BlogJet Blog

We’re happy to announce that BlogJet 2.5 if out of beta and the final release is available now. Since the first beta version of BlogJet 2.5 (released last December) there are many improvements which can be classified into five areas: unicode, spelling, pages, categories and tags, and recent posts.

Unicode support

BlogJet now has full Unicode support, so you can write blog posts in any language, and even mix languages.

Spelling

BlogJet 2.5 has a brand new spell checker which supports live spelling and many options (including auto correction).

Pages

Support for creating and editing pages on WordPress, MovableType and TypePad blogs.

Categories and Tags

Support for creating and deleting categories on WordPress blogs and fetching server-side tags.

Recent Posts

BlogJet 2.5 introduces the new modeless Recent Posts window with sidebar, which supports multiple blogs and pages. Under blog titles there are “Posts” and “Pages” items. Also, you can select mutiple posts or pages for bulk deletion.

Release Notes

Here is the list of what’s new in BlogJet 2.5 since the last official release, 2.0.1.4:

• Full unicode support.
• New spell checker with live spelling and many options (including auto correction).
• Clean theme that looks native in Vista and Windows 7.
• View Details in WYSIWYG editor.
• Ability to toggle word wrap in code editor.
• Automatic closing of tags in code editor.
• TypePad image uploading problem solved.
• Support for creating and editing pages on WordPress, MovableType, and TypePad blogs.
• New modeless Recent Posts to support multiple blogs and pages with sidebar. Under blog titles there are “Posts” and “Pages” items.
• You can select type of new posts using “Post”/”Page” buttons in status bar.
• Multiple selection of posts or pages (useful for bulk deletion).
• Ability to create new categories and delete them (WordPress only)
• Show and select server-side tags (WordPress only)

You can download BlogJet 2.5 from its product page. This update is free for registered customers. New users can get a free 30-day trial version.

We’re glad to announce the new beta version of BlogJet 2.5!

What’s New

• Support for creating and editing of pages in WordPress, MovableType, and TypePad blogs.
• New Recent Posts to support multiple blogs and pages with sidebar. Under blog titles there are “Posts” and “Pages” items. Plus you can select type of new posts using “Post”/”Page” buttons in status bar.
• Multiple selection of posts or pages (useful for bulk deletion).

• Ability to create new categories and delete them (WordPress only)
• Show and select server-side tags (WordPress only)

Get it now:

Download BlogJet 2.5.0.12 Beta (4.2 MB)

Let us know about any problems you encounter in BlogJet Beta forum.

We are happy to announce the new beta version of BlogJet 2.5, our blog client for Windows!

What’s New

• “View Details” in WYSIWYG editor.

• Ability to turn on and off word wrap for code editor.
• AutoComplete in code editor.

• Automatic closing of tags in code editor.

• Fixed issue with using Alt key for menu shortcuts.
• Recents Posts window is now modeless. (Note: it has been changed to modeless but currently it doesn’t reflect changing accounts and doesn’t reload published posts, you need to close and reopen it for changes to appear. This will be fixed in the future release)
• TypePad image uploading problem is solved.
• TypePad “Get recent posts” error is fixed.
• Fixed a lot of issues with drafts and WYSIWYG editor.
• Fixed setting default font as “Times New Roman” (font preferences work the same way as in BlogJet 2.0 now).
• Now dictionaries are placed into AppData/Spell folder (fixes Win7/Vista custom dictionary issue). (Note for Beta 2 users: please move custom dictionary files to AppData/DiFolders/BlogJet/Spell)
• Restored showing progress window when posting.

Download BlogJet 2.5.0.10 Beta (4.3 MB)

Let us know about any problems you encounter in BlogJet Beta forum.

The development of BlogJet 2.5 is progressing nicely, and we’re happy to announce a new beta version.

What’s new

• Live Spelling, and a lot of spelling options (including auto correction)

• Fixed not remembering window position and size.

• Fixed overwriting custom HTML/JavaScript settings for BlogJetThis! when installing.

• Fixed treating punctuation as spelling errors.

Special thanks to Jack Vinson and other testers for reporting many of these bugs.

Known Issues

We’ll address the following issues in one of the next beta versions:

• Embedded Flash video clips (including YouTube) appear as black boxes (affects only appearance in editor, posting works well).

• Windows Vista/7 only: you need to launch BlogJet as administrator from Windows Explorer to add words to dictionary.

Download BlogJet 2.5.0.4 Beta (4.3 MB)

Please report any bugs you encounter in our beta forum.

We’re happy to announce a holiday present for you — a public beta of BlogJet 2.5!

What’s New

• Full Unicode support.
• New spell checker (you can download dictionaries here).
• Clean theme that looks awesome in Vista and Windows 7.

Download BlogJet 2.5 Beta (4.3 MB)

Full Unicode support is a big deal. You can write posts in any language and even mix languages:

Development and Next Releases

Now that we released 2.5 beta, the transition to a new code base (with most core parts completely rewritten) and a new development environment is done, so we’re ready to continuously improve BlogJet and release new versions faster.

BlogJet Beta Forum

We’re starting to be more open about BlogJet development, and replacing the closed beta forum with an open one. Please join us in BlogJet Beta Forum. You can report bugs in beta versions there.

Happy New Year! Enjoy the new BlogJet!

One of the updates to Firefox 3.5 broke BlogJetThis! extension: it worked only once, and after that Firefox showed an error (NS_ERROR_ALREADY_INITIALIZED).

We have updated the extension. You can download it from BlogJetThis! support page.

Thanks to everyone who reported the issue!

We are happy to announce a small bug-fix release of BlogJet. It fixes connection issues with some Blogger blogs, and includes an updated extension for Firefox 3.x.

We’d like to apologize for not releasing the fix for Blogger issue earlier. We were transitioning our code base to an updated development environment and rewriting core parts of the program, thus changes on Blogger’s servers caught us in an unfortunate time.

Enjoy the new build, and expect more to come in the not-so-distant future!

You can download the new version from http://www.codingrobots.com/blogjet/download/. There’s no need to update if you didn’t have issues described above.

Sadly, blogging APIs have never been the first-class citizens in blog engines. Sure, most people just use web interfaces to post to their blogs, but there are a lot of people who prefer desktop applications like BlogJet.

WordPress 2.6 is going to join Movable Type in discriminating against blog clients—they are going to disable XML-RPC APIs by default. Users will have to enable them manually. (Movable Type requires you to use special API key instead of your password.)

Daniel Jalkut, developer of MarsEdit, the excellent blog client for Mac OS X, has a good post on this in his blog:

In my opinion, an entire class of problems with WordPress (and other blogging systems) stems from this interface bifurcation. Establishing a single interface to WordPress would be comparable to the “pin code + card” interface at your bank. You pass through it by car, on foot, and even at the counter when they ask you to swipe before doing any transaction. If you’ve only got one “real API” that touches the critically important data, then you’ve only got one door to secure. Furthermore, when all views into the blog are required to share the same API, suddenly none of them is deprived of functionality that the other has. Imagine if the API that the web interface uses to access all features of a blog could be just as easily employed by MarsEdit or any other application you authorized. The end result would be lots less work “playing catch up” for the XMLRPC and Atom developers, and more time focusing on innovative and cool features for all blog users.

Read it now and come back.

Did I mention that most blogging clients (except for one) are made by tiny software companies, and that they spend a huge amount of time answering to support emails from their users who have various problems configuring their server software?

We do our best to make our software as easy to configure and use as possible: just enter your blog address, login, and password, and let the program do configuration as needed. Disabling API by default will throw this work away; it’s a way to increase the number of support requests, therefore, the amount of time we spend on support rather than perfecting our software.

Time to move on and develop other types of software? Or make our own blog engines? ;)

P.S. I have nothing against WordPress developers; actually they have one of the best implementations of the API, and I want to thank them for their work. However, I do not understand how disabling API will increase WordPress security.

Update: WordPress developers handled this issue with care: WP provides a meaningful error message and instructions on how to enable API. Thanks again, guys!