A simple InfoPath blog editor for .Text - SimpleBlogger

About

SimpleBlogger is an InfoPath based blog client utilizing the simpleblogservice API provided by .Text. Main functionalities are:

  • view current posts;
  • edit existing posts;
  • create new posts;
  • view comments.

 

Feature highlights

In fact, those mostly are benefits provided by InfoPath. SimpleBlogger does very little.

  • Standard editing features found in most Microsoft Office products, but not in most existing blog clients, such as: background speller checker, format painter, undo/redo, insert/draw table, line spacing, etc.
  • Full offline support: imagine writing your blogs on your flight!
  • XHTML compatible: the post content generated by designer are in XHTML.

 

System requirements

[Update 07/27/2004] - Office 2003 SP1 is released.

[Update 07/30/2004] - If you have problem with SP1 install and you had SP1 Preview installed previously, see whether this InfoPath team blog entry could be any help.

 

Intended users

.Text bloggers.

[Update 05/26/2005] - Community Server users, look here.

 

Note: if your blog server is a custom build of .Text, SimpleBlogger may or may not work for you, depending on whether the following assumptions are broken:

Assumption made Result if broken
RSS feed URL = blog URL + "/rss.aspx" unable to view/edit existing posts
SimpleBlogService URL = blog URL + "/services/simpleblogservice.asmx" unable to update existing or publish new posts
SimpleBlogService web service is working as expected and there are no modifications to the APIs same as above
/rss/channel/item/wfw:comment node contains the post entry id unable to edit existing posts
/rss/channel/item/wfw:commentRss node points to the post comments RSS feed unable to view comments

 

Screenshot

Click on the picture to view in full size.

SimpleBlogger screenshot

 

Installation

Download the SimpleBlogger.msi and run it. If you installed SimpleBlogger before, please uninstall it first.

 

Revision history

 

 

Usage

Open the InfoPath form template from your install location(default: %ProgramFiles%\InfoPath Form Templates\SimpleBlogger.xsn).

Hint: the above is only necessary if you don't have a saved form file (.xml) for your blog. You can always save data for your blogs in a form file and open the form file directly later. This is also how you can do offline blogging.

 

Support

This is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of this tool is subject to the terms specified in the Terms of Use.

 

Known issues/Limitations

1) General blogging related functionalities

Symptom: a) when posting a new entry, you can not specify advanced options that are available for the .Text Web Admin page; b) for existing posts, categories information is not shown, thus can't be modified.

Cause: SimpleBlogger relies on the simpleblogservice web service API provided by .Text. It can not do anything more than what simpleblogservice web service can do.

Workaround: None

Status: None until simpleblogservice implements those functionalities or another SOAP based web service is provided.

 

2) Posts created or modified in other blog client looks weird in SimpleBlogger

Symptom: this may happen when the html source of the post contains mangled html tag like <A><B></A></B>

Cause: SimpleBlogger performs several simple steps to fix up bad HTML code to make them XHTML compatible. The emphasis here is "compatible", not "effective".

Workaround: None

Status: None. Converting HTML to XHTML is too complicate a job for SimpleBlogger to handle it well. As long as you stick to SimpleBlogger, which always generates XHTML compatible post content, this should not be a big concern.

 

3) Inserted pictures are not shown on the web page

Symptom: Pictures inserted using InfoPath built-in "Insert Picture" feature will show up correctly in SimpleBlogger, but not on the web page.

Cause: By design, InfoPath inserts the actual picture in the xml data by encoding it as a base64 string.

Workaround: In source edit mode, locate and modify the "img" tag created by InfoPath or simply insert the by yourself like this <img src="https://some.website.com/somepicture.jpg" />

Status: I already tried really hard to make this easier but failed. I will try something new later. In the mean time, I would really appreciate if someone discover a way to get the insertion point of the InfoPath Rich text control or text box and share that with me.

 

4) Unable to paste into post content in design mode

Symptom: this may happen if copying from source external to InfoPath, e.g., a web page.

Cause: investigating

Workaround: Paste into Notepad first.

Status: investigating

 

5) Font size shown in the web page may not be the same as shown in the design mode of SimpleBlogger

Symptom: this most likely happens with text inside tables.

Cause: investigating

Workaround: it seems like setting the font size 1 point higher or lower than current font size resolves the problem. Hint: you can use CTRL-] or CTRL-[ shortcut key to increase or decrease font size by 1 point.

Status: investigating

 

That's all I know of. There definitely are more. Please let me know if you find issues with SimpleBlogger, I'd be happy to investigate as long as I have time.

 

Finally, as always, enjoy blogging!