Blogging to DasBlog from Word 2007

April 11, 2007 5:37 PM Comments [13] Posted in DasBlog | Musings

If this works, I've blogged to DasBlog from Word 2007. Why would I want to do this?

Looks like it works fine except for pictures. According to Ken (a developer on the DasBlog team) the Word 2007 implementation of the metaWebLog API's "newMediaObject" method is broken. They are passing a string but calling it an int, and DasBlog is pretty strict.

I can see where I might find myself on a computer that had only Word 2007, and rather than using the Web Interface I might want to blog from Word.

There's also the comfort level - that seems to me to be the most compelling reason. Word is comfortable, and being able to post to one's blog here would be very natural for most writers who live in Word already.

I might set this up for my wife as she's already comfortable with Word and Office. We'll get the picture/media thing worked out and I'll have Mo give it a try.

Comments [13]
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:44:57 PM UTC
Well, I don't know about you, but I do it for the ease of editing that Word gives me. I can't wait for you to dish out your advice on how to make the most of it.

I posted a couple of tweaks that I did to make posting from word easier on my blog at the following links:
http://blog.gadodia.net/index.php/archives/word-2007-startup-options-or-blogging-made-easy/ and http://blog.gadodia.net/index.php/archives/using-macros-to-speed-up-posting-from-ms-word/

Cheers.
Vaibhav
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:48:01 PM UTC
Another reason for why you might want to do this is because you are testing XmlRPC support in DasBlog (to the best of my ability, I think that is what Word 2007 uses for blogging, then again I suck at these things)...
Vaibhav
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:50:02 PM UTC
Well I blog to Wordpress, and have never had any problem with pictures, but that may be because the Wordpress engine might not be as strict as DasBlog.
Vaibhav
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 5:56:15 PM UTC
The reason I really like it is the same reason for why I would rather type out an email on Outlook and send it out when I am ready as compared to typing it onto a web based mail composer. Also, in India, the internet speeds are not all that zippy, so making multiple saves on a web-based interface are cumbersome (for that matter, even the initial loading of the composer is cumbersome).

Which is why doing it from Word rocks....
Vaibhav
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 7:00:54 PM UTC
So did you get the pictures posted there via newMediaObject or via FTP?
Nick
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 7:04:01 PM UTC
I like the idea of word as an editor its very rich, but it tends to mess up link tags(tends to forget to close one) for DasBlog.
Aaron
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 7:19:52 PM UTC
Same problem we had with Subtext and my company's internal blogging software. Pretty annoying stuff since there is a spec to follow. ;)
Ray Booysen
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 7:48:35 PM UTC
Ah yes, the thick versus thin client debate.

on another subject:
I've taken difficult table based designs in Word, saved them in .html, opened them in Macromedia (the "other" IDE) and clicked on the Command, "Strip Off Extraneous Word Stuff". I think that is what it's called. From there I have a very clean html representation of something I could only design in Word.
John A. Davis
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 8:14:02 PM UTC
That's pretty sweet. I've always been leary on doing that because the markup Word produces has always been....sub-par at best. The crazy amounts of HTML markup they would do to create a page was almost infuriating since it was hardcore overkill and only worked in IE.

Nice to see they've changed this in 2007!
Scott
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 8:48:06 PM UTC
Hi Scott,

I made a try when I installed Office 2007, and I was really happy to see it worked. But, there is a problem when you try to post a picture, but it is not an issue in DasBlog.
If you host your DasBlog at Brinkster (just an example), it will probably not work because to post pictures on the blog, you have to specify the FTP stuff (username, pwd, remote folder, etc). This is fine unless you have a username containing a backslash "\". Indeed, at brinkster, the usernames (at least mine) are in the format "brinkster\username" and Word can not publish the pictures using FTP, saying that it could not log-in.
Otherwise, on other installations of DasBlog, it works perfectly !
Again, good job from the DasBlog team !

Regards
Yves Peneveyre
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 8:53:32 PM UTC
Thanks Yves...we know that we can do the FTP stuff and that it works in Word...what we're talking about it getting images and stuff uploaded WITHOUT FTP, via Port 80 and over HTTP. This allows folks to blog within companies that have locked down FTP access, line mine.
Scott Hanselman
Thursday, April 12, 2007 6:58:07 PM UTC
Yeah, it's worth pointing out that the 'broken' bit of blogging from Word 2007 to dasBlog was only the newMediaObject (the bit that allows a user to upload pictures etc without having to configure FTP details) everything else worked OK (text only posts)..

A fix (courtesy of Nick) is now in the latest source.
Ken Hughes
Friday, April 27, 2007 9:35:15 PM UTC
I'm sorry guy ... but I don't understand if Subtext allows to post images or not through port 80 in word 2007. A simple test fails.
If it's possible can somebody be so kindly to write me an e-mail at googlegroups [at] cleanmail . it and explain how
Thanks
Andrea
Andrea
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer’s view in any way.