This marks the official release of Manji. I released the Preview version a little over 2 weeks ago. I think the preview was a great idea because I got so much feedback of what was broken and where. Somethings I was fully aware of others I was a bit in the dark about, so I’d like to thank everyone who’s downloaded it and said good things about it and used it. I really appreciate all the love.

I’ve sorted out those permalink pages now, so the official Manji download page is www.brokenkode.com/manji as you would generally expect it to be. Could I ask all those who’ve made lists on their sites etc to just point to this location now. I do appologise for the inconvenience but at least now it’ll be easier to find in the future.

Gratitude First things is a big shout out to Alphaoide who’s come into the dev side of things to help me out, since to be completely honest is a godsend, as I’m no coder. He’s been a ROCK and I’d just like to thank him for all the help. If you guys bump into him on the boards or wherever please be sure to thank him as well.

So what’s been fixed? Loads of things, here’s a list:

• Xhtml validation on main page (this was very minor and stupid mistake on my part, but hey it did get released).
• CSS validation on main page.
• IE funkiness has been sorted out. This was specifically in the comments form section and general spacing in the footer area.
• Comment edit buttons now look the same in IE and FF. Originally pngs they're now gifs.
• The comments underline used to break if there was a long name or a pingback. That's not an issue any more.
• Spacing of the actual naviation menu sorted out.

What’s new?

• About page now gets edited from the static page menu rather than hand coding it in the about.php file.
• No need to edit the file to activate the comment buttons. They'll activated automatically.
• Hovering over the comment edit buttons also tells the user what they do.
• Masthead is now clickable by default.

What about the code? Did you clean it up you lazy bastard? Well once you look under the hood, you see that a lot has been modified:

• The css has now been completely sorted out into structure and typography. Each section of the page has also been clearly labelled, so now skinning and modifying the actual look of your site could not be easier.
• The php has been streamlined big time and again given a bit of a polish so you now know where something begins and where it ends.

What’s next? Loads. I’m not as anxious to get the rest of my ideas out there as I was to get this release, mainly because soo many people seemed to be using the template, and I felt that I should give them a more rounded product. I’ve still got Lava Flavoured Manji to release sometime in the future, which is basically a darker version of Manji for everyone that’s not into the white space.

A 1.2 version is still in the works believe it or not, and I’ll probably work on that next (as far as Manji is concerned).

I have one final idea that needs some serious development but I think it’s a pretty neat idea. Alphaoide came up with the name, but I’ll see how much that idea flies and I’ll talk about it more if I think it’s something that would be useful.