My Messy Workbench: Reviews

Some good reasons for using phpBB as your Movable Type comment engine.

2004-02-03T23:08:02-08:00

I've integrated my phpBB forum installation to run comments on my Movable Type blogs. ((Here's how.) There are several very good reasons for doing so.

I already had phpBB installed and running on my site. phpBB provides all the anti-spam protection MTBlacklist does, and more. One user registration for blogs and forums. Registered users gain additional functionality. phpBB provides email notification when new comments are posted to a topic (How can I do that?) I've modified phpBB so registered users can be notified whenever a new message is posted on one of my blogs. (How can I do that?) phpBB provides user profiles for registered users who can set their own level of security--send messages privately between members while keeping your email address secure. Now, all that said, I've still got some more work to do. The current integration level of the two programs remains somewhat awkward. I'm working on ways to, for example, have the email notification direct users directly to the blog individual archive. Currently, the email provides a link to the phpBB forum ghost-topic. More integration coming in the future.

Taking MT Editors Offline

2004-01-24T14:09:57-08:00

I've already talked about offline editing in a general way in the article Editing your blogs offline -- not ready for primetime. At this writing, I manage a Movable Type installation (or try to) comprised of 3 full blogs and a pair of sideblogs. Four of these are (or will be) fairly active and in a single writing session I may post to all four. I'm writing this entry on my laptop which, as is often the case, is presently not connected to the internet. I write a lot; I write in several blogs; so far, I'm the only author on my blogs; I write away from the web. This set of circumstances presents a number of feature requirements which the currently available MT editing tools generally fulfill poorly, if at all. I'm going to talk about offline blogging with three popular and generally well-designed desktop editors for Movable Type blogs: Zempt 0.3, SharpMT 2.1 and w.Bloggar 3.03. First, I'll identify some basic requirements for editing mulitiple blogs offline, and how each of the editors fails or succeeds to meet those requirements. Then I'll discuss additional offlining pros and cons for each editor.

General Unmet Needs for Offline Blogging Early Onset Blogheimers An offline editor, particularly when it's offline, should remember a few things about the blog accounts it has been set up to edit: The blog accounts to which the user is subscribedThe blog IDs for each of those accountsThe list of categories for each blog IDA list of posted entries including the text, blog ID and categories for each entry It's best if settings for automatically updating/downloading this data were available to the user, in addition to the ability to manually update/download as desired. It should be obvious that the user should be able to set the current editing environment to any state while offline. I often edit posted entries when online. Currently, this kind of activity is unsupported. SharpMT2.1: Minimal compliance. Allows only one blog accountCan change blog IDs offline, but attempts to connect generate errorsDoes not update category list when blog ID changesEntry list maintained offline, but can only open an entry for editing when online; Option: open entries for editing when online in multi-edit environment--edit offline later. But that's extremely awkward. Zempt0.3: Partial compliance. Allows multiple acccounts -- I only have one account so I can't test what happens if I change accounts offline.I can select the blog IDWhen blog ID changed, shows current list of categoriesOnline only: List of entries must be downloaded on demand. w.Bloggar3.02 Minimal compliance. Allows multiple acccounts -- I only have one account so I can't test what happens if I change accounts offline.Can select blog ID, but generates a host connect error.Category list blanked when blog ID changed offlineOnline only: List of entries must be downloaded on demand. Little Orphaned Entry All my entries become orphans the moment I save them. If I save a draft, or an entry I've downloaded for editing, it won't remember what blog it should be posted to when I open it up later. If, during an offline session, I create five drafts for four different blogs, I have to set the blog (and category) individually before posting. An entry's blog account, blog ID and category settings should be stored with the entry. SharpMT2.1: Fails to comply. Due to its multi-document editing environment, SharpMT2.1 can be particularly nightmarish in terms of remembering which entry goes where. Think of having 10 documents open waiting to be posted to 3 different blogs. Ouch! This shortcoming renders the otherwise useful Batch Posting nearly useless--or dangerous given the potential for inadvertently posting entries to the wrong blogs and categories en masse. Zempt0.3: Fails to comply. w.Bloggar3.02 Fails to comply. I'm a Spoolin' Fool When you create new emails offline and click Send the email is queued (spooled) in an outbox and automatically delivered by a background process the next time you go online. I think a good offline blogging editor should apply this model as well. A well thought out spooler would make offline editing relatively straight forward. As it stands, I'm required to manage the multiple draft entries I draft while online, while somehow keeping these separated from entries already posted to the blogs. Implementing a spooler would almost certainly require the developer to solve the other unfulfilled feature requirements described in this review. Additionally, other features of email clients and newsreaders would be useful as well. For example, a set of default folders for managing entries would be: Drafts for unposted draft entries; Outbox for queueing drafts and edited posts to be published; Published for storing the published entries. An option to synchronise the Published folder much like a newsgroup would be useful, and not just for multiple-author blogs but for single-author blogs as well--I use a variety of editors and methods for creating entries on my blogs. SharpMT2.1: Fails to comply. Zempt0.3: Fails to comply. w.Bloggar3.02 Fails to comply. Daft Drafts My drafts can't remember if they've been posted or not. Frankly, I can't either. Which drafts in this folder should I open for posting? Have I posted the changes made to this file yet? A properly implemented spooler would correct this deficiency. SharpMT2.1: Full compliance, sorta. On the edit tab of every open document is a graphic describing the current state: draft; posted draft; downloaded post. It would be even better if the graphic displayed whether the document had changed since opened/posted. Also, don't edit a draft that has been posted already because posting it will create a new post rather than replacing the originally posted entry with the edited contents. SharpMT's multi-document editing provides some additional relief, if drafts created offline are left open. However, in SharpMT an entry downloaded for editing can't be saved to disk (!!), which makes editing offline risky and prone to data-loss. The longer you're offline, the more likely a software or system crash will destroy your edits. Zempt0.3: Fails to comply. w.Bloggar3.02 Fails to comply. Comments on the editors. SharpMT 2.1 Pros This editor is oh-so-close to being a very useful offline editor for multiple blogging. It is feature rich, has professional look and feel, is fairly well laid out, and the powerful multi-document editing UI is unique among desktop editors for Movable Type. It's recently been outfitted with a nifty new spellchecker too. The URL insertion feature is the most brilliant I've seen in any piece of software. SharpMT maintains a list of entries in a nifty list you can pin up on the window. Very nice. Cons Aside from the feature shortcomings listed above, SharpMT frustratingly lacks some basic editing features. Font and paragraph editing tools supported by the other editors are missing altogether. Also, a few of its UI elements could be more ergonomically friendly. Undo only undoes the most recent action, Search is gibbled--it finds the text but doesn't reorient the edit window to display it, Search and Replace is not implemented. the user should be able to both view and change the current blog without having to open a dialog window--in SharpMT, the current blog is displayed on the right side of the status bar, out of sight and unmodifiableThe Edit/Preview/Post Options tabs appear in the lower left hand corner of the window, quite distant from all other tool and navigation buttons. Finally, I have experienced intermittent and inexplicable problems when posting. For example, when entries include potential trackback urls to ping, the ping is often not sent. Zempt 0.3 Pros Zempt is my backup offline choice to SharpMT. (I'm editing this in Zempt.) I can select the blog and categories I want when offline, so if I'm going to create just one draft, Zempt is the way to go. As with the other editors, I can configure what fields to display for editing. However, Zempt remembers how I've configured the fields for each blog. For example, I only use the Keywords field for my Media Things sideblog. So if I select the Media Things blog, there it is. Cons Zempt only downloads blog headers on demand, which makes editing my blog entries somewhat of a pain, even when online, and also makes linking to other blog entries when offline something of a memory game. (What was the ID of that entry, anyway?) w.Bloggar 3.03 I don't often use w.Bloggar. It's lack of full MT entry field support is an app killer. But, to be honest, I don't like it's look and feel in ways which I'm not able to describe. It just doesn't look or feel right. So my opinions and observations will lack not only objectivity but experience. Pros I think most people will find its layout quite usable and ergonomic. In addition to image upload, there is also a file upload button. The FTP settings can be unique for each blog. And its support of character styles, fonts and paragraph formatting tools is superior to the other editors. Cons w.Bloggar is designed as an editor for multiple blogging platforms. It does not support the the MT fields EntryMore, EntryExcerpt or EntryKeywords. w.Bloggar, like Zempt, only downloads blog headers on demand, you can't view them when offline. The Import Text File feature is poorly named, as it in fact also opens a draft post. On the other hand, by default, draft posts are saved to a predefined file--which flirts with the possibility of accidental data overwriting. Summary So true offline blogging is a ways off yet. Substantial feature improvements are required to allow bloggers to work offline with the relative ease of posting email, or interacting with newsgroups. These three editors are useful offline tools, though awkward and limited, particularly when applied to multiple blogs. You can do it, but it ain't any fun. However, implementing the spooler functionality mentioned above in any of these clients would force it to deal with most of the issues hindering offline blogging. Here's hoping. Now I'm heading off to research posting blog entries via email

SharpMT 2.1 (Beta 1)

2004-01-03T02:30:27-08:00

This latest interim-release of SharpMT provides some great new features.

Insert an image link for uploaded images. This works much like the WinAmp and MediaPlayer plugin for making a "Listening to:" string. Previously, the user had to upload the image then manually type in a link to the uploaded image (If you could remember the name that long! ;)) This is an excellent upgrade, though one wonders why it wasn't in an earlier release. That said, and being a greedy bastard, it would be nice to see the "upload" extended to a more powerful "insert" allowing the user to type in a URL and (here comes the bastard part) better yet, to browse a server via FTP. I've got nearly 1500 images already on my server. I don't need to be duplicating those because it's easier to find them on my hard drive. Custom Tags Probably a nice feature for lots of folks. I type fast enought that I don't often remember to use CTRL key combos for inline text editing creation. I doubt I'll ever use this one. Updated Interface -- this is by far the best new feature. It allows a fair bit of user-configurability for the edit space. The Title, Category and Excerpt fields can be minimised to maximise screen real-estate. There's also a resize bar separating the Body and Extended fields which can be used to set the proportion of editing space for each field. You can reduce the size of either edit box to 0 lines, thereby maximising the space available to the other. As a text editor, the inflexibility of SharpMT was one of its weakest areas, and this new UI is a vast improvement, putting it in tight competition with Zempt's flexibility. There are some bugs to work out. For example: When the Excerpt field is maximised, pull the resize bar down until the Extended Entry edit box disappears. Now Minimize the Excerpt field. Notice that the Extended Entry box reappears. That's not so bad, given that the box reappears because the resize bar doesn't move. However it would be better if the resize bar recognised the intent of the user to create more screen real-estate and therefore re-aligned itself to keep the Extended box from reappearing. The real bug occurs, though, after the user drags the resize bar down to minimise the Extended Entry. If the user chooses to Restore the excerpt at this time, the resize bar still does not re-align itself with the new Excerpt configuration. However, now the resize bar is in limbo land: it cannot be selected at all. The user must once again minimize the Excerpt field, move the resize bar out of the way, then Restore the excerpt field. I'm sure Randy will have that fixed in the next Beta release. New Draft-Level Default -- If you have not selected "Use Server Time" as the default "Authored On" time, then SharpMT will stamp the "Authored On" time of any newly created drafts with the time of creation. This is an improvement for offline blogging as the creation time of a draft is more often than not a closer approximation of its completion than the next time I'm able to log onto the net and publish it. It'll keep your blog from looking like you wrote 300 pages of text in a couple minutes anyway. I'm not being greedy, I think, when I say what I'd really like to see here is something more like an email outbox. That is, I would like to leave my "Post Status" set to Publish. If I'm offline when I click "Post to Server", then SharpMT would stamp the "Authored On" time as the post time. The post would then be saved to the Outbox where it will be cued for batch posting the next time I log on. Links Window It's nice to add the date/time stamp an entry was posted to the details box. I hardly ever look there though. I'd love to be able to filter the links based on category though, as in MT. Spell Checking -- Randy's lobbying for the bucks to include one of these. I never use spell checkers in web editors. Mi spelings gud enuf allready ayund thuh spel chequers ar uzualy awkwerd oar completally uzer-vengfull cuz thay kumplain aboot stooped theengs. Then again, if $200 gets Randy a good one, perhaps I'll pitch in. There's one feature I really hope Randy considers for the next ujpgrade: Save the blog state along with the entry. Currently, SharpMT saves the category IDs, but not the Blog ID. This gets really confusing for bloggers who post to multiple blogs while working offline for extended periods. (Like when bicycling across China, though it was often tougher getting a connection in Australia) It would also make batch uploading of open drafts a much safer operation. I don't dare batch upload presently because I'm always afraid I'll have one errant blog entry open. Even without that, the editing UI upgrade alone makes this Beta worth installing. p.

Editing your blogs offline -- not ready for primetime.

2003-12-23T17:39:51-08:00

I've been looking for a good offline editor for posting entries to my Movable Type blogs. There are several exceptional freeware and donationware editing clients available for MT, and a few are useful when disconnected from the internet, so long as only one blog is to be edited. SharpMT, Zempt and w.Bloggar, in particular, make for serviceable single-blog offline editors. However, no editor provides more than the most rudimentary functionality and features called for in an offline environment. And bloggers who publish more than one weblog are in a particularly cumbersome bind.

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Got some category stuff up.

2003-12-16T01:31:22-08:00

here. I'll knock off after propagating that code throughout the templates. That oughtta take, oh, another 5 hours! Presently listening to:Pigs (Three Different Ones) - Pink Floyd - Animals (11:28)/" target="_blank">/" target="_blank">" hspace="4" align="right" border="0"> ]]>