Dear All
I am working on an extension for the Danphe version of Flock, and with the forthcoming release of Cormarant in which it will work, I would like to kindly ask those that are testing the cormarant builds to have a look at this extension and offer any suggestions.
The extension is hard to sum up as it is a large collection of different tools/functions but here goes:
Text Selection: Select text with your mouse and up pops a contextual toolbar just below the text selection. This will stay in a semi-opaque state for 1.5 seconds unless your mouse over it. Common text operations are contained within, including a quicklink textbox (type the url then hit return). Mouseout of the contextual toolbar and it will disappear.
Middle click: A small contextual toolbar for non-text selection based operations.
Link click: If you have already inserted a link, click on it to bring up a small link contextual toolbar, to either unlink it, alter the url or open up the Link Plus dialog (alter many attributes of a link, not just it's url).
Image click: Click on an image to bring up the Image Plus dialog, which allows you to alter many attributes of an image. Please note that this is at present in the blog sidebar as I have not yet had a chance to move it into a popup dialog.
Preset Markup: This sidebar allows you to create, store, edit and apply preset html markup to highlighted text, such as css styles or html element attributes (id, class, title). This is particulalrly useful for improving productivity for microformat creation.
Tag Plus: This sidebar allows you to create, store, edit and insert tags the way you want them, not as supplied by default from 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.
Other functionality 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.
Quikmaps: This sidebar 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.
Also a dictionary/thesaurus and dedicated hCalendar sidebar.
In addition to all of the above, a number of toolbar buttons have been supplied, including blockquote, code, smilies and websnapr image link insertion (if you have not yet noticed, you can right click and customize the cormarant blog toolbar).
I should point out this is still in development and still needswork, but with your help can iron out any issues before cormarant is officially released.
Please visit http://flock.spatialviews.com and go get 'Blogplus'
yours, mctones
Daryl L. L. Houston
This is very cool, tones. I haven't ever warmed up to Flock's blog editor because I find the placement of the performancing extension's editor more useful, but this is a big improvement on ours, especially the enhanced tag thing and the image detail editor. Great work!
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Flock Web Guy
erwan
mctones:
This is a great extension! The tag functionalities in particular are impressive. Ultimate Tag Warrior support is a very recurring feature request so that will make a lot of Wordpress users happy.
Daryl,
I didn't released it yet because it needs some testing, but I've developed a "bottom" blog extension before Christmas.
If you know how to check out svn code you can try it here:
http://svn-mirror.flock.com/trac/flock/browser/experimental/erwan/lowerblog
mctones
Thank you for your kind comments guys, as an amatuer extension writer, I have been eagerly awaiting the release of danphe so I could get appraisal of my part time work (explains, but does not excuse, my concerns about the danphe release).
I absolutely love the tag bit myself, and if nothing else feel this could quite reasonably be an extension in its own right if nobody likes the rest.
My mind is still not made up about the contextual stuff, is it a nice pretty gimmick or something that genuinly improves productivity?
At some point during this extension development, I tried forcing the blog editor to open ala performancing without success to see if it was any better. I normally try to keep abreast of the continuous builds and shall revisit this experiment you pointed out Erwan.
One final point/query: I personally hate popup window, upon popup window, and early versions of this extension had everything in a sidebar. However, I started to find the constantly shifting sidebar everytime I clicked on an image and or link a little bit annoying. How does everyone else feel, are too many popups upon popups creating a disparate feel to the blog editor??
tones
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mc as in scottish not hammer
mctones
Oh, and I forgot to ask, a lot of the sidebar stuff utilises people css and images - are they still going to be there in the background for the cormarant release or should I duplicate them to be safe??
@erwan: you have included an 'lj user' toolbar button but it did not seem to display properly. My extension has forced the editor src to be a custom html page I ship with the extension rather than the default about:blank. Perhaps you could amend the cormarant code to display the lj:before and lj:after css code??
EDIT: erm, actually just remembered that I shipped a custom editor src page so links and images would display a help cursor :-(
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mc as in scottish not hammer