Many under-the-hood changes
Besides the overhaul of the sidebar the recent roll-out was geared towards areas that are currently invisible to most (except to the most astute user) but fundamental to how things work and where we are going next. Lately we’ve been prototyping and building our new range of skins, and during this production period we found that certain variables present in the current range no longer ‘map’ to the new range - and functionality is required to deal with this issue.
To prepare for when we pop the hood
From a template point-of-view we are ‘dropping’ the notion of fixed, hard-coded templates and moving towards more flexible, multi-column layouts but this shift introduced the issue of what to do with ‘old’, unused content after a switch. We don’t want to ‘lose’ any of your content and it is best left up to you to decide what to do with it. For that to happen you need to be able to manage and move ‘orphaned’ content.
Dealing with ‘orphaned’ content
If you now switch to another skin (and in particular once you switch to one of the new skins) you’ll be able to identify ‘orphaned’ content easily from the page edit screen - it is grayed out and located on the right-hand side. This content can now be copied-and-pasted to a new location and be deleted once you are done.
This migration will only be necessary for page-based content; post and photo sections data will remain intact due to their relatively simple and consistent nature.
If there is a map there will be a match
A further benefit of this variable-preservation technique is that most skin settings now remain intact after a switch - which means when you try out a new skin your logo and code should remain the same if the variables match up on a skin-to-skin level. Please check your site in detail in any event as certain variables don’t always map to other skins.
Hang on. Did someone say ‘new range of skins’?
Most of Monday’s roll-out was in preparation for the release of an entirely new range of skins - the sidebar changes and fixes were incidental to the bigger picture - it’s now time to go 2.0 with the most important aspect of what we do - the sites you build with Tank.
Be sure to grab a front-row seat.