Desktop Clients

Most blog systems provide web-based interfaces. Browser text fields, though, are primitive, constrictive, and awkward to use. It's very easy to accidentally delete a post you're working on, and there are no autosave or "Are you sure you want to lose this message?" prompts.

Desktop clients are a more convenient way to blog. A desktop client is an application that runs on your desktop PC and communicates with a blogging system using a protocol called the Blogger API. Many blog systems understand the Blogger API, including Blogger, Radio UserLand, and Movable Type.

The typical desktop client features a text editing window with buttons to add images, mark sections as bold or italic, create headings, etc. Most support two commands: Post, which sends the post to your blogging system but doesn't make it appear on your blog; and Publish, which sends the post and makes it visible on your blog.

This chapter provides a quick survey of six popular blogging applications that make use of the Blogger API. While they do vary in completeness, compliance, and usability, they're all simple to install, configure, and use; you should make use of the same handful of settings and sport a range of features designed to take your blogging experience beyond that cramped browser window and into an environment better suited to writing.

The Settings

While each sports its own particular preferences, all the Blogger API-based applications hold certain API-specific settings in common, usually:

The username with which you identify yourself to your blogging system.

Password

The password associated with your username.

XML-RPC URL

The URL of your blog system's Blogger API interface (the default is often Blogger's http://plant.blogger.com/api/RPC2/). Sometimes this is broken up into Server and Path settings (e.g., Server http://plant.blogger.com, Path /api/RPC2/).

Weblog ID

Many blog systems support multiple weblogs — for example, with only one installation of Movable Type, you can publish as many different weblogs as you like. Some desktop clients understand the concept of multiple weblogs and will let you select the blog to which a particular post is to go. Others require you to hardcode the ID of a particular blog. A Blogger ID is a string, such as myblog, while Movable Type uses numerical IDs.

BlogScript

BlogScript by WebEntourage (http://www.webentourage.com) is a free AppleScript script for Mac OS X that simply posts the contents of the clipboard to a weblog via a single menu selection. The obvious advantage is the ability to write in any environment you choose, by copying the text you wish to blog and activating BlogScript when you're ready to post

Given its focus on simply being a copy-to-blog function, BlogScript is understandably rather sparse. The only additional feature it offers is the option to ping weblogs.com. You can copy and modify the AppleScript to manage multiple accounts and weblogs.

Installation is a snap; simply drop the script into your Scripts folder, and it'll be available from your toolbar Script menu. The only prerequisite is Script menu for OS X 10.1, available for free download at http://www.apple.com/applescript/macosx/script_menu/.

BlogApp

Also from WebEntourage is BlogApp, a $6 shareware Mac OS X application that offers a rudimentary drag-and-drop text editor with bold, italic, and hyperlink buttons, as-you-type spell-checking, the ability to maintain multiple weblogs and weblog entries, and template maintenance functions: Store Post, Edit Last Post, Edit or Delete Recent Post, Edit Main Template, and Edit Archive Template.

BlogApp requires Mac OS X, Version 10.1.2 or higher. Downloadable as a compressed disk image, installation is just a matter of decompressing and mounting the image and copying the application to your Applications folder.

blogBuddy

blogBuddy (http://blogbuddy.sourceforge.net) is the Windows (95/NT/ME/2000/XP) equivalent of BlogApp, providing a basic text editor with bold, italic, underline, and hyperlink buttons (see Figure 2-5), web service-based spell checking (meaning you don't need to install a big dictionary), support for multiple weblogs (but not multiple accounts), and the ability to edit previous posts and main and archive templates.

blogBuddy is open source software, distributed under the GNU Public License, downloadable as both a self-installing executable and a ZIP archive.

w.bloggar

The most featureful desktop client is w.bloggar (http://www.wbloggar.com/) for Windows. It sports a colorized HTML editor (including tables and images) with text formatting (bold, italic, font, color, size, alignment, and so forth), an integrated preview window, and everything else one would expect to find under the File and Edit menus. Toolbar drop-down lists provide instant access to previous posts and main and archive templates. Figure 2-6 shows w.bloggar in action.

w.bloggar supports not only multiple weblogs associated with a particular account, but multiple accounts across weblog systems and services; simply choose Select Account and you're posting elsewhere. And w.blogger allows you to post a particular weblog entry to multiple weblogs simultaneously — associated with a single account, mind you.

w.blogger is freeware, downloadable as a self-extracting installer. It requires Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or newer.

Radio UserLand

Radio UserLand can be used to post to another blog system (e.g., Movable Type or Blogger). The experimental Manila-Blogger Bridge Tool lets you mirror Radio UserLand blog posts via the Blogger API. Detailed instructions are available from http://radio.userland.com/manilaBloggerBridgeTool/.

shows the configuration screen for the Manila-Blogger Bridge. As you can see, it takes the same parameters as the other tools.