The site was set up mainly for accounting users with the progress of development and guide for usage of Skinstudio and IconDeveloper. Brought to you by Adam Najmanowicz - the lead developer of SkinStudio & IconDeveloper.
Blogging with Blog Navigator Proffesional - writing articles with images
Published on October 21, 2004 By Adam Najmanowicz In

The fourth part of the article already available here...

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.

FTP server configuration

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 http://www.skinstudio.net/blog_bin/bn/BlogNavigator.gif .

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.

Have fun, and

Stay tuned for more soon!


Comments (Page 1)
2 Pages1 2 
on Oct 22, 2004
Hi Adam. I think 3 things would make Blog Navigator better. If there was a Blog Navigator wizard for a how to use and add blogs it would bebetter. I think the UI is scarey to some people or intimidating. If there was a way to guide people within Blog Navigator to add feeds maybe it would help.

The other 2 are more simple. I would like a way to organize my KEEP SAFE better. I can't seem to get that right or seem to organize it. Maybe if there was a wizard on that or a part of Blog Navigator that allowed you to organize just thatit would be cool. To me, KEEP SAFEi s the biggest feature. With the filters already in Blog Navigator you have a powerful keep sake of internet files. VERY IMPORTANT for research, data gathering, sharing, work an fun. If your a blogger it makes tings easier. If this featue also kept creation date, aurthor name and stuff you could better blog about it or inert it into a blog you were writing.

So I thinkthe Keep saf feature should be expanded upon or made easier to use. I guessI can getinto more detail if you want.

Finally, the right click function within the browser area of the blog reader. since it uses Internet Explorer engine, I would like to be able to use the right click and get to short cuts. right now I can not 'pluck' a website from the browser. and sometimes even adding it to favoites doesn't work. If I can use those right click short cuts that woul be great. To expand on this,if links shortut canbe added into a blog navagator toobar, sort of speak, where you can add favorite links to, it would make browsing in it easier. It would be sort of like a mini Internet Explorer. Googlesearh, access to my favorites and some addable link buttons would kep me insie of Blog Navigator longer to blog about stuff.


Hey, don't get me wrong, the Keep Safe, the web search baskets (and it ability to gather non-rss feed sites info), Joe User intergration and sort search is the main saving grace and is more than enough to use as a RSS feed gathererand blogging tool, but add those features above and your challenging Google. Now you can browse, search, gather RSS feeds, blog about it, save it, reaseach it, sort it, look for it and share it. Make no mistake, Bog Navigator is the hidden gem on the net.


PS
add a simple user iterface and a pro user interface switch mechinizm and you get more people. you know, like if I am a novice I can hav this, but if I know what I am doing, then use the pro user interface.... maybe, not sure about that one, but it could help.
on Oct 22, 2004
oh and I like that FTP stuff about uploading theimage to your own server.

now I have to check out blog pro again and see what else is in there. I am still having trouble setting up an blog account in the pogram

on Oct 28, 2004
Man!!! I can use this thing to update articles on my own website (not just my web logs)!!! I am going to try to intergrate this with MSAccess so I can have my website published without all the hassle of looking at code. All I have to do is upload it from my computer. This will make it easier for me to keep sites updated as well as my blogs.

YEAH!!!!

(I think that is what Dreamweaver does, but why buy a program when you can make one using VB, C++ and Access or MySQL? )
on Oct 28, 2004
As to your last comment, I guess I could help a bit in making it easier to upload edited pages with one click or open pages via ftp. I'll think about how to integrate it nicely with the gui.
on Oct 28, 2004
trully valuable suggestions. Thanks! I'll need to ponder on it for a while, though I think I can come up with something usefull. as for wizzards... I am not big on wizards, but i guess i could have a couple of wizard like walkthroughs embedded in a wizard like dialogs. I don't want make BN too memory intensive, and this could help things.
on Nov 06, 2004
Adam, you are from Poland ?
on Nov 06, 2004
I live in Poland, yes.
on Nov 20, 2004
Hey, I know I asked this before, but how do I update Blog Navigator Pro edition? Right now, I seem to not have the FTP Upload image option for some reason and I think its because I don't have the recent update for blog navigator pro. How do I get at the updates? theough Stardock Central Browser?
on Nov 20, 2004
you can get the updates by entering your registration data in Stardock Central or by visiting this page Link and entering the email you registered under.
on Dec 06, 2004
Hey, Adam, could you send me the link to the new Blog Navigator executable file? I emails sales at Stardock, but I know they are busy this week. I only have the Blog Navigaotr100 Enhanced EXE link.
Could you email it to me?
bklynblue@msn.com
on Dec 20, 2004
jo, mailed
on Dec 30, 2004
An informative and well presented series Adam, thank you. In fact as a result I looked again at blogging and decided to go ahead and buy Blog Navigator. I wonder if you could check out this thread I started at WC Link. I basically wanted to know whether or not as a Firefox user, I am by using Blog Navigator opening myself up to IE web exploits that I had through Firefox sidestepped. There must be other people out there who are equally unsure as to how Blog readers fit into the hierarchy of browsers, where their permissions are set, even if it's necessary to be thinking on this level - or is the assumption that although Blog Navigator is as I understand it IE based - there is no inherent risk of exploitation when blog reading?





on Dec 30, 2004
I have partially answered it on your blog - some more follows...

If you're using the SP2 on XP you should be OK. Blog Navigator brings all IE SP2 shields up the moment it starts. So unless you click on one of those "Yes please infect my computer with lots of malicious spyware" buttons, I would think you should be relatively safe - all the sercurity features are enabled by default - including ActiveX warnings and popup blockng. I hope you will enjoy BN as much as we do. Should you have any troubles, please mail me - adam AT stardock DOT com.

I have been looking at the Mozilla Control it's still a bit buggy. I may try to reexamine and enable BN users to make use of it with the limited feature set it offers if they prefer it for the security reasons. But to be honest I do not think that at this moment it is any safer than IE if the IE user chooses not to download ActiveX components when they prompt to be loaded.
on Dec 30, 2004
Adam - thanks very much for taking the time to reply. Yes, I have SP2 and part of the online reading I've been doing over the past couple of days researching IE exploits has, for me, re-inforced the value of installing SP2, which while not foolproof is preventing some issues.

It seems an anti-climax after pushing this thread at wincustomize for 24hrs - but all I really wanted was to understand where in the surfing hierarchy the program stood. You've pretty much confirmed what I had thought - only my knowledge is often incomplete and I find its easy to mis-interpret some, if not many, aspects of computers and surfing if I'm not careful.

I think anyone who checks out all the Blog Navigator links available here at Adam's Blog page will see the work that has gone into the program.

Cheers



on Apr 04, 2006
I want mp3 player. What will advise?
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