Blogware suggestions
I was going to send this to my friend Roland at Streamlinewebco, but thought that it might make for an interesting post for other readers who also use Blogware or other Blog applications.
Here are a couple of suggestions for improving Blogware in the next revision:
batch-tagging of categories: Quite often I will write a bunch of articles and then realize afterwards that they actually require their own category. So then I have to create the category and then go back into each and every article, adding the category and saving the article again. There should be a batch add/remove category function where you can list all the articles with a checkbox on the right side and then check off the ones to modify and then have a category pop-up list and the add/remove buttons. Very straight forward to do.
Bigger text-editing field when using a browser. I often want to see more of the article I’m writing and I’m using this tiny little window to do my editing. It makes no sense.
Simpler non-programming addition of components. I want to add a header bar and can’t for the life of me figure out how to do it properly. And I don’t think I’m a stupid individual. Is this program for coders? Or non-coders? I thought it was for non-coders but the component stuff is pretty complex.
Anonymous commenters should have optional fields. They need to have the Name, Email, URL fields in addition to the comments field so that they can make comments and have a name attributed to them without having to register as a user (which nobody does.) Moveable Type and TypePad do this and it allows me to identify myself when commenting on other people’s sites. People who comment on mine and don’t register (i.e. everybody) don’t even have the option of leaving a name and email because the fields aren’t there.
Fully expanded Category tree components: I would like to turn on the category tree component but I can’t because it then hides the sub-categories until clicked on. I want a fully expanded category tree in the left hand column so that people can see categories and sub-categories. As it is, I have had to put them all at the same level.
When in View Content Mode or Dashboard mode, settings should stick. It always defaults to the first 25 articles on the main page. I have to keep switching it to the first 100 articles in all categories. Then I make a change, or add a post and it resets again. Please keep those settings.
Automatic table of contents. I would like to see an auto-generated page that contains only the headings of each article as a link to that article sorted/separated by date or else listed chronologically without the date separators. WHY? Because then you could put that link in the upper left corner and people could scan all of your past article titles in one quick page view to see which of them they would like to read.
Full-blog view. Why is it that blogs make you look by month? How come I can’t hit a button to see the ENTIRE blog from beginning to end in one huge long page? When I start reading a new blog, I often want to read the entire site, from start to present day to get a sense of the person’s writing and to explore some of their previous articles. But I don’t want to keep having to go month by month by month by month by month to see it all.
What’s wrong with the favourites OPML import? Why not just have a tabbed text and/or CSV import as well? I have tried on three occasions to import a list of blogs. It doesn’t work. My friend Boris Mann also had this problem.
Proper outlining and numbering widgets in the editing buttons. Currently there are no bullet-point or numbering options in the editor. So if you do bullet-points, you have to do them by hand and the second lines wrap around to the left edge rather than to the beginning of the first line, as they should do.
Things I still don’t understand: How do I modify column widths? How do I add a sub-title bar (as in Title = ABC Blog; Sub-title = blah blah blah blah blah blah about this blog); How do I add an “email me” button on the front page without having to fight the component-building demons? Or put my picture in one of the columns (see previous demon reference.)
Other comments/kudos:
• great job on the additions to the image button (the pop-up window with the three image-addition options). This works very well.
• Templates. They’re great. Clean, simple, easy to use. Bravo. Can we have more?
• it is a relatively simple application. And fast. I like that a lot.
• Version 1.2 seemed to add some very good functionality without adding complexity. Bravo. Hopefully you can continue that trend.
• Despite what I said above, I am a fan of keeping it simple and not bloating the application beyond belief so I think that all requests must pass the “will at least 50% of our users need this” test.