BloGTK Weblog

Here is a preview of the new BloGTK 2.0 interface. This interface is designed to make the process of working with multiple blogs much easier. You can have all your blogs available from the main interface, no matter where they’re hosted or what system they use.

BloGTK 2.0 Main Window

Development on BloGTK 2.0 is still proceeding, although there are some big pieces left to go. Mainly, the first run configuration needs to be built, and the offline editing functions need to be put into place. However, as soon as BloGTK is functional enough to be usable, I do plan on putting the code out on Subversion as a developer release.

I should also mention that this blog will be getting a makeover in the near future as well. As nice as the WordPress default template is, BloGTK deserves its own style…

A quick update on the progress of BloGTK 2.0. Right now the focus is on getting the MetaWeblog API support working correctly. So far, so good on that front, although there’s a lot of testing to make sure it all works correctly.

There’s also an article that every open-source developer should read on why Free Software tends to have bad usability. BloGTK 1 could be the poster child for that—it’s UI design was atrocious—and I’ll be the first to admit it. I do care about usability, but developing a usable interface is a difficult skill to learn. BloGTK 2.0 is going to get a lot of usability work as development continues, especially when it gets loosed on the world.

More as development continues.

Development on BloGTK 2.0 has been very slow lately as my day job has taken priority and I’ve been dealing with an annoying problem with the account settings panel. The good news is that the code is now working (but needs more testing to be sure), and I can move on to adding more polish.

BloGTK 2.0 will use RSD introspection to try and configure most of the settings to a blog with nothing more than the address. That means that most users won’t have to worry about endpoints, blog IDs, or picking the right API. Even though BloGTK is geared towards more technical users, that saves a lot of guesswork.

In WordPress news, WordPress 2.6 is out. Those of you who are upgrading will not have a problem with BloGTK, but if it is a new install, you will need to activate XML-RPC in the settings to use BloGTK or another remote blogging tool.

Finally, once BloGTK 2.0 is in a semi-feature complete state, I’ll be putting the code up in a public Subversion repository for testing. The old BloGTK was written in a time where version control was a major pain—finally I’ve done the right thing and started using an internal Subversion repository for development.

As before, there’s no definitive ETA for release. I was hoping to have something in time for the Ubuntu 8.10 release, but that looks doubtful. With BloGTK, I pushed the app out the door, and made a lot of rookie mistakes and poor design decisions. I want 2.0 to be more polished and professional. That means taking the time to try to get it right before letting it loose.

It’s only been a few days since the new BloGTK was announced, and already development is continuing at a more rapid pace than I would have expected. For a project being done in my limited free time, BloGTK is moving right along.

No, I don’t have an ETA for the first release. Other than “when it’s done,” of course.

So far, support for creating and editing new posts with Blogger, Movable Type, and WordPress is working. The UI is shaping up nicely—and that means that there will be some screenshots coming in the near future.

What’s left? The configuration system needs to be built, there’s a bunch of tools in the editor that need to be built, and then round after round of testing. BloGTK 1.0 was pretty buggy—I’m hoping that 2.0 will be better and more stable.

There will be more updates as development progresses. The website will also be getting an upgrade (with the old theme being given new life as a WordPress theme) sometime in the near future. Keep checking back here for more updates as BloGTK continues to push closer to release.

The next version of WordPress will make it harder for external clients like BloGTK to work by disabling the APIs they use to function.

Take a wild guess as to how I feel about that one.

Granted, all this adds is one more step for users, but it also suggests making remote access a “second-class” citizen to the WordPress world. You don’t solve security issues by shuffling them under the rug. The WordPress team still has to fix security vulnerabilities — this isn’t saving them any time of effort. It may help some users on the margin by removing one vector for attacks, but it’s not going to provide a big enough benefit, especially given the myriad other ways in which WordPress can be compromised.

If WordPress wants to get serious about security, they need to apply this same logic everywhere. Malicious themes are a huge problem — so user should have to explicitly enable theme support. Malicious and poorly written plugins can open WordPress wide open to attack — so before any plugins can be used, users should have to explicitly authorize plugin support. The list could go on.

This may sound harsh, but the WordPress team is taking the Windows Vista approach to security. Adding steps for users just makes things worse because it tends to engender a false sense of security. The real security solution is doing old-fashioned things like making sure that you’re sanitizing every piece of input you get — not annoying users and the developers who depend on your ecosystem.

If WordPress can’t adapt, people will move on. WordPress flourished when MT lost its edge — and back then WordPress was not the better package, but it had the mindshare of the community. The next WordPress is waiting in the wings, and if WordPress keeps taking such a mistaken approach to security, they could easily fall behind.

It looks like one enterprising user has gotten BloGTK 1.1 working on the Asus EeePC. The EeePC is a great mobile blogging machine, and BloGTK makes it even better.

It’s been a while since there was an update to BloGTK. During the last period of development for BloGTK there were so many frustrations and so little time that I had to give up.

Flash forward to a few weeks ago when I’m putting together my new Ubuntu box—I notice that there’s a Python library for Blogger’s GData system installed. And it even has a nice system for interfacing with Blogger. When I last did work on BloGTK 3 years ago, I had a lot of the app built. Maybe it was time to take another shot?

This entry is being created in BloGTK 2.0. The build is nowhere near complete, but there has been enough progress that it’s safe to announce its existence to the world.

BloGTK 2.0 will add some great new features like:

• A completely revamped interface designed for multiple blogs
• A new editor, with integrated spellcheck, HTML syntax highlighting, and undo/redo.
• Support for multiple categories.
• Full support for Blogger
• Autodiscovery of weblog settings (if your blog template supports it
• And much more…

There is no release date for BloGTK 2.0, as it all depends on finding programming time in my busy schedule. However, this time the technical hurdles have been surpassed and it is possible to deliver the kind of program that users have been asking for.

There will be much more coming as development continues on the next generation of BloGTK.