VisualBlogger Beta 1 This Weekend!
I'm wrapping up the last features for the first beta of VisualBlogger 2004.
Wanted to give a brief status report on where I am at, what features it has, and
what features are left to be done before the final release.
Beta 1 Features:
- Full WYSIWYG Editing
- Raw HTML Editing
- Blogging ScratchPad
- Post To Mutliple Weblogs
- Post To Multiple Weblogs with Categories
- Blog Credential Hashing in Local Store
- Save Posts
- Load Posts
- Clipboard Access
- Code Formatting
- Provider Model-Based
- 2 BlogProviders
- .Text Simple (SimpleBlogService.asmx)
- .Text 0.95 (AspNetWeblog.asmx and BlogContent.asmx)
- Abstracted object model mapped to provider-specific objects
- Central Bug Reporting / Feedback System
Final Version Features:
- Advanced Post Options (Allow Comments, Page Alias, etc)
- Dynamic assessment of available options by provider (CanAllowComments,
etc)
- 8 BlogProviders
- .Text Simple (SimpleBlogService.asmx)
- .Text 0.95 (AspNetWeblog.asmx and BlogContent.asmx)
- .Text 0.96 (DotTextAPI.asmx)
- Blogger API
- LiveJournal API
- MetaWeblogAPI
- Movable Type API
- Atom API
- Dynamic provider substitution/addition at runtime
- Edit Existing Posts (Where Available)
- Edit Categories (Where Available)
- Insert New Categories (Where Available)
- Upload Images via FTP
- Local Caching of Categories
- Saved Entries stored as XML
- VS.NET 2002 & 2003 Integration
- VS.NET "VisualBlog This Code" right-click option (Code autoformating)
- IE "VisualBlog This" right-click option
- Automatic backups every 5 minutes
- Remote Blog Configuration (Where Available)
Ambitious, to be sure, but completely doable. I'm planning a final release
sometime in late April / early May. I wanted to release it along with the other
stuff Interscape is doing, but this project needs to take a backseat while we
collect some public feedback. I want this to be a really kick-butt tool, and I'm
willing to wait a bit for that to happen. Plus, I have some other .Text-related
development work that I'll need to focus on for a while, so it works out quite
nicely.
I spent tha past 3 days doing a complete overhaul on the organization. I
redid all of the namespacing, and gave the Web Service references a predictable
taxonomy. Posts are now using objects as intermediate storage units, using
heavily modified versions of ScottW's .Text objects. I can honestly say now,
that I LOVE programming with collections. I can't wait till I can use Generics.
Very exciting. I added some nifty features to the existing Category collections,
which let me dump the categoty data into various formats depending on the
situation. Using this setup also made implementing the providers a breeze. The
combination of typed datasets and the new objects make mapping to
provider-specific objects dirt simple.
I have really grown as a developer through this project. I really surprised
myself with all the things it can do. It took me weeks to figure out the
provider model implementation for GenX.NET (found out weeks later that
Microsoft's implementation in Whidbey is very similar), and I implemented it in
VisualBlogger in a matter of hours. I already found some serious improvements to
the model that will be made for GenX.NET 3.1, and was able to streamline the
code for that product even further.
Well, enough rambling. I need to test the "Post To Categories" part of the
new provider-based system, so I can go to sleep. Got to start getting ready for
the MVP Summit. Looking forward to going back to Microsoft again. This will be
my second trip, and I am way excited. More on that later.