Middleman 2.0 « Thomas Reynolds

Middleman 2.0

Aug 8 2011

Middleman 2.0 is a huge release featuring a refactored core, a unified source folder, a unified command line, tons of new features and a full documentation website.

As always, install via RubyGems:

gem install middleman

For more information, read the Getting Started guide.

Here's an overview of everything that's changed.

Unified Source Folder

The public and views folders have been combined into a single source folder which contains all of your files. Use the migration tool to quickly update your folder structure, or manually combine the folders.

Unified Command

The old commands, mm-init, mm-server and mm-build, have been combined into a single middleman command with the following subcommands:

middleman init
middleman server
middleman build

New Features

Here are the most interesting new features of Middleman 2.0.

Sprockets

Sprockets is a tool for Javascript dependency management. Using Sprockets you can include other Javascript and CoffeeScript files into your scripts.

//= require "another_file"

function my_javascript() {

}

Read more in the Javascript, CoffeeScript and Sprockets guide.

Dynamic Pages

Dynamic pages allow you to generate HTML for files which share a single template.

["tom", "dick", "harry"].each do |name|
  page "/about/#{name}.html", :proxy => "/about/template.html" do
    @person_name = name
  end
end

Pretty URLs

Pretty URLs (aka Directory Indexes) let you generate folders for each HTML file in your project which results in a pretty, extension-less URL in common web-servers.

activate :directory_indexes

Now source/my-page.html will generate build/my-page/index.html.

YAML Frontmatter

YAML Frontmatter lets you add in-template variables at the top of a page, which are also available in the layout, and to configure which layout the page uses.

---
layout: "login"
page_name: "Login"
---

<h1><%= data.page.page_name %></h1>

The above login.html.erb file will be rendered using the login.erb layout file.

Read more in the Individual Page Configuration guide.

LiveReload

By default, LiveReload will monitor your config.rb file and automatically restart the Middleman server if it changes. This means, activating new features no longer requires a server restart.

In addition, you can have LiveReload monitor your project files as well and instruct the web-browser to reload when they change using the LiveReload Extension and the --livereload flag.

middleman server --livereload

Migrating to 2.0

Updating old projects to Middleman 2.0 is very easy. Simply use the new migrate command:

middleman migrate

Read more about the migration edge cases in the Migrating to Middleman 2.0 guide.

Support

If there are any issues or regressions, please log bugs on the Github Issue Tracker.