Sephy’s Platzish

One of the neatest programs to take the blogging world by storm (somewhat) has been Windows Live Writer, a program from Microsoft that allows you to create drafts, and publish to your blog from just about anywhere, no browser needed. I almost got to the point of downloading it, but then I thought of a program that was already on the computer.

The program is one that had laid dormant for quite a while, but is now again in part-time development - w.bloggar, a piece of freeware developed by a guy in Brazil, who has had this around for quite a few years now. It was the first offline editor that I had used (mostly because it worked with Blogger, and allowed me to quickly edit posts without having to deal with Blogger’s old system of constantly having to republish the blog every time you made a post.

There are obviously other offline editors out there (most notably WLW, which I have not used, but almost downloaded before digging this program out of the archives), but w.bloggar is the one that I’ve used almost exclusively, unless you want to count EditPad as an offline editor (which is just as valid) .

Getting started

When you download the program (if you want to use a portable version, that is available as well as a full version that can work with either Internet Explorer or Mozilla with an installer), you can go ahead and install it, or just run if if you downloaded the portable or zip versions. Now, since I’ve already got it installed and set up, I will just jump to getting your blog set up on here.

The program works as an extension of your blog; when you first start up the program, you may be shown this screen -

If you do start with that screen, then you’ll need to click on the little button next to the drop-down box and select new. This will bring up the new account wizard -

As you can see, you don’t even need to have a blog to get started with w.bloggar, but for the case of this tutorial, I’ll show you how to go about making a new account for a blog you already have (it’s fairly self-explanatory, so the screenshots will just be a guide).

The first screen you’ll see after selecting that you want to add your current blog as a new account is one where you can select which blogging platform you’re using (the program supports a whole host of them), along with setting an alias for the blog you’re setting up. For this tutorial, I’ll use my testing blog and aptly call the account Sephy Test.

In the next screen, this is where you put in the information about your blog - since I like to keep my test blog’s address somewhat quiet, I’ll leave the sample stuff in there for the shot. Anyway, simply put in the address of your blog (only the domain name, i.e. www.sephyroth.net), and then in the Path box, put the directory that you have WP installed on, followed by xmlrpc.php (so, if your blog is in the /blog/ subfolder, then you’d put /blog/xmlrpc.php; if it’s in the root, then /xmlrpc.php). You can also adjust the port you use, turn on encryption, and choose if you want to use UTF-8 encoding.

The next screen is quite simple - just put in your username and password for your blog - if you want to save it, go ahead, otherwise you can leave the box unchecked.

And, that’s it - you’ll now be in the editor window, ready to make a post to your blog! (well, of course, now I have this post in there as a draft, but you know what I mean.

Touring the editor window

Now, let’s take a quick tour of the editing window. The first few buttons on the first toolbar are fairly obvious, through to the spellcheck.

After that is one of the features that I didn’t even know about until starting to write this (in fact, there’s a lot of hidden stuff in here - so if you decide to get it, do some exploring!); as a matter of fact, it’s quite a handy feature - custom tags. This button allows you to put in your own HTML tags that you use frequently (i.e. for me, one making a centre-aligned paragraph would be useful because of all the pictures I post).

Then you have a control area - Options, a pseudo-logout button, which brings you back to the w.bloggar start window. Next is your blog list - if you use Blogger, this is a very handy tool - it will retrieve your full list of blogs, and you’ll be able to select the blog you want to work on. The next button (the one with the red checkmark on it) is the Blog Properties button, if you click it, you will be brought to this window, where you can make custom settings for previewing, how you upload your images (yes, you can upload images properly to WP - with thumbnails!), and media information -

The other buttons of importance on the first row are the next one - go to blog site, which loads the blog in either IE or your default browser (a simple option you can switch in the options), and the Posts button - if you click on the down arrow next to Posts, you’ll be able to edit the last number of posts, or choose a post number to edit (if you know the number of the exact post you want to edit, that is ). The Template button that you see at the end, before the Help button is grayed out because you can’t edit the template for WP blogs, only for Blogger blogs that use classic templates.

If you select a number of posts to edit, you’ll see this dialog, from which you can select a post to edit (by the way, it doesn’t have to have been made in w.bloggar to edit) -

The second row of buttons is a standard formatting bar, with a couple of buttons that are important at the end - first is the upload button, which allows you to upload a file to your blog. There’s also the Post and Post & Publish buttons - Post is used to save a post as a draft on your blog’s site, and Post & Publish is used to publish the post to your blog.

This is what the Upload dialog looks like -

Now, in the main body of the screen, you have your basics, like post title, and categories (which are culled from your category list; if you want to use more than one category, click the ellipsis to bring up your tag list and tick as many boxes necessary. The tabbar that is there is used to create options - More is for if you want to have a jump in your post, and preview allows you to look at your post in what should be your blog, but so far I’ve had issues with getting it to work properly with WordPress.

One of the features accessible from the More panel is the Advanced options. This is where you can set your trackback and comment settings, along with text filters (if enabled), and edit the date and time.

Using these advanced options has created an interesting problem - if you choose to edit the time of your post, WordPress will read that as having been posted at the time you set, GMT. For example, if I set a post in w.bloggar to have a timestamp of 4 PM, my blog would think that it was published at 10 AM, or 6 hours behind server time. However, if you use the current date & time option, it will publish the post at the time it currently is on your blog.

The status bar has the usual stuff - date, lock info, insert/overwrite status, and a couple of other things - first, the WordPress logo is clickable - that will bring you to the account properties, where you can adjust the settings from the original setup, and the notes brings you to the Media page from the Blog options dialog

Using the Editor

It’s simple to use the editor in w.bloggar - it’s just like using any other plain-text editor (EditPad, or the WordPress “code” view), where you need to insert the HTML code manually, but the program does give you a generous helping hand, by way of the Format and HTML menus, along with the HTML toolbar.

You’ll notice that the HTML toolbar and the HTML menu have the exact same layout, save for the Custom Tags item appearing in the menu and not the toolbar as it is already in the main Toolbar. If you want to try a preview of how it would look on your site, you can try the Preview tab, but it has some pitfalls, as this is what a preview of this post looks like in there -

As always, your mileage may vary with your platform, but so far I’ve had issues with WordPress, and when I used this for Blogger, they didn’t have the customised CSS functionality that I remember.

Give it a go!

If you’re interested in giving w.bloggar a go, check out the download page - there you’ll find links to download all the versions of the program. It is Windows-only, with a selection of languages available. If you’re adventurous, you could always use the first stable version, but then you’d lose a lot of the additional functionality of the newest versions, including uploading files.

I have to say, by the way, that I’m actually pretty sold on this program again - it’s simple to use, there isn’t that much of a learning curve, and the best feature of all - I’ve had it running for quite a while, and done a lot with the program today, and it’s only using 17 megs of virtual memory, and 25 megs of RAM; I bet Windows Live Writer can’t live up to that.

I read with great interest your article referencing the dream PC of the “future”, 2005 to be specific, (Trends, August 1995) with your crazy projections of 100 gigs of storage, a gig of memory, and the truly zany 10 Ghz processor speed, weeks of battery longevity and a 100 megapixel screen. Oh, and 4 ounces? I really don’t think so, even though the MacBook air comes closer than any other full-featured computer yet.

Sadly, your prediction of a PC running on something called photonics hasn’t panned out yet, but you did appear to be right on about 6X CD-ROM drives being nothing more than a fad, and they found a better name for those 5GB Super Compact Disk you mentioned in your article - DVD; the 10 gig version is called a double-layer DVD. Fully rewritable CD- and DVD-RW discs still haven’t been perfected either, but with as cheap as DVDs are, I don’t think there’s a worry about needing to be able to rewrite a disc.

I did derive great joy over the letters you have chosen to publish in relation to the story you ran about hot web sites of the time. I’m slightly disappointed that you never did follow Nicholas Duffy’s suggestion of the 100 hottest FTP sites (or, for that matter, 100 hottest IRC servers, 100 hottest Gopher servers, etc.).

My favorite letter, though, is this one, exalting the virtues of the list and its availability -

What a superb report on the Web. Not only did you provide a great collection of excellent Web sites, but you also made the list available in Hypertext Markup Language on your home page. This is the sort of thing that makes the Web and PC Magazine great.

Dave Meyer, via PC MagNet

One of the best things about reading through your magazine back in the days when I was a 12-year-old (11 at the time of this particular issue’s publishing) was going through the classified listings in the back of the book. While the solicitations to purchase barcode machines and toner for $45 are wonderful, you must have loved selling those ads for the adult lines and BBSs. I think this sentence will justify your joy in selling these ads - Adult pages - 3.75, Security - 1.25.

I wonder how many people called Erotica East, based in Hong Kong, to get access to Adult GIFs, Hot Chat, and other “FREE” services, only to get a lovely $500 phone bill for that international calling? Also, I tried to call the 800 numbers in the adult section, and none of them worked, except for one which asked me to make a collect call-back…

That’s led me to trying out other telephone numbers…I gotta say that some creative marketers have taken advantage of some simple to remember words after the 1-800.

Oh, and did I mention those new 800 area codes - 888, 877, 866 and 855?

Anyway, I hope you keep up the good work, and I just looked and your home page is still quite organized.

Sincerely,
Sephyroth
via the Internet

It’s less than a year until the date when all the TV stations are required by federal law to switch off their old analog signals and start broadcasting in digital only. Of course, the push is on for everyone to get an HDTV, but the reality is that while it would be awesome to get one to take advantage of the full signals given off by these digital channels, you only need to get a DVD recorder - they have digital tuners, which can pick up HDTV signals, but not broadcast them in full HD.

However, if you do want to buy yourself a new HDTV set with, say, the $600 you’re getting from the government, or from your tax refund from this year, there are a few things to keep in mind.

First - when shopping around, make sure that your set has two coaxial inputs - one for cable and one for antenna. That way, you can pick up the cable channels you’re already getting on your analog TVs (and which you will still receive after the air stations go dark). Also, you might be able to pick up extra channels from your cable company’s digital packages, and sometimes even get the on demand programming, depending on how your cable system’s set up. Of course, the other coaxial input is for your antenna that you have (admit it!) on your roof, even though you haven’t used it for nearly 15 years ever since cable was installed…not that I’m guilty of that.

Not at all.

The cool thing about the antenna input is the fact that you will get extra channels than you would get if you got your HDTV via cable or satellite.  Let’s take an example of the stations in this area.

First up is channel 4 - 4.1 is the main TV signal, in mixed format between widescreen HD and 4:3 Standard TV, 4.2 is a digital-only weather channel, NBC’s Weather Plus (people in the city will jump up and exclaim that it’s on cable, but it ain’t here!)

Next is channel 6 - they only have 6.1, the Fox signal, comprised of HD programming, 4:3 programs, and some widescreen programs

Channel 10 is where digital comes alive, literally. This is the great thing of having two PBS stations in the market run by the same broadcaster. Channel 10’s digital signal has 7 separate subchannels - none of which are on cable - 10.1 - MPTV World, featuring rebroadcasts of PBS and local programming, 10.2 - V me, PBS’ Spanish language channel, 10.3 - MPTV Kids, featuring all children’s programming, 10.4 - Create, a channel which airs overnights on 36, but this is the 24-hour feed of cooking, craft and other awesome PBS shows, 10.5-7 - MPTV Extra; weather and traffic video, with different audio tracks - classical music, weather radio, and world radio network, which rebroadcasts national broadcasters from around the world.

Channel 12 has just one digital channel, featuring ABC’s HD feed, with the lovely added bonus of a constant 12 logo on the screen, because we wouldn’t know we were watching channel 12 without that logo on there in addition to the ABC logo…

Channel 18 also only has one signal, featuring the CW’s HD programming.

Channel 24 used to have a second digital subchannel featuring The Tube music network, but from what I have heard, they suspended that channel.

Channel 30 has a digital channel, but nothing in HD. I think the less said about their programming the better…

Channel 36’s digital feed (the other PBS station in town) is dedicated completely to delivering HD programs. It’s a 24-hour HD channel, commercial free.

The next channel worth mentioning (aside from some random religious channels and a shopping channel) is 55 - the Pax network (now called ion, which stands for infomercials on now). They have 4 digital channels, none in HD - 55.1 - ion Main feed, 55.2 Qubo children’s programming, 55.3 Ion Life and 55.4 Worship.

Channel 58 is an interesting channel - during this time of year, they actually drop the HD feed because of the running of the NCAA tournament - which takes up 58.1-58.4 (and the same channels on cable 581-584). During the rest of the year, 58.1 is the main CBS feed, 58.2 is the rebroadcast of channel 41, an independent. It has been rumored that they will be adding a classic TV network to their lineup in the next couple of months, but nothing firm has been mentioned.

Oh, by the way, those are just the Milwaukee channels. Who says that we can’t get the Madison channels as well? If the weather’s right, Chicago isn’t out of the question. Nevertheless, all the choices offered by FREE HDTV are probably better than what you get on the digital packages on cable (though satellite is a different question).

Now, if only we could get something like the UK has with their Freeview program, encompassing a ton of free TV, along with a ton of digital radio. Ah well, I guess beggars can’t be choosers. We get our TV truly for free, the UK has the licence to deal with…

At first, I was going to say that this was another example of the laws of searching coming up and biting me on the rear end. However, the law worked again, and I got the result I’m wanting (well, so long as it stays working).

Remember when I left my laptop in the basement for a long time? Yeah, that didn’t turn out so well. At the time, I decided that the solution to the problem would be to put it away and come back to it later. Well, it’s later, and I grabbed the cord for the laptop, plugged it in and crossed my fingers.

Nothing - just the start stop cycle again.

But I persist and, magically, the thing starts up. Now, here’s where I start to go wrong - I go to find the plug for the old router (which is wireless). Naturally, the laws of searching did apply here, and I couldn’t find it. So, I figure, well the laptop’s working decently and I decide to shut it down and bring it out to the main room with the computer in it.

Bad move. Welcome back, start-stop cycle. Of course, as I’m doing this, I notice the plug for the wireless router, so I had a backup plan.

I take the laptop back into my bedroom and hook it up once more to the wall, and again get the start-stop. This time, it was only a few minutes before I got it started up, grab the wireless card and insert it.

It’s a good thing that I have 2 PCMCIA slots on the computer, because putting it in the upper slot gave me a message that I’d have to restart the computer in order to use the card. I’d have none of that so I put it in the lower slot - which worked. AVG went and did its thing, so I let it go.

The next step was to start moving stuff over to this computer (the main one) once and for all. I open the Network Neighborhood, open the shared folders on here, and select files from the desktop to move.

That’s where the luck runs out, unfortunately. As the files were moving (and I went out to here to start writing about my good luck), the laptop did one of its favorite tricks on me - freeze up totally. The only fix that I know of for that problem is to do a forced shutdown of the system using the power button.

And you can only guess what happened next.

Yep. Start-stop cycle. So, I’ve decided to bin this job for the night.

However, all is not lost, as I have just checked in with my scammer friends, to find that one of them have written back to a female character I use with this lovely mail -

SWEET LOVING BABY GIRL,

My love i was dieing in my heart all these times for not having hearing from you, you make me so empty in all my ways. How are you? i hope you are ok,I have been having this sexual feelings torwards you, but i found it difficult to have sex with a strenge woman.

Darling, i love you and i can never do without you. i feel so much about you baby, i looked at your beautiful face every day, i want to have sex,how are we going  to do it,andwhat do you have in mind about me.

Im stiil loving you

forever yours

Ah, scammers and sex. Even though he has this difficulty to have sex with strenge women, he doesn’t say he didn’t do it…

This is the start of a short series on making your browsing on Firefox, which is already a more secure browser than Internet Explorer, but there are some improvements that you can make on your own to increase the security you have when browsing.

The first of those is to download an easy-to-use extension called NoScript. The purpose of it is to take all of those various scripts and objects that you find on a webpage and block them from getting to your browser. Needless to say, it is one of the most popular extensions for Firefox out there, consistently in the top ten in terms of downloads. However, there are some detractors who may ask why you’d want to use this, and also those who wonder how it works.

Why NoScript?

Have you ever wondered why it takes a site seemingly forever to load? Does your browser freeze on you when you’re viewing a page? Are you concerned about picking up a virus from an unfamiliar page on the internet?

A lot of the time, these issues all come back to the same sources - a script; either JavaScript, or possibly an object on the page (Flash, Windows Media Player, and Quicktime for example). Depending on the site you go to, there could be a lot of scripts and objects that get loaded as you visit the page. These could be loading just about anything - from those “most recent visitors” widgets, to Entrecard, ads, site counters, and even click-tracking scripts which are used to find out where people are clicking on a site.

Of course, most of these are scripts of the “friendly” variety, but there are some scripts that can be used to your detriment, by trying to exploit a security flaw, or in some rare instances, try to put a virus on your system.

Why not NoScript?

In the interest of fairness, there are several detractors to this particular extension - they point out that Firefox is already a very safe browser, which is true, but the point of NoScript is to allow you to choose which scripts run on a page. My personal favorite is this plea posted in the reviews section for the addon -

Please, for all that is sacred in the world of Web 2.0, do not use NoScript. Firefox is a secure browser, JavaScript can do no damage to your computer, the browser, your privacy or any personal data.

Of course, he goes on to explain how Cross-site scripting can be used to damage your personal data (by the way, NoScript blocks Cross-site scripting attempts).

Another common complaint about NoScript is that it is somewhat confusing for novice users to use, especially when the visit a site that says that they cannot view the contents because of JavaScript being blocked or disabled on a site. The truth is that NoScript can be a bit cumbersome to use to start out with, but the learning curve is not too steep if you have a basic understanding of menus on a program.

Installation & Getting started

To install NoScript, it is no different to installing any other Addon - simply visit the Mozilla Addons site and install the extension. After restarting Firefox, you’ll likely be directed to the NoScript website to see the change log (you’ll be directed to that site every time that it updates as well - you can turn that particular feature off; instructions are available in the FAQ).

When you visit the next site (except for sites that are already preloaded in the whitelist - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Mozilla Addons, and the author’s sites), you will receive a notification that looks like this -

You may also hear a sound from NoScript telling you that scripts have been blocked on the page. If you want to allow the scripts on a page, simply click the Options menu and choose to either Permanently or Temporarily allow the site’s scripts.

After allowing the scripts, you will need to reload the page to activate them - this is something you will always have to do whenever you select to allow or disallow scripts on a page. Also, when you allow a site, you can revoke the permission by clicking on the NoScript icon in the status bar - which is the blue S in a circle, possibly with a crossed circle on it if there are other scripts on a site which are still blocked.

Also, if you have turned off the notification bar, you can use the S in the status bar to adjust permissions on a site by site basis. This is what the menu looks like after allowing mozilla temporarily (a temporary permission is in italics and a permanent permission is in bold) -

So far, I’ve only shown mozilla.com which does not have any external scripts running on the site.

More advanced usage - sites with external scripts

However, where NoScript comes into its own is when you’re browsing a site that has a lot of external scripts. For this example, I’ll show you my site. First off, this is what a page on my site looks like with NoScript turned off (i.e. allowing all scripts to run globally) -

And then, this is what the site looks like with scripts turned off; you’ll notice the missing elements all in the right hand column - Entrecard, MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog and Alexa.

And, just to show you all the sites that have scripts on here, this is what the menu looks like when I’ve got all scripts blocked (note that this is the status bar menu, and not the information bar menu) -

This is where, for some users, NoScript can become quite tedious. If you want to allow a script to run on a site, you need to both the site that hosts the script (for example, with Entrecard, you need to allow both amazonaws.com (to show the card), and when you refresh the page to show the card, entrecard.com - so that you can drop your card). This is what the widget looks like if you only have amazonaws.com allowed -

As you can see, you can see the card, but the Drop yours link is not there. When you allow entrecard.com and reload the page, you will then see the link to drop your card -

Now, an important thing to know is that even if you have allowed a site to display its scripts, you need to allow the host site to show scripts before you can see things like Entrecard, MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog.

To use a practical example of how this works, this is what SCHWOIT looks like with schwoit.com blocked (note that the Entrecard widget should appear right in the upper-right corner of the site) -

If you view the full size image, you’ll notice that the information on the info bar has changed. Since there are scripts on this site from other sites that I’ve permitted to show scripts, it now says that scripts are partially allowed, and tells you how many sites are allowed out of the number of sites that have scripts on that page. Now, if I go to allow schwoit.com, this is how the window looks -

More advanced features

There are a few more advanced features that are included in NoScript, such as a pseudo blacklist - that is available in the menu under Untrusted. However, since NoScript is a whitelist-based add-on, the only thing that this untrusted list does is prevent a site from appearing in the list you see of sites to allow when you open the Options menu, status bar menu, or right-click menu.

For a full list of features, along with the full range of settings that are available to you in NoScript, you can check out the features page at the author’s site.

Any questions?

If you have any questions about how this all works, or if you have more advice on making the NoScript experience better, feel free to leave a comment.

As always, if you’d like a how-to written up about something, all you need to do is drop me a line via the contact form. If I know how to do it, I’ll write it up, but even if I don’t know how to do it, I will go and figure it out and then write up the how-to on getting it sorted out.

Coming soon

Sometime in the next week or so, I’ll have the other half of the combination that makes (at least) my browsing experience so much more improved - Adblock.