Ye Olde Rad Blog II

I've been looking into installing the latest version of MovableType (blogging software) .. which happens to be v4.1 .. which is currently in beta3, which was released 2 days ago.

The main reason I'm waiting for v4.1 is cuz (copy-n-paste from the "What's New in MT 4.1" page):

Valid, Well-formed XHTML Post Content

Movable Type's Rich Text Editor is now completely modular allowing a developer to create a plugin to swap in the rich text editor of their choice. A plugin for the popular FCK editor which outputs semantically valid XHTML has been created by Six Apart and is available in our plugin directory.

The biggest trouble I have with MT 3.35 (which I currently use) is with the editor. (I use TinyMCE.) It strips out code I want to use for Lightbox (among other things), causing much grief.

So the option to use a variety of editors, especially the FCK editor, which outputs well-formed XHTML (which I've been studying), will be very cool. (Wonder how they came up with that almost-profane name.)

MT4 now comes in three different versions:

1. Commercial
2. Open Source
3. Personal.

People are grumbling (see comments) cuz *only* the Commercial version (which costs $235) will come with a feature called Custom Fields, a feature which moves MT in the direction of Content Management (like Drupal, for example), and away from pure blogging software.

I'm also interested in Expression Engine, (which supports Custom Fields natively). But EE is not free for personal use (like MT4). If they would comp me a license, I'd go that route (especially if they release a version with a WYSIWYG editor). Maybe I'll ask. Can't hurt, right?

For more real-world insight into this question of Movable Type v4.1 vs Expression Engine v1.6, see this thread titled > Six Apart Releases Movable Type Open Source! (v4.1) for why I feel MTOS is a better choice than EE (at least, right now).