Posting to your Blog using Flock 0.7.14

One of the web browsers included in Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux is Flock, version 0.7.14.
Rather than use a web browser, such as Opera, Firefox, or Flock, to go to the web address of your blog, and log in directly to the interface, Flock has a built-in setup to allow you to connect to your blog, and compose a new blog post, using the editor provided in Flock.

So, this post is being made using Flock, and the "blog this" feature.

"Blog This" is where one comes across an interesting link or story while surfing the web, and to place that link in your blog, all that is required is to right click the link, and click "blog this" in the drop-down box that appears.

Here is an example:

Photos: A plane that skims the sea

Although this may seem simple enough, there are some steps to go through to get this link in the proper place in this blog post, using Flock.

First, you set up your blog within Flock, by either pressing "Ctrl-B", or going to the Flock toolbar,

Tools -> Blog

Enter what you want to have for a Title, and what you want to say, prior to the "blog this" link.

Then, go to the web site where the link can be found that you want to put in the blog post, and as mentioned above, right click the link, and click "blog this" in the drop down box that appears.

Now for the fun part, Flock opens a new blog post editor, with just the link. You really did not want Flock to do that, would have been nice if your link were placed in the blog editor you are working on, rather than a new one. You will have to change that second blog post editor to "Source", (tab at the left-bottom), and highlight the "html" for the link, then do "Edit -> Copy" in the editor's toolbar.

Now you will want to paste that link in the Source of your blog post, the first one you are working on, not the second one that Flock opened, with just the link.

After you have pasted the html code for the link you want to add in your blog post, click on "Editor" in Flock's blog editor, and see how it looks.

More complications: Now, try and type more text in your blog editor. Does it try and appear as a "link" (wrong) or as just "text" (right).

If it appears as a "link", blue with underline, then click on the "Source" tab and examine the "html" that was "pasted" into the blog post editor. The above link that I placed in this post had a "second line" of seemingly duplicate html that should be removed. I had to highlight the extra html, and delete it.

That done, then subsequent text added into the blog editor will appear as normal text, and not as a "link".

One other thing while you are looking at the Source "html" in the Flock blog editor. If there are too many spaces between the sentences that you have entered, they will appear as "<p>" and "</p>", also "<br>" and "</br>" you can highlight and remove them by hitting the "Delete" key on your keyboard, then switch back to the "Editor" tab, and see how it will look.  When viewing your post in the "Editor" tab, you can also remove the extra spaces by clicking at the end of a sentence, and pressing the "delete" key until the next line is directly below, with no space between the two lines.  What you see is what you get, with the Flock blog editor.

Using Flock to prepare blog posts can have some advantages over using the normal web interface that Blogger, for instance, uses.
Blogger seems slow, the text you type lags behind as it appears on the Blogger interface. Using the Flock editor is much easier to work with.

In any event, once you have finished making your blog post using the Flock blog editor, to post, just click the "Publish" button in the lower right hand corner.

If the result as posted to your blog while using Flock is not to your liking, you can always use the normal web interface to fix the post. The Flock editor can replace a complete blog post, and Flock will save a copy for you locally prior to posting to your blog. That local copy can be edited and then posted as a "replacement" blog post.

When you click the "Publish" button, you are given a choice of "new" or "replacement". If "replacement" is chosen, the Flock blog editor then downloads a list of your blog posts, so you can choose which one to "replace".

The Flock blog editor can reopen the file for you for re-editing, on the toolbar, File -> Open Recent.

Or, In Rapidweather Remaster, use the file manager, emelFM to locate the local copy, it will be in /home/knoppix/Flock Blog Posts/
then use the SciTE editor to change the source html of the blog post, if you are confortable with that.

If you are running Rapidweather Remaster with a "persistent home directory", then the posts will be saved for you for use the next time you boot up the system.

In other news, I am still holding the development of Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux at Beta 122, Build 1.
I am having a lot of fun using it, running from the USB drive as mentioned in previous posts. That's turning out to be a "long term" test, for lack of a better term.

Stay Tuned!

Blogged with Flock