RobiNZ CAD Blog

Windows Live Writer, nice price but not for me

If you are serious about blogging an off-line editor is an essential tool. TypePad have a good on-line editor but I rarely use it as it’s still slow & cumbersome in comparison to a local editor.

As a longtime BlogJet user I was interested to read a burst of posts about the latest Windows Live Writer beta release. I tried it but in spite of the attractive price, it’s free or rather 100% subsidised by Microsoft, and some nice features I’m happy to stick with BlogJet as it still offers a better mix of tools for my work-flow.

Try them both, BlogJet has a free trial, and see which suits you. Either way you’ll be sure to spend far less time than typing & formatting in the web based editors and be able to work off-line which is great for mobile workers.

BlogJet – http://blogjet.com/

Windows Live Writer – http://writer.live.com/

Disclosure: I purchased my initial BlogJet licence, the update to the current release was complimentary after participating in the beta.

A new BlogJet and a Coding Robot?

Apart from when I’m travelling, computer-less, every post seen on this blog since January 2005 has been composed with BlogJet - an off-line composition tool. BlogJet 2 has just been released but I’ve been running the beta for several months. The beta has been painless and the new features have really enhanced BlogJet. If you are an existing BlogJet user or considering an off-line blogging tool it’s worth trying.

So what do I like about BlogJet 2?

• New interface: The choice of  Office, Windows or Vista “style” UI. I believe it’s also Vista OS compatible but not running that so can’t comment.
• Post History in the Cache: A user specified number of posts are cached locally. You can edit these while off-line and repost which may be useful for mobile users. I’ve tried caching up to 200 posts with no problems at all.
• Save as draft, post as draft, post for future: Of course you can also create drafts, saved locally, ready for posting. These can be posted as draft or for a future publication date (with TypePad)
• Post Tags: Support for tags is built in. The default is Technorati tags but this can be customised should you wish. I still use Categories as an overall filing tool, they become TypePad Category archives, but add post specific tags to assist searches.
• YouTube Support: Adding a YouTube control is simply a matter of copying the URL into the Insert YouTube Dialog. The control is inserted and can be run in the draft before posting.
• Flikr Images: Direct access from the Insert Picture dialog.
• Recent Post Search: You can rapidly search cached posts and . This is really nice as a filtering tool.
• Post Categories Sorted!: Categories always worked fine but now are shown alpha sorted, rather than the order they were created. This little change makes a huge difference!

BlogJet is a must have and this upgrade retains it’s ease of use while adding useful new features . Many complaints I see about blogging relate to the hassles of on-line composition; lost posts and limited capability of the host platform editors.

BlogJet frees you of all that! Its easier, and quicker, to compose better looking content in a simple WYSIWYG editor then post it when it suits you. View a video demo and get BlogJet trial at http://www.blogjet.com!

What about a Coding Robot? BlogJet is now a product of a new company — Coding Robots. Dmitry, BlogJet’s author, is Chief Executive Robot…

 

PS: If you have an “Upgraded Blogger” blog: I have a simple Blogger Blog (mainly so I can assist friends with Blogger Blogs) but had some trouble getting BlogJet to talk to it. The problem was it had been upgraded to “The New Blogger”.

• You need to delete and recreate existing BlogJet Blogger Accounts for “Upgraded” Blogs. 
• The Blogger upgrade had also left some old api related code in my template which tripped up BlogJet post caching. If you strike this just switch your blog to a basic template, save the changes, then pick a new one as they are clean.

Disclosure: As a Beta tester I received a complimentary upgrade to BlogJet 2.

Tags: Coding+Robots

This is a Test?

I’m not sure why I read Civil3d blogs when I don’t use it but you never know what gems you may find. Take this disturbing test post by James Wedding who was trying Microsoft Live Writer. This post was done with BlogJet but it’s not making the image look any better! Somehow I doubt you can blame the editor for that. Click thru to civil3d.com for the full size version if you dare  

civil3d.com » This is a Test
Filed under: civil3d.com by James Wedding, P.E. @ 11:07 pm
I’m not the biggest fan in the world of all things Microsoft, but I hate the editor we use here at civil3d.com for posting, so now I’m testing the Microsoft Live Writer application. Looks great so far, but it does seem to be missing a few of the niceties (like our MORE button) that come with our online editor.
And in case you missed it, here’s the Beta Libre photo that might be disappearing from public consumption. After an initial setup, this appears to have worked quite well….

BlogJet update soon...

Dimtry has posted some preview videos showing a new version of BlogJet which must be due within a month. BlogJet is a weblog client for Windows that allows you to compose and manage blog posts without opening a browser. I use it for composing my blogs – see my BlogJet Index for related posts.

The Blogjet Channel - YouTube

BlogJet - Blog - BlogJet 2.0 update for free starting from Monday; YouTube demos
It’s our policy that everyone who purchased previous major version within a month of a new release, gets this new release for free. However, some customers had concerns that we will not deliver BlogJet 2.0 within a month of their purchase…
Have no fear, starting starting from this Monday (Oct. 30), everyone who purchase BlogJet 1.6, will get BlogJet 2.0 for free!

Blogging Tools & Process

I read a couple of posts, at Notes, links and conversation & What Is New, asking how people create and manage blog content. I thought I’d share how I use a combination of tools for this.

 

Revision 26–02–2006: Added map to the extended post

BlogJet Upgrade - Version 1.6

While I was away at AU Dmitry released an upgrade to BlogJet. It’s the off-line Blog editor I’ve been using to author every post seen here, and the other blog, since I purchased it back in January 2005.

I’ve been using the new BlogJet “Lime” v1.6 (why is the code name Lime?) through December and have found some refinements which make life even easier…

2005 Blogging Highlights

Seems like the time of year to do a Blog related review of the year so here goes…

"Real World" DWF Resolution Findings

Prompted by Shaan's post on DWF precision I’ve been testing to see what impact increasing the DPI has in “real world” conditions. So far I’ve found ramping the DPI up to fairly huge values does increase the DWF file size, but not as much as I expected, and seems to have only a slight impact on plot file sizes.

We draw on A1 sheet at 1mm = 1 AutoCAD unit typically with a 1:200 viewport. For a real world comparison I created a DWF from a store layout at various resolutions then measured a known length in Autodesk Composer aiming for better than 1mm precision. The file has a lot of AEC Mv Blocks (shop fittings) and AEC Spaces (departments) with solid hatch fills. The table below shows the results using the DWF6 ePlot.pc3.

DPI	DPI Factor	File size KB	File Size	Length (mm) in AutoCAD	Length reported in Composer	Accuracy	Plot File to Hp800 Plotter MB
400	1	84	1.00	25446	25000	98.25%	1.56
101600	254	102	1.21	25446	25400	99.82%	1.61
1016000	2540	158	1.88	25446	25446	100.00%	1.69

It was a bit of a concern that the file size nearly doubled but it seems this is because the initial  file was so small. Publishing a 20 sheet drawing set for our office (Site, Building, Fit-out Plans and Elevations) with lots of hatch fills resulted in the file growing from 2.5 MB @ 400 DPI to 3.0 MB @1,016,000 DPI. Multi-sheet Store Layout sets, about 1 MB @ 400 DPI, grew by 10–20%.

While this increase is noticeable its not a bad trade off for better than 1mm precision over large distances.

PS: Wow, the table pasted from Excel into BlogJet worked fine!

Blogjet Response Impresses

I had the same experience but reported via email. Great Product, great service

Blogjet - Great Response:

In a previous post here I mentioned all the reasons why I love using Blogjet as a front end to TypePad. It makes my life so much easier and straight forward. TypePad by itself is great – no question. TypePad + Blogjet is more than great – it’s excellent. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my previous post, I was having some problems getting Blogjet 1.5 to post due to a time code error.

I reported the problem using the Blogjet forum, and I’m very happy to report that the response from the Blogjet staff was great. They responded to my post with 18 minutes (perhaps just luck – but I’m very happy anyway), asked relevant questions, gave me a few things to try, then about 8 hours later provided a link to a new build that corrected the problem. Outstanding!

Blogjet 1.5  (5.0/5.0)

[Via PDA Dreams]

Blogging tools reviewed

Neville has a great review of Blogjet and Ecto on his Blog "NevOn". These are "standalone" tools that help with composing and posting Blog articles. The strengths and weakness of each are discussed in detail.
His comments about the changes planned for Blogjet Version 1.2 are promising. I tried Version 1 and the problem with category posting and lack of thumbnail pictures for TypePad were my only reservations. I will have a look at 1.2 when it arrives.

BlogJet Test

This is done with Blogjet that promises wysiwyg publishing for Blogs.

Shaan Hurley found it and mentioned on his blog in the article  Blogjet Rocks

I'm trying it for 30 days to see if I like it, so far I do!

It makes these things much easier:

• Positioning and sizing images and text in a post
• Text Colour and Format.
• Add Bullets!

You can also try it by downloading from the Blogjet Website.

UPDATE: See this post