A few miscellaneous items for today.
HTML Editor
Perhaps there is a better way. I’ve started to use two pieces of software to do this blog: Nvu and MarsEdit.
Nvu. My buddy Will Mayall turned me on to this product. I now draft in Nvu. It’s the closest thing I can find to the Holy Grail of editing in WYSIWYG mode and then flipping over to HTML. I especially like four things about it:
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You can select text, go to the menu item Insert–>HTML… and put tags around the selection.
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In the Source view, it shows tagging in a hierarchical view so that you can see if your HTML arguments are correct.
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When you’re creating an ordered or unordered list, you can press Shift Enter and create a following paragraph that is not numbered or bulleted.
In other words, like this.
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If you use smart quotes and apostrophes in the WYSIWYG view, Nvu automatically converts them to the correct HTML code.
The only things it won’t let me do are insert pictures and post entries. It’s not intended as blogger’s tool–but a webmaster’s, so I can live with this because it produces such clean HTML.
MarsEdit. Yes, I know: I can draft in MarsEdit, so I shouldn’t need to use Nvu. Except that with all my ordered and unordered lists, it’s hard (at least as far as I can see) to tag paragraphs that follow an ordered or bulleted paragraph but should not be an ordered or bulleted paragraph. So my procedure is to draft in Nvu, add pictures with MarsEdit, and then post.
Between NetNewsWire and MarsEdit, Ranchero Software is becoming as important as Microsoft to me. And speaking of Microsoft, I tried using Word in Office 2007 running under Parallels. It’s pretty good as a blogging tool that combines editing and posting. Definitely something to try if you’re stuck in the other world.
Wireless News Blog
Just found out about Mobility Today. It’s a very useful blog that covers news in the mobile device market. The reviews are helpful to someone like me who loses a phone every three months or so.
The Art of Moderating
This is a good posting about moderating a panel by Jerry Weissman. Jerry gets big buck$ for training CEOs for IPO roadshows. Moderating a panel seems to be a popular topic because here’s another one on the same topic by Paul Kedrosky. In case you missed it, here’s my version.
By the way, Ranchero was bought out by NewsGator a while back.
They are doing some nifty work integrated client software across their hosted service. For example you can sync your NNW subs to NewsGator and then sync FeedDemon on Windows to that same NewsGator account. Pretty slick and useful for people who work on multiple platforms and like client-based software.
Sounds like an awesome program, but I post more photos than text at my blog. I have put the intimidating portrait of you up for sale at eBay. I wonder what will happen? I can’t post a link to eBay here for y’all to look at “Kawasaki Krump” for auction but I have a link at my blog. I have noted in my comments at eBay that I will donate money to a charity of your choice Mr. Kawasaki.
Cheers,
Candy :)
Thanks again, Guy, for the previous post on panel moderating. I used it as part of my preparation for a recent RFID event and it served as a handy reference/checklist. Happy to report the panel went well, and I received numerous compliments for my part.
Mike
Total geek time.
1. HTML isn’t hard to learn.
2. A good blog package should already have formatting built in. Look at what Blogger is using.
I’ve built a couple blog systems that use DOM to do live editing. It really astounds me that basic WYSIWYG HTML editing is still absent from most blog tools.
You have tried Performancing for Firefox?
http://performancing.com/firefox
While I like nVu very much, Performancing is the all in one edit/post solution all within your browser (which is where you frequently were already when writing inspiration hit you, right?)
Guy,
The link you’ve posted to MobilityToday.com points to a 2+ year old news article – not a great first impression. Once I clicked around, and realized they do actully have current content, it looks like a good site.
Guy, have you considered using Dreamweaver by Macromedia? It produces some very nice HTML (XHTML Compliant) and has a good editor. I think MX 04 (the latest version) even has some sort of Word to Dreamweaver feature that translates Word’s coding into XHTML compliant code.
Have you tried Ecto?
http://kula.jp/software/ecto/
Guy – Great post – loving your work.
How about a post about how England are going to whoop-ass at the World Cup this year? Come On England!
Doug Hanna has a good point about Dreamweaver, although it seems that many people prefer 8 over MX (the latter being too ‘feature heavy’?).
As for me, well it’s a text editor until I’m more fluent with HTML (kind of like learning to add before using a calculator?)… but that’s my own personal challenge.
I recently switched to OpenOffice for drafting up posts. My first choice was Nvu, but it didn’t measure up.
OpenOffice includes Writer/Web, essentially their word processor but strictly for editing HTML documents. So you get all the word processor features (save/load, spell checking, auto correct, etc) without the weird formats.
It has an easier time with headers, lists and tables than anything else I tried.
Copying & pasting to WordPress produces clean HTML, with a header that needs to be deleted before publishing.
I haven’t tried images yet, since I upload those after the draft.
Going one step back, before I come to drafting posts I would like to ask you guys if there is any alternative to WordPress. My hosting server is crap in supporting php.
Any insights will be helpful.
www.futuretechweb.com
I love NVU. Before that I was using Netscape but now that I’ve got the hang of it, NVU is more powerful. It has a few glitches/bugs but I also have the hang of those.
I do have a question though. How does one pronounce NVU? In the line of gnu? as in “neh-VOO”? Or is it “en-view”? Or what?
Ellen
I agree that the HTML component for blogging is still a kludge and we could do with some better tools.
Future Tech Web,
If your host is bad at supporting PHP, good luck at finding a blog system. There’s tens of thousands of hosts that do an excellent job with PHP, perhaps you should consider one of them?
Vladimir Orlt,
My mistake! Eesh, it must have been too early when I posted that. I use 8, not MX 2004. I like both myself.
I’ve also heard good things about Performancing for Firefox.
Guy, this kind of posting is why I read you every week. Nvu might not be the best, for ever, but I would not have heard about it if not for your website.
Your posting about proper emails is bookmarked, because I find myself frequently referring people to it.
When I first looked at your site, I thought you were using a modified template out of RapidWeaver, which is what I’ve used on my site.
Guy, Thanks for the heads up about NVU. I have it but have not used very much; simply a matter of time. I had actually thought of using it though since I couldn’t seem to get ecto to work as I wanted it to. For the erlier poster; it’s pronounced “In View”
Thanks for the great articles on the blog.