There’s a lot of noise in the news sites (Slashdot.org, News.com and Neowin.net) about the Monday release of Konfabulator for Windows. But to be honest they just make me think that journalists today no longer care to be through and accurate and will chew in everything that a PR department will send them. I do not personally rant about those kind of things, but this one got me going. Especially one thing Mr Alro said which is cited in about all of the sources:
‘When you have a great idea, you want more than 2 percent of the global market to have access to it.’
That’s just utter gibberish!
Unless you lived in a glass castle for the last 6 years or never been a part of the desktop customization community you know that there already is a pretty stiff competition in that area on Windows. He sounds as if some Macintosh saviours bring the desktop customization into the abandoned wasteland of Windows.
Hellooo! I have a news for you! DesktopX is at least a few years older than Konfabulator and it has always been a Windows application. And it just began from that. There are multiple desktop customizing apps epart from that, Kapsule and AveDesk to mention just a few of them.
Unfortunately this is not news for Mr Arlo Rose he is pretty aware of it as I’ve been reading his rhetoric after Apple anounced Dashboard in Tiger and that just makes me all much more astonished about this statement.
If you have used any mail program supporting HTML there is really not all that much new I can show you here. Writing blogs with Blog Navigator is a breeze. Simply select New Blog Article from the File menu from the main menu or:
from the main toolbar and Blog Navigator will create a new editing windows for you where you can edit your article in a WYSIWYG manner. Let’s take a screenshot of this article being written… Ok, the screenshot is taken, but how do you insert it into the article. Well… for the screenshot to be available for your blog readers it has to be online somewhere, available from a web server. How do you put one on a web server? You can upload it manually with an FTP client or… let BlogNavigator do it for you.
Blog navigator allows you to add picture already available online by clicking the hand pointed tool button on the right of the lower toolbar. It will then ask you for an address and will make use of it. But! The real time saver is the button pointed at in the middle of the top toolbar. You can configure your FTP settings once and let Blog Navigator do the tedious job of uploading pictures for you. So I’ll click the button now… since it’s the first time I’m using it and i did not configure that option in the previous article, Blog Navigator informed me that I need to do it now. I clicked OK on the message box and configured it as specified in the table.
The first four fields are pretty self explanatory, you need to specify the address of the server and the port it’s using for for the FTP protocol. The username and the password are needed for the server to let you in. The “folder on the FTP server” you specify is the folder you want your file to be uploaded into. This folder needs to be available online through a web server and that’s what you specify in the last field – it’s the URL that represents the folder for browsers.
Let’s say I configured it like shown on my screenshot. If I’ll choose to upload a file from say… C:\BlogNavigator.gif – that file will be uploaded to the server ftp.skinstudio.net and will be put in the /blog_bin/bn/ folder on that server. After that I know (since I specified that in the last field) that it will be available as Link .
Once the account is configured, and you will only have to do it once, you get the very dialog that allows you to upload the file:
The OK button will stay disabled as long as an existing file will not be chosen. You can enter the name directly or click on the Browse button and select the image you wish to upload. And we’re required to choose from between the three options.
The first one is the one I use to upload thumbnails I enter into this article. Just as it says in the dialog – it uploads the image and uts it in the article like you would paste an image into a Word document.
The second option I use for images that you get after you click on my thumbnails. I just make sure the thumbnail is selected before pressing the “Upload file” tool button in the article editor.
The third option has absolutely no effect on the article and simply puts a file on a server without doung anything else afterwards.
The editor features most of the elements you may need in your blog.
You can insert and edit links with “Link” option availavle in the “Insert” menu as well as from the toolbar. The “table” menu in the editor also allows you to insert and edit tables. and so on… most things can be done in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) way. But for the most advanced options you may want to edit the code directly and for that you have the “Code” tab. If you want to make sure how will your code look and behave in Internet Explorer then the “Preview” tab is there for you.
Most of the WYSIWYG editing options is available from the lower toolbar also most of them are available with a handful of shortcuts. You will find the most important ones here.
Depending on the service you use for your blog the top pane fields may differ in number or flexibility. Blogger 1.0 does not allow for title. Only JoeUser offers a link, subtitle and subcategory in addition to regular category. Not all blogging services support categories at all. But that’s not your problem really. Blog Navigator knows those things and will only provide you with the fields the service allows you to specify.
I’m done! I want them to read it!
Now after the article is written here come the 3 important buttons:
You’ve got that very important message for the world you want them to read it. And here come the three, probably the most important, buttons in the editor:
post – put the article on the blog server but do not make it available to everyone but just me. It’s a hidden article that will become visile once you publish it
publish – put the article on the blog server and make it available to for everyone. Alternatively update the article and if not available to the general public, make it available. Not for every service it’s possible to hide the article back so make sure the published article is ready for the general audience.
postpone – keep the current version locally. If an article was never uploaded the article is just local. if however it was already published, do not change it on the server, but keep the changes on user’s computer for later update of the online version.
That’s it. That’s all you need to know to use Blog Navigator as your publishing tool and even that is pretty detailed since in most cases you will not even need the file uploading.
Stardock Blog Navigator Professional offers a host of keyboard accelerators while you edit your articles. Here you have a short summary of the most important keystrokes used by the article editor.
Formatting
Description (Command)
Key
Toggle bold formatting
CtrL+B
Toggle italic formatting
CtrL+I
Toggle underlining
CtrL+U
Increase paragraph indent
CtrL+T
Decrease paragraph indent
CtrL+SHIFT+T
Posting and file operations
Description
Key
Save the edited article into a locally stored file
CtrL+S
Post the edited article to online blog (make it visible for the user butnot to the general public)
ALT+S
Publish the edited article to online blog (make it visible for the general public)
CtrL+SHIFT+S
Upload a file/image to an associated FTP account for use in the edited article
ALT+U
Insert Image
CtrL+SHIFT+I
Insert Horizontal line at the end of the edited article
CtrL+SHIFT+H
Print edited article
CtrL+P
Movement
Description
Key
Move one character to the right. If an absolutely positioned element is selected, nudge the element one pixel to the right.
RIGHT ARROW
Move one character to the left. If an absolutely positioned element is selected, nudge the element one pixel to the left.
LEFT ARROW
Move down one line. If an absolutely positioned element is selected, nudge the element down one pixel.
DOWN ARROW
Move up one line. If an absolutely positioned element is selected, nudge the element up one pixel.
UP ARROW
Move right one word
CtrL+RIGHT ARROW
Move left one word
CtrL+LEFT ARROW
Move to the end of the current line
END
Move to the start of the current line
HOME
Move down one paragraph
CtrL+DOWN ARROW
Move up one paragraph
CtrL+UP ARROW
Move down one page
PAGE DOWN
Move up one page
PAGE UP
Move to the beginning of the document
CtrL+HOME
Move to the end of the document
CtrL+END
Cycle selection through block-level elements within the control
TAB
Reverse-cycle selection through block-level elements within the control
SHIFT+TAB
Selection
Description (Command)
Key
Extend the selection one character to the right
SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW
Extend the selection one character to the left
SHIFT+LEFT ARROW
Extend the selection right one word
CtrL+SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW
Extend the selection left one word
CtrL+SHIFT+LEFT ARROW
Extend the selection up one line
SHIFT+UP ARROW
Extend the selection down one line
SHIFT+DOWN ARROW
Extend the selection to the end of the current line
SHIFT+END
Extend the selection to the start of the current line
SHIFT+HOME
Extend the selection down one page
SHIFT+PAGE DOWN
Extend the selection up one page
SHIFT+PAGE UP
Extend the selection to the end of the document
CtrL+SHIFT+END
Extend the selection to the beginning of the document
CtrL+SHIFT+HOME
Select all elements in the document
CtrL+A
Editing
Description (Command)
Key
Delete the selection or, if there is no selection, the character to the left of the insertion point
BACKSPACE
Delete all of a word to the left of the insertion pointer, not including the space before
CtrL+BACKSPACE
Copy the selection to the Clipboard
CtrL+C
Paste the contents of the Clipboard to the current location
CtrL+V
Cut the selection to the Clipboard
CtrL+X
Delete the selection without placing it on the Clipboard
DELETE
Toggle between inserting and overwriting text
INSERT
Undo the most recent formatting commands
CtrL+Z
Re-do the most recently undone commands
CtrL+Y
Find text
CtrL+F
Display the Hyperlink dialog box if the insertion point is within an <a> element
CtrL+L
Toggle absolute positioning for the selected element
CtrL+K
absolute positioning
A CSS feature that allows elements in a Web page to be positioned using style attributes that function like x and y coordinates. Using CSS styles, absolutely positioned elements also support a z-index that allows them to appear in front of or behind other elements on the page. Absolute positioning is a DHTML feature implemented through various style attributes.
Partially copyright ? 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
First of all let me express how excited I am about the release of Blog Navigator. I think we did a good job on it and I am trully amazed at our approach to its release.
Let me explain why. Mind that Stardock kept a guy :) ) on a payroll for a better part of a year to do this.
We’ve been discussing the Blog Navigator release yesterday and Brad actually decided to remove ALL the RSS related limitations from the free edition of Blog Navigator! What does that mean? It means there is no longer a limit of a single instance of Basket, Article Monitor and Web Search (Internet Article Monitor) in the free version! You get everything that makes it a great RSS reader and it’s NOT a trial or a shareware that will nag you in any way, neither you are limited at how you use it. You can use it at home, and you can use it at work (I would not however recommend taking it to the beach – notebooks don’t like the sand involved)!
Thank you Stardock!
If you’re into RSS/feeds/syndication and already have a reader – Blog Navigator comes with a handfull of importing filters – it’s very likely that you will be able to move all your feeds within a minute or even have them autodetected and done automatically. So if you want to be sure you never miss an article on your favorite sites, want to monitor for a specific topic or any set of them or just need a cool web browser that will get some more articles in the background for you while you read another one – give it a whirl, share it with a friend, tell a co-worker they can speed up and enrich their daily lecture.
We really tried to make it the best possible syndication experience out there – now you can see if we succeeded. Tell us if you like it. We will gladly hear what we can do to make it better. I would like to thank all beta testers withough which suggestions it would not be what it is now – stressing the enormous part of Brad Wardell and Kris Kwilas in shaping the product and Randy Cox whose suggestions and patience in testing the consecutive versions of betas went beyond all limits.
For the best possible experience read my series of articles on Blog Navigator features and how to make the best use of it
Reading blogs is one thing, and alot of programs allows you to do that with better or worse results. What makes Blog Navigator unique is among other features (like search article monitors, baskets and search blogs) its ability to both read and write blogs.
Let’s setup Blog Navigator Professional to use an account on JoeUser.
There’s not much to show really… I’m not sure it could actually be easier. Let me add my JoeUser account to Blog navigator as a first sample:
Now I have the regular dialog like adding any other feed or folder type where you enter it’s name and various properties. The most insteresing tab that defines my account access info is the “Account” tab.
I entered my username and the password and selected JoeUser.com from the “Blog Service” combobox. If you do not have an account on a service you want to use, simply click the “Create your blog own here” link below the combo and Blog Navigator will take you to the blogging service site where you will be able to create one.
Now I press the OK button and… that’s it!
Since I had articles on that account already Blog Navigator retrieved the last 20 posts and now allows me to edit them, delete and add new articles.
Blog Navigator comes with a handful of predefined list of popular blog services you may select from the list where i selecvted JoeUser.com in my sample. Alternatively you can setup your own custom blog service. All you need to know (or ask the admin of your site for) is the URL (address) of the so called “RPC-XML end point”. If you do not know what to ask – just point your blog service admin ad this article and he/she will surely know what to give you.
Still most probably it will be your own service setup on your own server – in that case consult the documentation of the web application to obtain the entry point to the XML-RPC API and the API type the application supports.
Let’s setup my Joeuser account the harder way…
I select the “Custom…” blog service from the combo box, which happens to be the defaulty one… but I digress…
I’ve read in the site documentation… well actually I helped designed it, but I digress again … that the api the web site supports is the JoeUser.com API (which else!) so I select it from the combo box and…
enter the XML-RPC end point I obtained from my admin – Pat. (actually we’ve came up with that address while designing the JoeUser.com XML-RPC API, but let’s pretend I had to go through the pain of asking Pat for it :) ).
Well…
actually now I’m left with two Blogging accounts pointing to one account in a service – not very practical… but hey! It’s possible and Blog Navigator can handle it just fine, so why not.
Actually I can delete the other one – deleting an account does not delete it on server. That’s actually different than deleting your posts – Blog Navigator will also delete them on server. It will however inform you and make sure you are aware of the consequences and that this is what you really want to do.
In the next part I’ll show you how to write an article to our newly added account.
A few days back I found that nice Visual Style. Really easy on eyes – perfect for coding – titlebar not to high – not too many distractions. So i ran it through Skinstudio, added a few mods to make it the nice place to look and shown it to Pas (Snidely Whiplash). He’s made a couple of mods himself and I wanted to have them in my skin. But my skin was USF (yes you can apply USF skins to WindowBlinds with Skinstudio) and his was WindowBlinds. But the image format is the same, so i could just copy it and change the settings in my skin. But how would i do that without wasting an hour chasing all the attributes that needs to be changed? So i came up with 2 easy features to do that.
Extract from the change log:
– added possibility to copy and paste images between skins! Just select image attribute in the section view and right click it and press copy. Now right click the image attribute in the other skin and select Paste. Skinstudio will actually copy the image from one skin to another!
– made it possible to copy images from explorer and paste it to Skinstudio. Just select the image file in the explorer and copy it with Ctrl+C or any other method Explorer supports, then in skinstudio select the target attribute in the list, right click it and select pause from the popup menu – Skinstudio will ask you what do you want to do with the image if the file was actually an image
It builds on top of another feature i’ve added recently – as for now you may just copy bitmap from your favorite image program – take Photoshop for example and just paste it into Skinstudio in the form of bitmap. based on the attribute or control you have currently selected (image attribute must be currently selected) skinstudio will do all the boring work for you.
Ctrl+C , Ctrl+V it’s as easy as that. Skinstudio asks you an easy question then and takes care of all the layout changes you may ever need.
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