We have submitted our latest update to Apple – Blogsy 4.2.3. A couple of services changed their APIs which caused problems for Blogsy and there is also one bug fix in this update.
1. Tumblr Authentication Problem: If you tap on the Tumblr button to set up your Tumblr blog you get a “Failed Request” message. This is caused because Tumblr changed the API so the “Out-of-band” value of the “oauth_callback” parameter are no longer supported. We have updated Blogsy to reflect this change so when this update comes out users will be able to set up their Tumblr blogs.
2. SquareSpace 5 not working: You can’t set up our publish to a SquareSpace 5 blog with Blogsy. This problem is caused because SquareSpace changed the XML-RPC URL from “http://www.squarespace.com/process/service/PostInterceptor” to “http://five.squarespace.com/process/service/PostInterceptor”. We have updated Blogsy to reflect this change so when this update comes out users will be able to set up their Tumblr blogs.
3. URL Scheme Bug: When you use the URL scheme to send post content to Blogsy Blogsy currently overwrites the content you have open in Blogsy instead of starting a new post. This update fixes that so it will move any post you currently have open to the local draft list and start a new post using the content you sent to Blogsy. Until this update comes out please go into Blogsy and tap on the plus button “+” then “New Post” to start a new post before you send content to Blogsy through the URL scheme.
Partial Image Embed Code – If there is a partial image embed code in the HTML then when you try to publish your post Blogsy will just close. This will no longer happen after this update. Until this update comes out you can resolve this problem by flipping to the HTML Side and deleting any partial image embed codes.
Tistory Blog – If the publish date is set to automatic then the categories do not get posted with the blog post when the post is published. This only effects Tistory blogs. Until this update comes out you can set the date of the post and the categories will get published with the post.
[Changed]
German Language – “Automatisch” changed to “Autom.”
Blogger Page – If you set the Post Type as a “Page” in the Post Info. menu then left Blogsy and Blogsy got cleared from memory then when you came back you would not be able to open that page from the local draft list. This only effected Blogger blog users. If you are a Blogger user you should not set the Post Type to “Page” until right before you post that page to your blog.
Load 10 More Pages – If you tapped on the “Load 10 More Pages” option for your online pages the menu would just close. This only effected online pages and not posts.
Tumbr attachment view – Blogsy didn’t close the attachment view when switching from the Rich Side to the HTML Side.
Tumblr attachment clear – If you had attached images to a Tumblr post in the attachment box then tapped on that same Tumblr blog in the Online list the images would disappear from the attachment box.
iPad Photo Library – If you first opened the iPad photo library panel then an album then switched between the Envelope and Direct upload views and tried to drag an image into an envelope the image would drag in as a blank square. If you tried to upload it this way Blogsy could freeze or crash.
German Language – If the blog title was long it would partially overlap with the publish date and time.
Other apps now have another option for sending content to Blogsy. For quite sometime Blogsy has been using the following URL scheme – blogsy:”URL” – which allows other apps to send a website to Blogsy and Blogsy will open that website in its built-in browser. This is what is used if you set up the Blogsy Bookmarklet (find this in the Settings menu in Blogsy). Also, the Mr. Reader app uses this URL scheme so you can send blog posts to Blogsy.
Now we have added a new URL scheme – blogsy://post?entry=”post body” – which if other apps use it will allow you to send information from the other app directly into Blogsy and it will start a new post and put that information into the new post.
Here is an example of this.
Notice that there is content with no HTML tags along with some content with HTML tags. You can send content to Blogsy that has HTML tags or not. (We made this dummy program to test the URL scheme.)
When you send it to Blogsy you will get a message asking how you want to bring it into Blogsy.
Rich Side – This is what we are sure most people will choose in most cases. When you choose this option the content will be pulled in and parsed and if there is HTML in it then Blogsy will use that HTML. If there is no HTML then Blogsy will add the appropriate HTML.
HTML Side – We added this option because if the content you are importing has HTML in it that is not correct this can cause problems in Blogsy. If this is the case then you can choose the HTML Side option to open it on the HTML Side then fix the HTML before flipping to the Rich Side.
Markdown – If the content you are sending to Blogsy has Markdown in it then you need to choose the Markdown option. When you choose the Markdown option Blogsy will parse the Markdown and convert it to normal HTML so the dragging in of images and videos works. If you choose Rich Side or HTML Side then the Markdown will be wrapped in HTML tags and therefore will not work.
We added versions in Blogsy. This means you can open an earlier version of your blog post.
To get to older versions tap on the plus button “+” for your local drafts then tap on the clock and arrow icon to the right of the local draft title.
You will see the 20 most recent saves Blogsy has done. Blogsy is regularly saving you posts and you will see this in this view.
We also decided to add a save button in Blogsy. We realize that this is not the standard iOS way but we got quite a few requests for this so we just decided to add it so users feel more comfortable. Blogsy is regularly saving your post but you can tap on this button to force another save whenever you want.
We made a couple of other UI changes to make things easier for users for find and use.
We moved the “Default Photo Upload Location” setting from the Settings menu to the Post Info. menu. This means that now it will be easy to change this when you change the blog you are posting to.
We also changed the location of the button to get between the “Direct” drag in view and the “Envelope” view in Blogsy. Now it will always be at the top of the iPad photo library panel.
We got quite a few requests from high-end bloggers asking for Markdown support so we have added it to Blogsy.
If you want to use Markdown then you first need to turn it on in the Settings menu. Settings -> General Settings -> Markdown.
When Markdown support is turned on there will be a Markdown icon on the dock.
Tap on the Markdown icon in the dock to open the Markdown editor.
When you first open the Markdown editor you will see a full white screen. Tap on the screen to open the keyboard. As you can see in the image above we have added an extended keyboard for Markdown.
Write your post using Markdown or paste your Markdown in. When you are done typing tap on the “Done” button in the extended keyboard.
Blogsy will convert your Markdown to standard HTML so you can then drag images and videos into your post if you would like and publish your post to your blog.
*** In the version of Blogsy currently found in the App Store you can write Markdown on the HTML Side and publish from the HTML Side without flipping to the Rich Side and the Markdown will be sent to your blog.
Satyr (Blogsy 4.2) can now be found on the App Store.
This is the full list of the things we have added, changed and fixed in this update. But I will be doing blog posts each day explaining and showing with screenshots the features we have added and the changes we made.
[Added]
Markdown Support – Add support for writing and converting Markdown.
HTML Keyboard – Added option to turn on an extended keyboard for typing HTML.
History – Keeps versions of your post so you can revert back to a previous version.
Save Button – We added a save button so you can save a version.
Add URL scheme – If other apps add support for this URL scheme then you can send content from another app into Blogsy to create a blog post.
Resize to thumbnail – When you drag in an image to your blog post from the iPad photo library iOS provides Blogsy with an address to where that image can be found on the iPad. If the image can no longer be found at that address Blogsy will display a message and resize the images to 100 by 100 which can’t be found to make it easier to find which images have the problem and need to be deleted and dragged in again.
Added Draft setting for TypePad blogs.
Added parsing when fetching Joomla posts to check for special HTML entities and converting them to plain text.
Triple “+” tap – If you tap three times quickly on the plus button “+” it will move the current open post to the local draft list and start a new post.
[Changed]
User Interface (UI) changes.
Moved button for the (direct/envelope) upload option to the top of the iPad Photo Library panel.
Moved Local drafts from the Post Info. menu to the Plus button menu.
Moved Online post list from Post Info. menu to the Online menu next to the Plus button menu.
Moved the Default Photo Upload Location setting option for the General Settings menu to the Post Info. menu.
Search bars – Changed the style of all the search bars at the top of the panels.
Vimeo – Blogsy now detects and uses original video dimensions of dragged in video.
Posterous – The Posterous API no longer functions and Posterous will be shutting down soon so we removed Posterous from Blogsy.
Changed from Crittercism to Crashlytics to track crashes.
Switching Button – For UI reasons the option to enable/disable the switching button in the General Settings button was removed.
Tumblr – Tumblr changed their OAuth so Tumblr users could not set up their blogs in Blogsy. We have updated our code to work with that new Tumblr OAuth.
Instagram – Instagram changed their OAuth so OAuth users could not set up their Instagram accounts in Blogsy. Instagram reverted back to the OAuth for a few weeks then will change to this new OAuth again. We changed the code so you will be able to set up your account with the old or new OAuth.
iPad Photo Library Refresh – If you drag an image from the web browser and save it to your iPad photo library then Blogsy will refresh that view so you will see the new image right away instead of you first having to tap on another dock item to force a refresh.
[Bug Fixes]
Link crash fixed – If you tried to create a link and you pasted in a URL with a blank space at the beginning of the URL Blogsy would crash.
Freezing problem fixed – If Blogy could not find the photo on the iPad/Photostream at the address that iOS provided then Blogsy would freeze. Now Blogsy will display a message saying that the image(s) cannot be found at the address iOS provided.
WordPress tag refresh fixed – When you created a new tag Blogsy would not refresh the list of tags.
Invalid HTML crash fixed – Blogsy would crash when trying to post or if you tapped on the Post. Info. button and there was mismatched brackets (< and >) in the HTML.
Flickering bug fixed – If your blog sends back an error message you get an option to email that to us. After choosing one of the options in this menu the screen would flicker until you cleared Blogsy from memory and launched it again.