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Blogplus

Screenshot Ext.

Blogplus Features

This extension is hard to sum up in one nice paragraph as it is a collection of many small tools that come together to make your Flock blogging experience a little better IMHO. It can be divided into the following main sections: Additional Scribefire-like 'lowerblog' (can't get this to work in Flock 2), 5 new sidebars, numerous new toolbar buttons, 2 new dialogs, html/bbcode autocomplete, microformats keywords and 1 contextual toolbar (Windows only, see Known Issues).


Linux/Mac users in particular PLEASE READ THE KNOWN ISSUES page

5 Sidebars:

- Preset Markup allows you to create, store, edit and apply preset html markup to highlighted text, such as preformatted signatures, css styles or html element attributes (id, class, title). This is particulalrly useful for improving productivity for microformat creation. See help page for more info.
- Tag Plus allows you to create, store, edit and insert tags the way you want them, not as supplied by default by flock. The tags, which also include Ultimate Tag Warrior insertion, will be inserted into the bottom of your blog post before publishing, allowing a better appraisal of your final post.

For example, here is the technorati with image option:
<!-- Technorati with Image tags begin --><p style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;" class=""><img src="http://flock.spatialviews.com/files/technorati.png" /> Technorati tags:<a href="http://technorati.com/tags/example1" rel="tag">example1</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tags/example2" rel="tag">example2</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tags/example3" rel="tag">example3</a>, </p><!-- Technorati with Image tags end -->

Other functionality of tagplus includes tag suggestions based on your blog content and 8 different Blogged With Flock options, again these are inserted into the bottom of your post.

For example, here is an image version:
<p style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;"><img src="http://flock.spatialviews.com/files/flock_blog.png" />Blogged with <a href="http://www.flock.com/blogg-with-flock" alt="Blogged with Flock">Flock</a></p>

- Quikmaps allows you to insert a dynamic google map into your blog post, whereby you can change many of its attributes such as centre location, map type, controls, zoom etc. If you want to add markers or already have a quikmap, then go to quikmaps and set up your map and use the quikmap id.
- Dictionary allows you to check definitions of words (english only). Also includes thesaurus, acronyms, idioms, financial, legal, medical and computing dictionaries.
- hCalendar allows you to create microformats hCalendar events. This is included as it is a little easier than going the Preset Markup route for the complicated hCalendar markup.
- Favorites allows you to view the favorites sidebar in the blog window sidebar.

2 Dialogs:

- Link Plus allows you to alter many attributes of a link, not just it's href. Includes XFN creation. Optionally, when you click on or highlight an already formed link, the dialog opens with the relevant information populated in the textboxes. This setting is set to 'on' by default but can be toggled in the main options/preferences in the Blogplus pane.
- Image Plus allows you to alter many attributes of an image, not just it's src. Includes image link and XFN creation. Optionally, when you click on or highlight an image, the dialog opens with the relevant information populated in the textboxes. This setting is set to 'on' by default but can be toggled in the main options/preferences in the Blogplus pane.

1 Contextual Toolbar:

The contextual toolbar (currently Windows only due to the way Mac/*nix handles xul windows) is a 'smart tool' that detects if you have highlighted any text. By logic, if you have done so it suggests to me that you want to do something with that text; for example make it bold, italic, make it a link etc. The contextual toolbar therefore appears just below that selection, deselect text or apply one of the actions and it dissapears. This is enabled by default so Mac/*nix users need to go to the blogplus pane in the main preferences and disable the contextual smart tool.

Extra toolbar buttons:

If you were not aware, in Flock's new blog editor, you can right-click the toolbar and bring up a customize dialog, whereby you drag and drop in/out toolbar buttons. I have added a number of these to the default set.
- Code allows you to insert html code snippets into your blogpost without flock's editor interpreting it as literal html. Highlight your code, then apply using this button.
- Undo
- Redo
- Wordpress Smilies
- Image Emoticons for non-wordpress users
- Blockquote Indent does this at present but seems to have been replaced with margin-left: 40px.
- Link Plus allows you to alter many attributes of a link, not just it's href (see link plus dialog above)
- Image Plus allows you to alter many attributes of an image, not just it's src (see image plus dialog above)
plus other individual buttons for the sidebars or even a sidebar selector

1 Extra toolbar menulist:

Preset Markup a menulist to accompany the preset markup sidebar - allows you to apply your preset markup without having to go to the sidebar.

Other:

Now includes microformat keywords and a selection of HTML autocomplete, both available when in the source tab. See this pdf for a list of microformat/html autocomplete.

Credits to www.famfamfam.com for some of the icons and killeroid for helping me bug hunt.