mkdocs-materialx 10.1.1

Documentation that simply works

MaterialX

MaterialX, the next generation of mkdocs-material, build beautiful sites the way you already know and love, based on mkdocs-material-9.7.1 and named X, it provides ongoing maintenance and updates.

Why MaterialX ?

The MkDocs project is nearing its end due to personal issues involving its original author. He has ceased updates for MkDocs and intends to release a completely new 2.0 version as a replacement. However, this new version is entirely incompatible with the existing ecosystem. It is an entirely separate project that merely carries the MkDocs name, and an accidental upgrade will result in devastating damage.

As a result, to move away from reliance on MkDocs, the team behind the popular mkdocs-material theme framework has discontinued its maintenance and shifted to developing an entirely new alternative project named Zensical. While it features a modern architecture, it is incompatible with the original MkDocs ecosystem (no plugin support), incurs high migration costs (all configurations must be rebuilt from scratch), and still lacks many essential features.

To ensure the continued stable operation of existing MkDocs projects and ecosystem, a new community-driven successor to MkDocs has emerged: ProperDocs (based on MkDocs 1.6.1). It will provide ongoing updates and maintenance while remaining fully compatible with the original MkDocs ecosystem.

Similarly, mkdocs-material also has a new successor: MaterialX (based on mkdocs-material 9.7.1). It will also receive ongoing updates and maintenance, with full compatibility with the original ecosystem and zero migration costs.

MaterialX preserves the rich features and stability of the mkdocs-material project, while delivering new features and broad compatibility, and will adopt the following brand-new vision and positioning.

Differences from Material

Aspect	mkdocs-material	MaterialX
Latest Version	mkdocs-material-9.7.1	mkdocs-materialx-10.x (based on mkdocs-material-9.7.1)
Usage	mkdocs.yml + theme name material	mkdocs.yml + new theme name materialx everything else is the same as with material
Current Status	Stopped maintenance	Active maintenance and updates
Feature Updates	None (with legacy bugs)	Bug fixes, new features, UX improvements see Changelog

Differences from Zensical

Aspect	Zensical	MaterialX
Audience	Technical developers Technical documentation	All markdown users Markdown notes & documentation
Language	Rust + Python	Python
Stage	Launched a few months ago, in early stages, incomplete basic features	Over a decade old, mature, stable, and rich in features
Usage	Uses the new TOML configuration format, all configurations must be rewritten from scratch in the new format	Continues to use YAML format, zero migration cost
Ecosystem	New tool built entirely from the ground up. Incompatible with the original MkDocs ecosystem and add-ons	Built on mkdocs-material 9.7.1 Seamlessly compatible with the original tech ecosystem
Extensibility	No low-level support, not open enough, no plugin support	Fully open source and extensible, with rich plugin support
Core Focus	Prioritizes customization and variety, which can lead to configuration bloat and increasing complexity	Prioritizes extreme simplicity, with smarter defaults and automation to lower usage overhead, becoming increasingly lightweight

MaterialX Update Highlights

• Added next-generation date & author plugin, see: Add document dates & authors
  • Completely resolved date & time infrastructure issues, enabling automatic date handling across the project. Manual date configuration is no longer required for any feature, including: page date display, blog post dates, blog date archives, blog list sorting, sitemap.xml (lastmod for SEO improvements), RSS feeds, recently updated section, search ranking, and more
• Added Recent Updated module, see: Add recent updates module
  • Displays recently updated documents in descending order of update time, with dynamically refreshed list items
  • Supports multiple flexible layout styles (list, detail, grid)
  • Automatically generates document summaries (no manual configuration needed)
  • Intelligently estimates reading time, supporting all languages (CJK + space-separated languages)
• Refactored the mobile TOC component for seamless NAV and TOC experience on mobile (Zensical has no TOC feature on mobile)
• Perfectly fixed the issue where swipe gestures would penetrate when the sidebar drawer was active on mobile (severely harmed UX and caused frequent misoperations, unresolved in both Zensical and Material)
• Significantly polished the UX and details on mobile devices
  • Moved the "Back to top" container to the bottom, aligning with natural interaction logic
  • Optimized the show/hide sensitivity of the "Back to top" container
  • Added indent guide lines and active link accent colors for the TOC
• Added the modern Liquid Glass theme, consistent with Zensical
• Allows setting the topbar background color in the Liquid Glass theme to support backgrounds with different color schemes, see Topbar style
• For more details, see Changelog

Quick Start

1 - Installation:

pip install mkdocs-materialx

2 - Configure materialx theme to mkdocs.yml:

theme:
  name: materialx

[!NOTE] The theme name is materialx, not material. Everything else is the same as when using material.

3 - Start a live preview server with the following command for automatic open and reload:

for MkDocs :

mkdocs serve --livereload -o

for ProperDocs :

properdocs serve -o

For detailed installation instructions, configuration options, and a demo, visit jaywhj.github.io/mkdocs-materialx

Chat Group

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