Franz Kelsch on Tech

When the Apple iPad first came out, I was doubtful that it would be a success.  Certainly it could not replace a “real computer”.  Over time I have been proven wrong and iOS and the Apps continue to improve, it is become far more capable and can do many of the tasks previously only possible with a computer.

One example is blogging.  Doing this on the go, away for you computer was never that useful.  I have previously created blogs using on my iPhone using the WordPress App (free).  However there was no way to add photos and typing on an iPhone is not so easy.

The WordPress App, now with version 2.82 for the iPad and the iPhone allows you to add photos already on the device.  To get your photos onto the iPad is easy with the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit.

This kit comes with two similar devices, one to connect a USB cable and the other with a SD card slot. The USB adapter can be used to import photos from a camera connected via a USB cable, including an iPhone.  The other is to read directly a SD card from a camera.  Either you connect the camera via USB or insert the SD card then plug that device the iPad.  The iPad photo app automatically launches and allows you to import the photos from the SD card. Switching now to the WordPress App for the iPad, you can write your blog entry and  select the photo to insert into the text of the blog entry. Real simple.

The updated WordPress App for the iPhone also allows you to also insert images or video into the blog entry but only those taken with the iPhone.  The only other way to get a photo on your iPhone is syncing with a computer, but if you have a computer with you, you would just use it directly.

So cool! There is a new Word press app for the iPhone that allows me to write or edit a posting to a WordPress blog. I am using it for this entry.

Too bad it does not yet support images from the iPhone camera

I have mostly relied on the tools offered in WordPress to create and edit my blog postings but I have always wanted more. Since I have Adobe Creative Suite 3, I also have a copy of Adobe Contribute, which allows you to do direct editing of websites and blogs. Although this software has some nice features, such as the ability to insert tables, I have found using it to be rather annoying. If I try to edit an existing post, all the paragraphs are run together. It just seems to do havoc to the html code in the existing post.

I did stumble upon a neat plugin for FireFox, called ScribeFox. By clicking on the icon in the tool bar, I get a split screen, with the upper part of the FireFox window showing the blog and the lower one where I can create or edit a post. See below for what the input screen looks like. I did find there were no easy tools for setting the image attributes, such as the size. This software may not have all the bells and wistles but it is an elegant and straightforward approach to creating and editing blog entires. Also when I go back and use the built in tools in WordPress, I don’t get a scrambled mess like I do with Adobe Contribute.

I in the processing of creating several blog entries at our family blog for our recent vacation to Europe.  We went on a cruise with some friends and they wanted to know how to get a copy of the entry.  I had not thought about that before being a peson who has evolved to hardly ever printing anything and doing most things online.  A little research showed a great WordPress plugin called “wp-print” that did the trick.  You can add a link at the bottom of the entry that the viewer can click on get a print friendly view of the blog. This is much better than just using the browser to print since you would lose any styling from the CSS.

I doubt I will actually print things to paper, but I did experiment and used this method to create a PDF.  That is a great way to archive your blog entry.  Things online tend to disapear with time.  Who will keep up some blogs year from now.  If you are blogging as way to keep a history, this might be a good way.  Here is an example of a PDF I created for our visit to Florence.  I trimmed many of the pages from the PDF to reduce the file size since this is only for illustration purposes since the full 13 pages, with photos, produced a 7.5 mb PDF file. Florence and Pisa Blog PDF

Want to try it out, click the link below for this blog entry.