Founder of @zensical, creator of Material for MkDocs

Very proud of the team today: we’re launching @Zensical Studio. 👏 A lot of work went into making this fast, precise, and useful in real documentation projects. If you write docs with Zensical or MkDocs, we'd love your feedback!
Today, we're launching Zensical Studio, the missing productivity layer for Docs-as-Code. The idea is simple: Refactor documentation like code. Rename headings safely. Catch [broken links] instantly. Works with Zensical and MkDocs projects. zensical.org/studio/
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😱🙏Wow! Thanks, @github!
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Wow! @Microsoft is now sponsoring Material for MkDocs 🥰
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🤯 @AWSOpen just sponsored Material for MkDocs! The AWS Open Source Software Fund donated $10k to the project! We've started building a small but amazing team around the project and contributions like this help us sustain our efforts pushing the project to new heights! ❤️❤️❤️
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Material for MkDocs just hit $ 100k/year 😱 That's absolutely unbelievable. I think it's safe to say that with product-market fit and a well-designed release strategy, it's possible to earn a living in Open Source. 1/🧵
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TIL you can view Node CPU profiles in Visual Studio Code 😱 1. Run node --cpu-prof file.js 2. Open *.cpuprofile in VS Code There you go:
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🥳 Material for MkDocs reached its next funding goal! Thanks to our awesome sponsors, the following features will now be free as part of our community edition: ✏️ Blog plugin 🇨🇳 Chinese search support ⭕️ Annotations 🧭 Navigation icons ✂️ Navigation pruning 🤨 Navigation status
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We're super proud to welcome @FastAPI by the wonderful @tiangolo as the first silver sponsor of Material for MkDocs! FastAPI is an amazing Python framework to build lightning fast APIs with a world-class developer experience! fastapi.tiangolo.com/
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GitHub eradicated ~$240k/m in sponsorships in 28d An analysis 🧵
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Bloomberg just gave a $10k grant to MkDocs!
Replying to @TechAtBloomberg
We're also announcing the Q2 2023 @Bloomberg #FOSS Fund grant recipients: -- @MkDocsProject -- #OpenSSH -- @PostgreSQL Congratulations!! Each of these #opensource projects has received a $10K grant to support the people & communities who maintain them #MkDocs #Postgres
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🥳 Material for MkDocs is one of the winners of Google's Open Source Peer Bonus Program 2023 opensource.googleblog.com/20…
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2022 has been an incredible year for Material for MkDocs. We increased our monthly funding from $4k to over $10k, and growth is still looking insane. I'm so glad that I'm allowed to work on something that I personally believe in, building something I think is important. 1/🧵
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🎊 Important milestone: $10k/month Material for MkDocs just reached $10k/month in sponsorships! This means the new 🔍 search will be released into the community edition, including better offline support. Expect a beta release in the coming days! squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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🎉 Material for MkDocs has a new landing page! I'm super excited to finally reveal the results of the past weeks of hard work, check it out here: squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m… A thread 🧵 1/5
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Thanks to my awesome sponsors, I'm all bootstrapped – no investors to please. I can just write useful software every day, trying hard to make the lives of thousands of other individuals easier and more joyful. Life is great ❤️
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Material for MkDocs just got sponsored by @SIEMENS 😎 I'm super happy to see more huge international organizations understand the value of Open Source and support it financially. Funding allows us to stay on top of our game!
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It's quite astonishing to see the impact of the Insiders program on Material for MkDocs. New releases are pushed out far more regularly and at a faster pace. Instant bug fixes, more new features – this is what Open Source with funding can look like. That simple. 🤟
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🥳 We've reached our next funding goal! It's amazing how many individuals and companies see value in my work and support it financially, so I can continue trying to make writing documentation joyful for all of us. Thread 1/🧵
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🤩 I'm speechless! The $5,000 monthly funding goal was just reached! A BIG THANK YOU to all my awesome sponsors! You are the reason why I can push this project forward! Coming up in 8.2: – Mermaid.js integration – Built-in tags support – Stay on page when switching versions
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I'm making progress on native blog support. The left sidebar will host author info, reading time, linked releases, and links to related articles and pages 🚀 Still heavily WIP.
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Sneak peek: code block annotations – coming soon to Material for MkDocs Insiders. Code block annotations can contain _any_ valid Markdown and can be placed _anywhere_ inside code blocks.
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What an honor! The official WebKit documentation is now built with Material for MkDocs 🤯 docs.webkit.org/
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Announcing ⚡️ Instant previews This is the next big thing coming to Material for MkDocs. I was already teasing that some exciting new features are in the pipeline and here's the first sneak peek of what's about to hit the shelves in the coming weeks. A thread 👇 1/
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Material for MkDocs hits its 400th release! 🎊 It's only a minor bugfix release, as most releases, but it shows our commitment to keep things fresh and up-to-date 😎 github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-…
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📣 Announcing blog support Insiders 4.23.0 ships long-awaited blogging support via the brand new built-in blog plugin! 🚀 All sponsors can now build a blog using Material for MkDocs! Check out our new blog to see it in action: squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m… This is how it looks:
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Woah, it looks like @arxiv is switching its docs portal to Material for MkDocs 😱 What an honor! docs.arxiv.org/
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I just wrote a comment on GitHub that took me 40mins to write. Open Source is as much about writing code as it is about good communication ✌️
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🆕 IntelliSense for mkdocs.yml I've put together a JSON schema definition for the mkdocs.yml syntax expected by Material for MkDocs, which enables auto-complete and validation. Writing config has never been easier! Set it up in 5 minutes: squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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Blog support for Material for MkDocs is coming on Monday. I'm going to finish the docs on the weekend, so everything should be ready by Monday. Really looking forward to this! Definitely the biggest release this year. As always, all sponsors will be able to use it immediately 🚀
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🎉 Material for MkDocs 8 is out! I'm super happy with the result – code annotations now work beautifully on mobile and tablet, the code base has undergone a serious refactor and the project is in better shape than ever. It's rock-solid. Release notes: squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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🤫 I'm working on an exciting new plugin which automatically optimizes all 🖼 images it finds in your documentation. It does so concurrently (which yields much faster builds) and caches results, so optimizations are never performed twice, unless necessary.
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Open Source is brutal. Making a living on your own is hard – even harder when most of your users expect you to work for free. However, if you believe in your project and build something of value, the freedom that comes with it is worth everything you went through.
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– Material for MkDocs Live Edit – A POC I just threw together running the Material for MkDocs stack in the browser. Much, much faster than MkDocs dev server, and no need to install anything!
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What a day! The blog plugin saw the light of day and now the next funding goal was hit! 🎊 Wow! 🤩 Again, a huge thank you to all my awesome sponsors for supporting my work on Material for MkDocs! You rock! 🤟
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🤯 I'm speechless! 7 weeks after reaching the last funding goal, here we go again! A HUGE THANK YOU to my awesome sponsors! 🙏 Without you, Material for MkDocs wouldn't be the go-to solution for technical documentation that it is today. New major release incoming 🎉
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Finished the blog post view – pretty happy how it turned out! You can use nav syntax in blog posts to provide the user with related links, and those can even contain anchors which are automatically resolved and rendered as subtitles. How cool is that? Check it out:
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The search engine I'm currently building for Material for MkDocs will be so flexible, you can swap out basically everything. I think it's going to be the most modular thing I've ever built, and will be one of the fastest engines around 😎
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Open Source Maintainer Life You take one day off – 30 things happened on GitHub, 5 new issues, several new PRs. Oh man, don't let a day slip by, clean up often or you will lose the battle. Procrastination is not something you can afford on a popular project 😅
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😍 The @PyPI blog is now powered by Material for MkDocs! I couldn't be more proud! Note that the PyPI blog doesn't use our official built-in blog plugin, but a third-party plugin instead. blog.pypi.org/posts/2023-03-…
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❄️ Cold times are approaching, let it snow! With Christmas around the corner, there's a temporary new hidden feature in Material for MkDocs 🤫 You can see it live on our documentation! Want to unlock it to add it to your own documentation as well? Read on! 1/🧵
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📣 New blog post: the past, present and future of Material for MkDocs: – the very first version in 2016 (it looked so ugly!) – features released in 2021 (SO MANY 😱) – funding situation compared to 2020 Check it out here: squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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🤗 We are very close to our next funding goal! Once this goal is reached, the following features will become free for everybody to use: – Privacy plugin – Card grids – Tooltips – Linkable content tabs – Automatic light/dark mode – Document contributors github.com/sponsors/squidfun…
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Netflix is killing it! This must be one of the most beautiful Material for MkDocs mods I've seen so far 😍 netflix.github.io/dgs/
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Material for MkDocs 7.3.6 brings another much-requested feature – code block titles ✍️🤓 squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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When I got into this business, nobody told me that my job description would be 'technical writer' for quite a significant fraction of my time. I guess that's also included with 'full-stack engineer'.
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The documentation of the European Open Data Portal is now running on MkDocs and Material for MkDocs 😍 @EU_opendata @ondatait dataeuropa.gitlab.io/data-pr…
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I've started building a repository with runnable examples for all features that Material for MkDocs supports. This will be an ongoing effort, but will make bootstrapping projects easier for users. You can star and watch it here: github.com/mkdocs-material/e…
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📣 New blog post: How we're transforming Material for MkDocs We know it's been quite a while since our last update, which is why we're eager to share what's happening in and around Material for MkDocs with you. squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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Replying to @_developit
Sandbox: 250/month – FREE – "Great for building a proof of concept, evaluating capabilities and functionality, and limited scale exploration of the last month of Tweets, instantly." One little mistake and you have to wait for 30 days to continue working on your integration 😂
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🤩 Woah, I'm speechless! @elastic is now a premium sponsor of Material for MkDocs! They really don't need an introduction, so they're not going to get one 😉 elastic.co ❤️❤️❤️
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Wednesday, I had a call with one of our commercial users. They said that thanks to the SEO best practices Material for MkDocs follows, their documentation now has 1M monthly hits – more than their main website 😎 Best thing: it comes for free – it's all static HTML!
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For almost two years, I've wanted to build a new landing page for Material for MkDocs, and I'm super excited to say that after weeks and weeks it's almost finished! It will feature a jaw-dropping illustration done by my sister.
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We listened to the feedback of our many users, and rebranded Material for MkDocs from being "just a theme for MkDocs" to: A powerful documentation framework built on top of MkDocs We think this better reflects the capabilities it offers 🚀
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Ah, yeah. Open Source. Our highest maintenance user (not a sponsor) that binds so much of our time, complains a lot, and to whom we provided free support in countless situations in the past now starts calling our solutions stupid. Good job, mate! That's the spirit.
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I'm pretty excited that @CERN uses my project Material for MkDocs for their documentation! At the end of my studies, I applied for writing my Diploma thesis at CERN on some computing topic – I wasn't accepted. Glad I still found a way to make an impact. abpcomputing.web.cern.ch/
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I've started pushing some of the funds Material for MkDocs receives upstream to the plugin and extension authors that work tirelessly on building one of the best present documentation ecosystems, i.e., @timvink, @ojacques, and @ultrabug. More to follow.
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Today, I had a very nice and insightful call with two devs from a large corporation that uses Material for MkDocs for their internal documentation, and learned that they use it in 2,000 projects 🤯 That's, by far, the widest use I've ever seen.
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🎊 Material for MkDocs 9 is out! It comes with a new search implementation which is faster, generates smaller search indexes and supports HTML formatting ✏️ If you haven't used it yet, read our blog article to learn more! Also, try it on our docs! 🔍 squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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Docs are shaping up – adding a "How it works" and "When to use it" section to the new documentation section that describes all built-in plugins 😎
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Replying to @pushmatrix @mrdoob
Level 100 - Vietnam
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Imagine you create something, offer it for free, thousands of people start using it, and demand more and more and more. That's what maintaining a large project with thousands of users feels like. If a project helps you save time, pay the maintainers. Be fair. Don't freeload.
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😱 Material for MkDocs is now officially backed by @StanfordCompute – what an honor!
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The blog plugin is probably the most flexible plugin I wrote so far. In the process, I learned so much about the internals of MkDocs, that I can probably call myself an expert by now. Of course, you don't need to specify all of this – those are just the defaults. 😎
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Replying to @Una @argyleink
Firefox shows ineffective properties, so maybe dig around in the Gecko source code?
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The new social plugin is done! It's infinitely more powerful, and allows for live editing via simple 'mkdocs serve' 🚀 Check out what you can throw together in 10 minutes. The only thing I still need to do: write documentation 😎
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Not documented? Not done.
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Material for MkDocs is now at over 2 million downloads a month 🤯 pypistats.org/packages/mkdoc…
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Open Source funding got a dent in 2023 – I actually would've expected its growth to continue, but it didn't. All Open Source projects on Open Collective combined raised $16M ($19M in 2022) in 2023. We need more organizations supporting OSS! discover.opencollective.com/
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Woah! We just reached the $7,000 funding goal 1 hour before I planned on closing my laptop and disappearing into my holidays 😅🙏 I want to thank all my awesome sponsors for making my work on this project possible! You are helping in removing the suck from writing documentation!
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More than half of all Cloud infrastructure related blog posts are on Medium and after working for 30min you're paywalled. That sucks, and it's a great motivator to make the Material for MkDocs blog plugin even better.

ALT Life Smash GIF

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Material for MkDocs 9 will be released in 4 days, on January 2, 2023. It's finished since about a week, but releasing something over Christmas or NYE is likely not the best idea 🙉

ALT Launch GIF

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Instant previews are finally happening! 🚀 After finishing the new footnote tooltips positioning logic, I've started working on instant previews, which render internal links to sections in a tooltip as well. Of course, this will be opt in. Here's what I've got already:
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I have a two year old MacBook Pro and everything I use (apps, websites) is getting slower and slower. When did most of us stop carrying about snappiness? My god, we have so much power on our hands, why is most software out there so crappily written? 💩💩💩
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🏷 Tag support for Material for MkDocs – it's done! Insiders 2.7.0 adds support for tags (including a browseable tags index and search integration), which means users of Insiders can start using it NOW 🚀 Docs: squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m… Get Insiders: squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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🙋‍♂️ I'm working hard on the new search which is going to be much more powerful soon. It'll be possible to index custom metadata (e.g. document authors) to filter documents and the relevance of results will be much better. Here's a sneak peak of a prototype.
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Always funny when I search for the docs of a project for the first time and stumble across a site made with Material for MkDocs. Full circle. This time: AWS Lambda Powertools for TypeScript awslabs.github.io/aws-lambda…
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Social cards are shaping up! The next update will be a game changer, adding support for backgrounds, tints, Jinja templates for rendering content, adding metadata and so much more... This was a lot of hard work to get going, so give it a few more days! It'll be worth it 😎
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We're currently investing a lot of time into restructuring our documentation to account for the increasing number of options that Material for MkDocs and especially its unique built-in plugins include.
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What a day! First time on Hackernews' front page: +12k sessions +36k page views +180 stars on GitHub ... and counting.
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I'm really looking forward to the next funding goal being hit soon, as this means the blog plugin will be released into the wild. I'm not sure what will happen, but IMHO it's by far one of the most complete OSS solutions for technical blogging – massive batteries included.
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Tomorrow is a big day – we will unveil our new bug reporting process. This is a hell of a huge experiment and has been in the making for weeks. It should be much easier to report bugs now, and there's a whole new section on the documentation 🚀 Oh, and of course Material 9 😎
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Spotted a very nice mod of Material for MkDocs by the Ministry of Justice (UK). Few users know, that with a little knowledge of CSS, you can completely change the look of the theme! ministryofjustice.github.io/…
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I really can't wait for code annotations to be generally available! They have the potential to transform the way we document code examples, allowing for rich text (incl. images, graphs, tables, etc.) to be co-located with code. squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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To those of you waiting for the blog feature – I'm working hard on it whenever I can. Flexibility and ease of use are very complex to unite, but possible. Once the blog plugin comes out, there should be no more reason to use another framework for adding a blog to your docs.
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Current iteration of the blog overview page. Blog articles marked as drafts are rendered on serve, but removed from the output when the site is built. While all pages on the left are auto-generated from blog posts, authors can also add custom pages.
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Just discovered that @Google started adopting Material for MkDocs for their Open Source projects, which is funny, as they practically created Material Design - the underlying design language. I guess I can consider this a success ☺️ google.github.io/xls/
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🤫 Few people know: Material for MkDocs is very adaptable and can be skinned with ease. I just threw this together in 20m:
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9.5.5 is a big, big bugfix release – all known bugs of instant navigation should now be resolved, as I did a thorough rewrite, plus it should be much more resilient. Moreover there are now more inline comments to explain how it works than lines of code 😅 github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-…
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I finally cracked the hardest problem on the blog plugin – auto-generating pages with dynamic URLs (archive, category pages, etc.). It sounds so simple, but making this all work with MkDocs is quite a challenge! Woah!
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🆕 in the docs – 🕵️‍♀️ icon-search 🚀 Find the perfect icon to use in your Markdown document quickly and copy the shortcode with one click. All set. Check it out here: squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-m…
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> "When is feature X ready? Our company needs it now!" < "Have you considered sponsoring the project to help us develop feature X?" User has left the room.
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Ah, the joys of being an Open Source maintainer. Now that our bug reporting process is precisely defined and requires a reproduction, users start creating bug reports by using the template for feature requests.
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🎉🎉🎉 I just reached my first funding goal of $500 on GitHub Sponsors! 🤩 I'm so grateful to have so many awesome supporters! 🙏 This means the new search will be merged from Insiders to Material for MkDocs this weekend - watch out for the new release!
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😱 Woah! We're only $11 short on the next funding goal! github.com/sponsors/squidfun… 3...2...1... 🥳
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Ahhh, those Sphinx vs. MkDocs discussions. Love it. 😂 Dear Sphinx users: check out MkDocstrings by @pawamoy and prepare to be amazed!
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No idea why, but we're trending today! github.com/trending
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