B l o g g e n m o z

lilili

wipke — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 07:55:07 GMT

www.zigeuner-karten.de
www.sheppotronic.de

install failed. - please help!

groovehunter — Mon, 02 Sep 2002 01:16:07 GMT

Hi! I get a success msg when installing, same when downloading, but no 'publish to weblog'-menu item (moz restarted). What did I miss?

New version 0.1.1 out

hns — Sat, 18 May 2002 15:10:10 GMT

I just uploaded a new version of the original bloggenmoz code. While it doesn't contain any functional improvements, it now comes as a Composer overlay and can be installed from the browser using XPI (cross platform install) instead of manually fiddling with jar files. It should also be easier now for other people to play around with the code. Check out the download page for details.

A new version with the most obvious missing features (editing existing items and storing the password) should follow within the next few days.

Blogger API support for Mozilla Composer, version 0.1.1

hns — Mon, 11 Mar 2002 21:43:16 GMT

I reworked my original code into an overlay to Mozilla Composer. While the functionality is still as primitive as it used to be, this allows me to package it as xpi (cross platform installer) file. If you use a recent version of Mozilla you should be able to install the package just by clicking on the link below. Alternatively, if you want to look at the code, simply right-click on download and save the file. You should be able to unpack the archive with any jar or zip utility.

install
download

How to use it

When you open up Mozilla's Composer window, you should find a menu item called "Publish to Weblog" in the File menu (it's possible that you have to restart Mozilla after installation). Activating this menu item should bring up a simple dialog window. The values you have to enter depend on which weblog tool you are using, please refer to the documentation to find out. To give it a quick try you can use the following settings:

XML-RPC-URL:	http://www.antville.org:5056/
Weblog ID:	pippi
Username:	annika
Password:	tommy

This should result in your stuff to appear on http://pippi.antville.org/.

Notes and Caveats

Currently, you can't retrieve existing postings from your weblog via Blogger API. This means that you have to save your page locally (which is actually a good idea especially for longer pieces because you get a backup copy on your local machine). In order to know whether a page is being posted for the first time or being updated, Composer will add a meta tag to the HTML head of the page the first time it's saved.

<meta name="BloggerAPIStoryID" content="22663">

The presence of this kind of meta tag will let it know whether to create a new posting or update an existing one the next time you publish. Because of this, it is important that you save the page after you published it for the first time. In the current version there is a bug where the save button remains disabled if you already saved before first publishing. When you close the window you will be promted to save, though.

Some additional caveats:

Password saving is not yet implemented, you'll have to enter your password each time you publish. Remember, it's 0.1.
The publish flag is always set to true, that means everything you write will be published immediately.

Remember that this is experimental code. Have fun!

This is good

mkeyes — Thu, 02 May 2002 20:51:08 GMT

Is there any way to pull the entire live blog page into Composer? That would be an easy way to get the content back from the server for editing without having to save a local copy. From a user perspective I see something like a context menu item that opens composer, moves in the page and maybe outlines the content areas. You could enclose each entry with a DIV tag with a unique ID to keep things straight.

I wrote the IE only Adminimizer Toolbar and I've been trying to come up with a similar solution for Mozilla. At the moment on-page editing doesn't seem like a viable option like it is in IE, so I've been looking to Composer. Your widget is looking pretty good so far!

What's next?

hns — Tue, 19 Mar 2002 13:30:40 GMT

I've finally managed to add a note about Bloggenmoz to Mozilla Bug 121135 ([RFE] [xml-rpc] Add support for the Blogger Api) so everybody subscribed to that bug gets to know about its existence.

What's next? I am now convinced that there are only a few features missing to make Bloggenmoz really usable:

Add functionality to retrieve postings from the server.
Implement better server account management, i.e. storing passwords, managing multiple accounts by name etc.

Mike Lee suggests using his code to overload the recent pages menu in composer. That's obviously a good idea, just as generally looking to integrate Bloggenmoz with Mike's work would be.

Unfortunately I won't have much time for Bloggenmoz in the next few days, so if anybody feels like giving any of the above a try, feel free to grab the code and have a go at it!

Hook it up to Radio

John — Sat, 16 Mar 2002 19:24:31 GMT

That way you have a local source for editing your posts.

Actually

hns — Wed, 13 Mar 2002 11:39:20 GMT

my code is just a quick experimental hack to see if this makes sense (from a user point of view), while MozBlog is a pretty nicely structured and well-written package.

From what I've learned Blogger support in Composer does make some sense, but it won't be the ultimate Blogging solution. It's nice to be able to post to a blog from Composer, but the fact that there is no easy way to get the posting back from the server to edit it again (you have to store it locally) somewhat limits usability IMHO. So what is needed is an easy way to get a posting back from the weblog server into Composer...

wow

nedrichards — Tue, 12 Mar 2002 22:54:56 GMT

Wow, this sounds cool. I'm sure that in supporting the API it'll allow other hosts to be used (like MozBlog) otherwise my MovableType installation will get all lonely.

:-)

Some Ideas

hns — Tue, 12 Mar 2002 12:53:34 GMT

For now I'm just using this as a sketchpad for things I've learnt and ideas where this could go.

Fetching pages to edit from somewhere else than where they naturally live is troublesome, because one has to manage content in two separate locations. This is not true if the local system manages the pages on the public server, but we don't have that in our case.
Using meta tags for storing Post-ID in the page works well, could also work for pages served dynamically from server. We could then use "Edit Page in Composer" and we'd know where to save the page to.
Integration into existing Composer publishing framework. XML-RPC could fit in simply as an additional protocol. In this case, we could simply "save to blog" using Ctrl-S, which would be nice.

Welcome to Bloggenmoz!

hns — Mon, 11 Mar 2002 12:33:40 GMT

This site was created to document my attempts to add support for the Blogger API directly to Mozilla Composer. What this means is that people should be able to post to their weblogs directly from the HTML editor that comes with Mozilla. I've started coding over the weekend and already have a functional prototype. Here's a screenshot:

(Click here if the popup script doesn't work)

You can get my current code from the download page. You'll also find installation instructions as well as some notes and caveats. Please remember that this code is experimental!

This project was inspired by Mike Lee's MozBlog, a Mozilla extension that is embedded in the browser window and allows for quick posting of smaller texts (think bookmarklet). In contrast, Blogger API support in Composer would be ideal for writing longer texts, something that is very unconvenient with browser-based solutions.

There's more to come soon - stay tuned and let me know what you think!

inspiring

earl — Mon, 11 Mar 2002 16:23:00 GMT

keep on rockin! - and i'll have a(nother) look at bringing the Blogger API to vanilla :)

About Bloggenmoz

hns — Mon, 11 Mar 2002 13:19:40 GMT

This project was created by Hannes Wallnöfer.

I have a weblog at henso.com (sorry, mostly in german). You can reach me by email at hannes at helma dot at.

The reason for the funny Bloggenmoz name is that all other combinations of the words "Blogger" and "Mozilla" seem to be occupied by someone else. I'm starting to like it though. It has something swedisch about it, like you can buy at IKEA or some such ;-)

BTW, this site is running on Antville, our kick-ass software for weblog hosting. Check it out!