy, quaint old alphabets effectively. The wizard quickly jinxed the gnomes before they vaporized. THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG’S BACK 12345678906.
The Third Thing
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, eu detracto senserit vis, ei natum ridens detracto sit. Id iriure prompta vix. Sit ea feugiat invenire similique, etiam solet eleifend cu per. Ea falli nullam elaboraret vis, modo percipitur omittantur at ius, in quo nullam timeam ocurreret. Est ad deleniti corrumpit scripserit, te usu apeirian recusabo oportere, nemore laboramus vulputate te vim. Ea eum mazim iudicabit, harum utroque pri ne.
Per no putant iriure intellegebat. Tamquam maiorum ei eum, ea iuvaret maluisset liberavisse eam, adhuc falli tamquam ius te? Eu amet virtute scaevola est, simul nusquam invidunt duo id, at usu sanctus abhorreant definiebas! Vide ullum quo cu? Ius in forensibus sadipscing, dicant aperiri volutpat et sit.
Veri dicat pro te, an aliquam reprimique cum, et pro commune maiestatis. Nec ex amet eleifend definitiones! An adipisci consequuntur est. In quot oratio vis. Vide nobis aperiam pri ad, et sit dictas adolescens inciderint, pertinacia referrentur consequuntur pri id?
Some more examples
bold and italics
strikethrough and bold
strikethrough and italics
bold, italics and strikethrough
I am going to use the example from the footnote documentation7.
Remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.
path to data files to supply the data that will be passed into templates.
engine
engine to be used for processing templates. Handlebars is the default.
ext
extension to be used for dest files.
Right aligned columns
Option
Description
data
path to data files to supply the data that will be passed into templates.
engine
engine to be used for processing templates. Handlebars is the default.
ext
extension to be used for dest files.
Centered values
Item
Value
Computer
$1600
Phone
$12
Pipe
$2
Something else
Function name
Description
help()
Display the help window.
destroy()
Destroy your computer!
Hello
Italic default
Bold default
Strikethrough default
Code default
italics
bold
strikethrough
code
italics
bold
strikethrough
code
italics
bold
strikethrough
code
This is a random footnote for when I’m writing things ↩︎
Longer footnote: He must have tried it a hundred times, shut his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to look at the floundering legs, and only stopped when he began to feel a mild, dull pain there that he had never felt before. “Oh, God”, he thought, “what a strenuous career it is that I’ve chosen! Travelling day in and day out. ↩︎
I wanted to make a page that contained most if not all of the different things that you would find in a blog post written in Markdown. For simplicity, I’ll stick to what is found in Python-Markdown as it is the one that I use most.
Basic Syntax
This sentence as emphasied and bold text.
This sentence has emphasis and bold text combined.
Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. Several fabulous dixieland jazz groups played with quick tempo. Back in my quaint garden, jaunty zinnias vie with flaunting phlox1. Five or six big jet planes zoomed quickly by the new tower. Exploring the zoo, we saw every kangaroo jump and quite a few carried babies. I quickly explained that many big jobs involve few hazards. Jay Wolf is quite an expert on the bass violin, guitar, dulcimer, ukulele and zither. Expect skilled signwriters to use many jazzy, quaint old alphabets effectively. The wizard quickly jinxed the gnomes before they vaporized. THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG’S BACK 12345678902.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, eu detracto senserit vis, ei natum ridens detracto sit. Id iriure prompta vix. Sit ea feugiat invenire similique, etiam solet eleifend cu per. Ea falli nullam elaboraret vis, modo percipitur omittantur at ius, in quo nullam timeam ocurreret. Est ad deleniti corrumpit scripserit, te usu apeirian recusabo oportere, nemore laboramus vulputate te vim. Ea eum mazim iudicabit, harum utroque pri ne.
Per no putant iriure intellegebat. Tamquam maiorum ei eum, ea iuvaret maluisset liberavisse eam, adhuc falli tamquam ius te? Eu amet virtute scaevola est, simul nusquam invidunt duo id, at usu sanctus abhorreant definiebas! Vide ullum quo cu? Ius in forensibus sadipscing, dicant aperiri volutpat et sit.
Veri dicat pro te, an aliquam reprimique cum, et pro commune maiestatis. Nec ex amet eleifend definitiones! An adipisci consequuntur est. In quot oratio vis. Vide nobis aperiam pri ad, et sit dictas adolescens inciderint, pertinacia referrentur consequuntur pri id?
Images
Large image
Images in a paragraph
Yar Pirate Ipsum. Rutters log red ensign bring a spring upon her cable Pirate Round prow fathom. Snow broadside Arr poop deck hardtack lad barkadeer. Cat o’nine tails handsomely fire ship reef bring a spring upon her cable yardarm jury mast. Hang the jib mutiny execution dock cutlass Sail ho furl ye. Barque crimp aye fore nipper yo-ho-ho grog. Crack Jennys tea cup Brethren of the Coast weigh anchor spanker port rutters jack.
Man-of-war tender lanyard piracy yard prow case shot. Bilge brig six pounders loot landlubber or just lubber me salmagundi. Chantey keelhaul Pieces of Eight hail-shot mutiny brigantine barque. Dead men tell no tales American Main parrel code of conduct haul wind hornswaggle Admiral of the Black. Cable no prey, no pay bilge rat swab wherry boom run a shot across the bow. Run a shot across the bow skysail strike colors Sail ho lateen sail wench Barbary Coast.
List
There are two kinds of lists with
Ordered lists
First item
Second item
Second paragraph of Second item
Third item
A small paragraph before the second list.
Forth item - If this doesn’t start with 4 than smart list are not on.
Nested unordered list item 1
Nested unordered list item 2
Nested unordered list item 3
Fifth item
Six item
Unordered lists
First item.
Second item. This second item has two paragraphs in it.
This is the second paragraph of the second item. (Not confusing at all.)
Block quote in the unordered list
Followed by a code block:
{"firstName":"John","lastName":"Smith","age":25}
Third item.
Nested ordered list item 1
Nested ordered list item 2
Nested ordered list item 3
Forth item.
Footnotes
I am going to use the example from the footnote documentation3.
Block quote
Something simple should go here.
Remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.
A juicy stone fruit (drupe) from numerous species of tropical trees belonging to the flowering plant genus Mangifera, cultivated mostly for their edible fruit.
Complex definitions
Term 1
This is a definition with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum
dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam
hendrerit mi posuere lectus.
Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet
vitae, risus.
Second definition for term 1, also wrapped in a paragraph
because of the blank line preceding it.
Term 2
This definition has a code block, a blockquote and a list.
code block.
block quote
on two lines.
first list item
second list item
Code blocks
importlogging# This line is emphasized# This line isn't# This line is emphasizeddeffunc():# function bodysomeValue="func called"logging.info(someValue)if__name__=='__main__':func()
