I try not to get too fanboy about commercial software (free or otherwise), but I can't help it: Movable Type 3.2 is a big freaking deal.

Movable Type 3.2 raises the bar in web application design. Some of these features will influence the way other web applications are built for the next couple of years. The easy upgrade installation, the powerful list views, the searchable admin interface, the new comment management system, the interaction between background activity and the user interface. We will expect all web apps to work this way going forward.

Some improvements are long overdue for MT, solving problems that stuck out in previous versions—but that doesn't make them any less welcome. Just short of a home run, the best stuff in MT 3.2 raises the bar so high, not all aspects of MT 3.2 meet its own bar. Some nooks and crannies didn't get the attention of other, more major areas of functionality; "power editing" mode seems even less useful than the regular list mode at this point, and could really use a more powerful DHTML interface like other parts of the app got with this release. And some new features don't completely fulfill their potential: The list views are so cool, you'd expect them to be able to do things like change the category of a handful of selected entries all at once (like you can in the creaky old power editing mode).

Impressively, many of these shortcomings can be overcome with plugins. It has never been more obvious that Movable Type isn't just blog software, it's a software platform. Everything is extensible, everything is meant to be extended. MT 3.2 includes major improvements to the development, installation and administration of extensions. The plugin platform includes new features that won't be immediately visible to the end user—until the available MT plugins start getting better and more powerful by an order of magnitude. 6A has put a great deal of thought into the plugin development process and the possibilities of plugins, and developing and distributing plugins is now amazingly easy. There's never been a better time to be a MT plugin developer.

And some of the changes are little touches that go a long way. When I had a compile error in my plugin's .pl file and it showed up in a little red box on the System Overview screen, I almost cried. (The good kind of crying, not crying because I had a compile error. You know.) MT 3.2 is exceptionally developer friendly.

Motivated by this release, the kind words of interested bloggers, and a mention on the MT plugins page, I will be giving Builderoo, the text formatting system for Movable Type, an overhaul in the next couple of weeks. MT 3.2's new features for plugins will allow Builderoo to live up to its full potential, and I intend to see that it happens. More on that later.

Congratulations to Six Apart on this most excellent release.