SharpMT – 2.0 Beta 2

A whole collection of stuff this time out. Short list: in-SharpMT Blog Post editing, multi-posting of all open Drafts/Entries, a couple of bug fixes and one step closer to the release of version 2. Download SharpMT 2.0 Beta 2 and read the FAQ for more information.

In SharpMT Editing: there’s a detailed blurb on this in the FAQ, actually, but I’ll babble about it here, too. This whole thing is based on two assumptions: 1) that you’re online and 2) that you have a Blog Link for the entry that you want to edit in the Blog Link window. If neither of these are true, you can’t edit the Blog Post! So, in the Blog Link’s window, either double click a Blog Link or right click and select “Edit” – if you’d rather use the MT server based editing page, I’ve left in “Edit in Browser” as an option.

Now you’ve got the server based Blog Entry opened. You’ll see a Blog Link icon on the tab, rather than a Draft/Posted-Draft icon; you’ll also won’t ever see a .SMT extension there. Rule #1: Server-based Blog Entries cannot be saved as Drafts – will save confusion in the long run. On this opened Blog Entry, you can edit almost anything, except for URL’s to Ping (which isn’t supported by MT via the external interface at this time). You will see some things are disabled on the Advanced tab; this is supposed to be like this. Lastly, while you can change the category selections on an existing post, you cannot set it to “(none)” because it is ignored by the XML routines.

Once you’ve made your edits to the Blog Entry, click Post to Server to upload your changes.

Multi-Post: There’s an option on the Tools menu – “Post All Open Drafts” that will take the list of currently open Drafts and Blog Entries and either post a new entry to the server or upload the changes made to the existing Blog Entry. This is a powerful and time consuming process so there is no keyboard shortcut nor is there a toolbar button for it.

Bug Fixes:

– If you’ve selected one or more Blog Links in the list, you can now delete them. This removes them from the list and will not impact the server.

– Fixed a bug that was preventing the X for each draft to close itself.

– Fixed a bug that was showing the wrong Draft name being show for the “Save now?” dialog.

– Fixed a bug that was saving selected categories multiple times in the same draft.

Feature-wise, this is it for this release, aside from spell checking, which continues to be a monetary issue.

Download SharpMT 2.0 Beta 2 now!


9 thoughts on “SharpMT – 2.0 Beta 2”

  1. Minor typo: in the Windows menu, it says “Previos Draft” instead of “Previous Draft”.

    Just noticed there’s a .manifest file included with SharpMT – but XP styles do not seem to be enabled at all anywhere in the program.

    The ‘primary category’ dropcombo on a draft dialog (“form” whatever…) doesn’t appear to be alpha sorted, that might be a good idea too?

    If SharpMT is not maximized, and the Advanced stuff is displayed, Excerpts and Extended seem to swap places, and the Excerpt label ‘hangs’ out into the Entry Body textbox.

    (Those last two have always been the case, not 2.0-specific)

  2. thank you thank you thank you for adding in-blog editing! (I always found the MT editing window too small), and would end up firing up mt, copying and pasting it somewhere, editing, then pasting back. So now it’s just a click (well two clicks) away!

    Regarding the XP styles, other .net programs I’ve used have the same appearance as the current xp style.

  3. About the text filters: If I select textile, and then do a preview, does it send the post to the server to apply the filter, or does sharpmt apply it?

    (I haven’t installed SharpMT 2.0 yet, downloading .net 1.1 first)

  4. @KO – The text filters are applied on the MT server; the local page is just an HTML page that only shows what the editboxes have in them… lemme know how the editing goes – I found the bug that trashed this server and every edit since then has been fine (otherwise I wouldn’t have released it)…

    @Scott – Nice catch on the menu… I lost the u when I was putzing with the &. I’ll look into the .manifest file – in my experience just that it’s there is usually what activates the styles… there’s also an Application call to enable visual styles but it hasn’t been required in the past (and it’s only supported as of .NET 1.1),. The category drop down has been an ongoing debate: I show it in the order that MT returns it to me and it’s how it’s displayed in the web page – other people want it sorted. For the time being I’m sticking to the MT way if only because I base the selection on the array and I haven’t had a chance to switch to a Hash table. As to the boxes, I must be missing something – I’ve got SharpMT sized to small as it can go and everything seems to be OK. What resolution are you running at? I run at a high res but I also never run maximized; the screen shots I take are always geared to the small possible window which is 740 x 540. Thanks though! I’ll look into the other stuffs!

  5. @Randy: checked my categories on MT and MT returns them sorted, where #MT does not — dunno what’s going on there…

    Disregard the bit about the labels – I mistakenly opened up #MT1 instead of 2… 2 matching icons so close together, I got all confused I guess :)

    I also tried a .manifest file that I use for other apps and it still did not work; perhaps the API call will be necessary?

  6. @Scott – I’ll take a look… maybe I put in my categories sorted, but I know that I’m definately showing them in the order that MT sent them. The fear I have with mucking with this is that it’s referenced in so many places and SO many things are related to it… well, it could trash everything and that’s a problem – and this is after I just ripped the whole draft storage stuff apart… it’s that ugly with categories b/c of the primary and multiple stuff.

    As to the manifest, don’t kill yourself with it: I found the problem with it and it’s a strange setting that I hadn’t seen before VS.NET 2003, which is why it wasn’t set – it’ll be working in Beta 3. And cool about the labels! I thought I missed a huge thing with that one!

  7. Hi,

    Nice new version, but I can’t seem to recover the window once it’s minimised to the tray – it just never comes back and I have to kill SharpMT using the task manager.

    cheers, and keep up the good work.

    Simon.

  8. Another one: if I write Draft, save it, post it, whatever… I try to close #MT and it brings up a dialog along the lines of ‘the draft has changed, save the changes?’ when…nothing at all was changed.

  9. @Simon – Simply put “oops”. VS.NET 2003 crapped out on me here (I think the J# modules got mauled when I had to reinstall something else) so I’ll take a look at it.

    @Scott – Ah, but something has changed: the “posted” flag has gone from “unposted” to “posted” – that’s why it prompts for that.


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