In my post Testing various ways of publishing a picture with Windows Live Writer, a reader suggested I check out Flock Browser. So I downloaded Flock and am preparing this post to be published now.
What I am looking for in particular is to be able to prepare a post with pictures offline to be published to Blogger either immediately or in a future date. But the Flock User Interface is a disappointment. There is a menu bar at the top, a field for you to add in a title below that, then a toolbar comprising some formatting tool icons including "Bold", "Italic", "Strickthrough", "Cut". "Copy", "Paste", "Bullet List", "Numbered List", "Outdent", "Indent", "Link", "Unlink", and "Check Spelling". That is it. See screeshot below (see update below :
No icon for posting pictures". That is a disappointment. However, I will test the "Indent" tool" out as I have previously written about Indenting a paragraph at this post How to get Indent for your post paragraphs. However, unlike Windows Live Writer, there is no option to switch between a "WYSIWYG" mode and an EDIT HTML mode. The first link above was prepared by hardcoding the hyperlink (didn't work, it appeared as text. Had to delete and redo the link using the link icon in the toolbar), whereas the second link was prepared by using the "Link" icon in the toolbar. I want to make the link open in new tag, but there is no provision for me to switch to an EDIT HTML mode to do that.
I tried to post a screenshot of the Flog Post Editor Window by first uploading it in a blog specially created to host photos for purposes like this, copied the HTML for the screenshot, but it didn't work out. Since the hyperlink tag did not work, I expect the img tag also would not work. I will publish this post as is, then edit the post in Blogger post editor window to include the screenshot.
Here is a screenshot of the Flock Post Editor Window, added via the Blogger post editor window after publishing with Flock:
Here is the screenshot of the resulting post when I tried using HTML for hyperlink and the screenshot:
Update 26 February 2007: Read something about the ability to drag and drop pictures into Flock, but till now, still haven't found the way to do it. If you know the process, do comment in the comments section.
In summary, Flock is an additional option for those who want authoring tool to prepare their post for their blog (in particular, offline), but in my opinion, Windows Live Writer is a better choice.
Blogged with Flock
4 comments:
Hi !
I often follow your precious tricks on Blogger and I've learned a lot thanks to you !
I have a recurrent problem in Blogger, and I figured you might be interested to research it.
Every time I upload pictures on Blogger, they "land" on top of the post I'm writing. I then have to drag them up, down... to arrange items on my post. But very often, the pictures won't stay put and I have to re-arrange the whole stuff again.
Any idea ?
Cheers,
Zhu
You are using the COMPOSE mode I assume. After dragging and dropping the image, you have to save for the changes to take effect. However, I find manipulating pictures in the COMPOSE mode cumbersome and also restrictive. There are things I can do in the EDIT HTML mode which can't be done in the COMPOSE mode. I greatly encourage you to use the EDIT HTML mode. Then moving the picture, especially in a long post, will just be a 2 step process, cut and paste. See post
Uploading and manipulating pictures in Blogger
Peter a.k.a. enviroman
Enviroman Says
Ok Flock seemed to be not the best option. Back in the days of old Blogger, I've always used w.bloggar to prepare offline post. I wonder if you dont mind doing a review/test of it ;)
Yeah! Just for your information Blogger Beta doesn't support uploading of images to the photos.blogger.com service. GData simply does not allow it!
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