Screenshots and Update for VB2004
Made some major headway in the past 24 hours, so I thought I'd show off where we're at so far. As soon as Jamie Cansdale gets back from his week-long ski trip (lucky bastard), I can wrap up the VS.NET integration code. Just so you know, VisualBlogger 2004 will operate in two modes: Standalone and IDE Integrated. You'll be able to use this program just like Microsoft Word if you want, or you can dock it in the same place as the Output window in VS.NET, and blog from the dev environment. You could even use it as a real simple HTML editor if you want. We don't have any table support yet (don't know if we ever will) but you could always add those in manually.
OK, now for the screenshots. The first one is of the main screen. I'll let VB2004 herself tell you about that herself..
The next dialog shows the cross-posting options. I want to add client-side category caching, but right now, I snag the categories from the web service ever time you hit the right-arrow button. If you only select items from the first list, it will post your entry without any categories. If you select options from the list on the right, it will post to each blog with the specified category.
This screenshot is of the code formatter. It's just a plain textbox to post code, and the 3 buttons on the right specify the syntax. It support C#, VB, and ASPX / XML / Config files. I may add code snippet library support at a later date, but it's not planned for the first release. You can see samples of the output in several os my previous posts.
Finally, the last screenshot is of our feedback form. Today I installed and configured Axosoft OnTime 3.0, and we're now using it as our central bug and feature management system. This form submits customer feedback right from that central system. When an exception is thrown, you will get an option to send error data to us. If you choose yes, the bottom box will be automatically populated with properties of the System.Exception class for further troubleshooting.
There is much more that I want to do before V1 goes live. After I'm done cleaning up the codebase, I'm going to hand it off to Brady Gaster, who is going to abstract the post model and implement BlogEngineProviders for me. Then we're going to add support for all the major blogging engines (dasBlog, Movable Type, Blogger, etc.) At that time, you'll be able to edit existing posts, since the existing .Text SimpleBlogService web service does not support getting existing posts to edit.
Well, that's about it from here. Hope you like it. It will be done soon, I promise. It really has made me much more willing to blog now that I don't have to log into 6 different web-based consoles. I hope it helps you guys too.