SharpMT 2.5 adds support for Plug-In’s that support the ISharpMTExtension interface – the 2.5 release includes a Plug-In that will search Amazon for a book using an author’s name and a book’s title. Once a book is selected, the URL of the book at Amazon is inserted into your current draft. The ISharpMTExtension interface is described in a text file that’s in the Plug-In directory and any .NET developer can write a Plug-In for SharpMT, with or without their own Windows Forms…
Download SharpMT 2.5: EXE | MSI
Read: SharpMT FAQ
Screenshots: 1 | 2 | 3
That’s about the extent of it: Plug-In are now active and working. The Amazon Book Search Plug-In and a sample Plug-In are in the SharpMT\Plug-In directory. No Plug-Ins are loaded as part of the install, and while they are placed in the SharpMT\Plug-In directory, they can be loaded from anywhere. For .NET developers, the SharpMTExtension.dll (which is required for the 1.0.0.0 version of the ISharpMTExtension interface) is included in the SharpMT directory, there is a read me of sorts in the SharpMT\Plug-In directory and you’ll also find the C# source to the ExamplePlugIn.dll in the Plug-In directory. That should be enough to get you started, but email me with any questions that you might have.
D’oh! That’s the link to version 1.3!
And the MSI link is broken :(
Oops!
You might want to change your link for the .NET framework. It’s moved. :)
Thanks for the great program. I love it. :)
DoH! See, that’s why I didn’t want to include it but TuCows won’t rate an app without a link to it! Bah!
How do I use sharpMT to edit posts? Whenever I post something, then edit it, and re-post, it actually creates a new (dublicate) post. That is not the behavior I was expecting! Am I missing something?
AH HA! I was doing it all wrong… you have to double click the “Blog Links” window of the post you wish to edit, not pull up the smt file of the post. Sorry to spam the comments! This software is excellent.
Great app Randy. But a newbie question- my blog is on TypePad and the cgi-bin path is http://www.typepad.com/t/api
how can I configure this into #MT? It just gives me a 404 and it looks like it’s trying to append whatever is entered into this path to the web server name.
Got me – it should be the same settings that TypePad tells everyone else (i.e. w.Bloggar/Zempt/MTClient/etc) to use.
Can a current TypePad/#MT user out there able to lend a helping hand for configuration?
Let’s try this again … my browser wasn’t letting me post a message earlier (silly nightly Firefox builds).
To get it going on TypePad, use the following settings:
Web Server Name: http://www.typepad.com
CGI-BIN Path: /t/api
Put in your username and password and away you go!
This is a great app! All the features I’ve been looking for in a posting client!
You know I thought of that but how will it post to the correct blog if you have multiple blogs on TypePad?
Thanks for the help!
Never mind- stupid question as #MT lets you select the blog from a list. It’s working now! Thanks a bunch.
Well MT3 DE has been released, randy ure a developer go grab ure copy and write us a lovely upgrade to SharpMT please ? :)
Heh, not any time soon ;) I’m sorta waiting to see how well it shakes out and whether or not the current release is still compatible. The only thing I had hoped to see in MT3 is Unicode support via XML-RPC, but even that’s still a ? right now.
I AM planning a 3.0 release of #MT, but I figure it will be more of an upgrade to Whidbey, seeing as that’s the next best feature set from MS… in theory, I’ll be able to remove most of the third party controls and use the built in .NET ones (from 2.0).
What’s Whidbey ? Well I tried out #MT with MT3D and found the following http://blog.arvind-satya.com/archives/2004/05/check_that_spel.php
Read the para starting UPDATE:
Whidbey is Visual Studio.NET 2005 and version 2.0 of the .NET Framework – basically it includes a bunch of new controls and widgets and some other Geek Goodness.
So 3 outta 4 worked, eh? Interesting. Odds are there’s something “odd” going on, like they’ve changed the order or a parameter of their XML and now it’s gone all hokey in some situations… I remember seeing strange things with MT2 when being hosted by different servers… the XML that MT returns is rather, um, sucky.
Anyway, at some point I hope to be able to set up a test system here and give it a whirl, but given the rest of the chaos swirling around me (mostly the packing and moving aspects) I don’t know when I can get to it.
I just tried SharpMT for the first time… fantastic. Anyway, I am running 3.0D and it works flawlessly for me.
BTW If we can start requesting stuff, one thing that would be excellent is if you could minimize to tray but have the application open all the time. On my PC opening the app is a horror and takes ages to load much prefer it if I ran it at startup but minimized to tary, please ? :-)
You can always make requests!
I do wonder about this one. There is a minimize to the systray (under options) and you can change the properties of a shortcut to Run as Minimized… so I’m not sure what the feature is. Lemme know…
Whoops never saw the systray feature thanks :)
Hi Randy! The tool looks great, but I was wondering if it supports https connections — my server on supports secure connections to the authenticated movable type pieces (mt.cgi, mt-xmlrpc.cgi, etc).
Is there a setting I’m missing?
Actually, I don’t think there’s a setting for that right now – I’m pretty sure everything goes through HTTP. I believe the HTTP classes DO offer SSL support – it would be a question of making that setting visible and then implimenting it. I’ll throw it on the list of things to do for upcoming releases.
Thank you!!
Just wanted to tell you I’m now running Pocket SharpMT under WM2003 SE on a VGA PPC and it works great in both portrait and landscape. All I had to do was add the “HiDPI Aware” tag to the EXE as per MS. If you just add this yourself and re-release it will be fully SE compliant. It’s sweet using it in VGA landscape with the Stowaway IR keyboard. Better than a laptop. Kudos for a following the rules!
Cool that it works, but what’s this HiDPI Aware tag? That’s the first I’ve heard of it: for the portait versus landscape displays, I just add a scroll bar and handle the scrolling :)
Glad that it works thought – with the external keyboard, Blog entries should be easy!
From the MSDN website:
Legacy Support
High-resolution Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs also provide an emulation layer for backwards compatibility with old applications. With this emulation layer, the display appears to legacy applications as a traditional 240 x 320 display; however, the operating system scales all the graphics to fit the actual display size. Fonts are linearly scaled in height, using the method described earlier in this document, in the section titled “Creating DPI-Aware Fonts.”
The following factors control whether the device should use the emulation layer for an application:
Subsystem version information in the executable header.
HI_RES_AWARE custom data in the executable’s resources.
The subsystem version information is set during the linking phase of compilation. By default, applications compiled with the Windows Mobile 2003 and 2002 SDKs set this value to 4.20 or lower; in future releases of the Pocket PC SDK, this value will be set to 4.21 and higher. In general, applications with a subsystem version of 4.20 or lower are considered legacy applications and will go through the emulation layer.
The HI_RES_AWARE resource item can be used to override this behavior for legacy applications. The operating system looks for this special resource item when the legacy application loads. The following procedure adds it to your program, using Microsoft eMbedded Visual C++.
Note Alternatively, you can add the following line to your resource file directly:
HI_RES_AWARE CEUX {1} // To turn off the emulation layer
To add the HI_RES_AWARE resource item to your program
From the Insert menu, select Resource.
Click the Custom button.
Enter CEUX for the resource type.
Set the resource data to 01 00.
Click the Properties tab.
Rename the item to “HI_RES_AWARE”, including quotes. (If the quotes are omitted, HI_RES_AWARE will be incorrectly defined as a numeric value in resource.h, and you will need to go back and delete the line from resource.h.)
Deselect the external file checkbox.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwm2k3/html/dpi_awareness.asp
To make Pocket #MT Hi-res aware I just did the last section from “From the INsert menu”. Works like a charm in both portrait and landscape VGA.
Except that P#MT uses the .NET Compact Framework with VS.NET 2003 :)
Hi, just installed pocket sharp… (hp ipaq 2210, pocket pc 2003, latest 1.10 bios).
However it doesnt start up…. any ideas?
thanks
Rachael
Nice update. My only question is since we have to use the .net framework, upon install that brings some .net user into the picture in XP. That forces the user to have to “login” each time they boot up xp. In other words on my laptop I installed sharpmt and the framework. I never had to “pick a user” before, but now I do. After uninstalling the .net framework but having to give up the ability to use SharpMT, XP boots right up without having to pick a user.
I assume it is because the framework install creates a second user. I however cannot delete it. So I wonder if there is a way to still use SharpMT but bypass the need to click the login. It’s minor you know, but it’s just a matter of turning the pc on and walking away, or standing there and waiting for the welcome screen only to click my name and wait for the rest of the pc to load. This is an XP pro and XP home issue.
Any thoughts? I dealt with it on my desktop, but I would like to see if there’s a way to avoid it. ;)
Jessica, my XP Pro did the same thing back when I first installed the .NET Framework. Just go into the User Account prefs and disable the welcome screen, if I recall correctly. Silly that it (re)enables that, but oh well.
Congrats on the new job, Randy! I’m envious!
Been gone awhile, but just thought of one possible “feature” for a future #MT: when posting to the server, #MT disables all controls and displays the busy cursor. Would it be possible to return the normal cursor if it’s over one of the tabs (Main, Advanced, Preview) so we can still switch tabs while it’s posting? Or for that matter, if we have multiple entries up (yeah, I know, you hate MDI :p ) at least be able to switch to an entry that is *not* being posted?
Um, oh, thought of another :)
Clicking the ‘View Site’ button uses the system browser, but clicking links from the Preview tab only uses IE. I realize the Preview tab uses the WebBrowser control, but I had no idea it forced usage of IE externally as well. Not sure if that’s something that can be addressed or not?
I am trying to use pocket #mt with a personal webserver. I sync via ActiveSync and this allows me to surf the web when the ipaq is in the cradle. But apprently it can’t find my ‘localhost’ (127.0.0.1). Since MT is installed in this server, I can’t reach mt-xmlrpc.cgi. Any ideas? Thanks.
@Rach – Not a clue… the only thing you might want to check is if there’s a SP for the .NET framework… it’s always came up for me on my test machines (when I had them!)
@Jessica – Not too sure on it needing an account, but I do know that there’s the “fast user switching” that includes a “show the ‘select a user on startup'” option that can be turned off easily enough. I’ve never had to pick a user and I run with XP at home, so there should be a few settings to twiddle with. Also, there’s Tweak UI (from Microsoft) that will auto log you in with a password, if you add one…
@Tylan – Thanks on the congrads and for the feature input… I’ll add them to the list, but right now I’m still without a reliable ‘net option at home and am just compiling a list of to-do’s for #MT…
@Paulo – I would try localhost as the server name and confirm that the path to the CGI-BIN module is still correct… it should work, as far as I know, but I’ve never tried it with a on-device web server.
Any idea whether #MT compiles/runs under Mono (Ximian’s open source/cross-platform implementation of .NET)? I’m going to be switching to Mac OSX soon, but I’d hate to have to give up my favorite blogging tool!
Probably too simple a question, but I haven’t found it in the FAQs…
Are the desktop & Pocket PC versions compatible with http://www.Blogger.com?
If so what do I use for Web Server and CGI-BIN Path?
– Joe Levi
Nope – they both are not. Sorry!
Any plans to do so? Suggestions for other programs that are almost as nice as yours?
w.Bloggar and Zempt both support multiple blog engines, but I dunno that they support Blogger… I have no plans to support anything other than MT (at this time) b/c that’s what I use… if I change my own engine to anything (i.e. dasBlog) then it might be a possibility, but not likely.
w.Bloggar and Zempt do both support blogger.com (I tried ’em both when I had a blogger.com site). I believe Ecto (windows version) does as well.
Looks like I’m going to make the jump to WordPress, just a matter of when I find the time to do it and manage to import my MT blog into it, since I keep the blog on my HTML root directory rather than an /mt/ or whatever.
Here’s hoping Randy switches to WP too so he’ll implement support into #MT (although I guess a name-change would be in order then, eh? :p~ Maybe #Blog or something lol)
Heh. Not a chance of me going to WordPress… I’m very much against PHP and MySQL as they are just as kludgy on Windows as PeRL and BerkleyDB. If I go to anything it would be dasBlog, which is ASP.NET and XML based… and then, yes – #MT would be going along for the ride :)
My space is on a debian server, so ASP.NET is out of the question. Hell, my admin is paranoid of XML even; I begged for months to get XML::Parser installed and it never happened. At least with WordPress I can use PHP’s built-in XML parsing.
I did it. I made the move last week to WordPress. I totally love it, it’s soooooo much easier to deal with than MT, not to mention faster. But I miss being able to compose offline with #MT :(
Randy: Are there any plans to do something similar to ZemptThis, a right click/context menu extension to IE, so that I can select the link/text, and have it embedded into SharpMT? It’s the #1 most used feature for me on a daily basis, and the #1 reason I don’t regularly use SharpMT. Here’s the link to ZemptThis:
http://www.simmonsconsulting.com/wordpress/index.php?p=113
Beats the hell outta me – I hadn’t heard about this until now… I mean there is a Blog This type thing for RSS readers like RSS Bandit and SharpReader (readers that support IBlogExtension) but this sound more like it’s an IE plug-in than a #MT enhancement…
I do have to point out that if you right mouse click on a link, select “Copy Shortcut” you can go to #MT and paste it in the Links window… might be the easiest “workaround” for now.
Thanks Randy. Would love to see it get on your feature list. It’s super handy if the subject of the post is something you browsed to, rather than read in an RSS feed.
Randy: SharpMT and Pocket SharpMT are great. How about adding GPS support for Geoblogging?
Thanks! GPS support? What exactly do you mean?
So I think it would be really cool to stamp individual blog entries with location information (Lat/long coordinates), see also http://www.blogmapper.com/
I think this would really become intersting with PocketSharpMT as well.
I am working on a project called “egraffiti” that aims to examine what happens when people are able to leave lcoation based messages that can be viewed through a map interface.
Not sure how it might be used, but perhaps:
“The Service at this restaurant sucks” or “This corner is where I met your mother”
http://egraffiti.net/
Maybe this will help explain.
Grrrreat product!
Just a small suggestion, could you add a “Current Time” button that would set the “Authored On” to the current datetime (when clicked)? I find it a pain to set the datetime when working offline (amd not using server time).
Actually, I think you can do that through the Preferences – tell it that you don’t want to use current time and when a new draft is created, it gets it’s time stamp there.
I’m aware of that Preference setting. What I meant, is to be able to set the current time as the time stamp when I’m done with the draft, without having to increment the time manually (tap tap tap).
Example: I start offline on the draft at 9:00:01 am (and the draft is time-stamped as such), and after 10 minutes of painful scratching (I’m slow) on the iPaq, I’m done with the entry. Being a stickler for accuracy, I then manually set the time stamp to 9:10:01 am… Is there an easier way to do this?
You could leave on the server time as the default and before you save it, turn it off on the draft… when you do that, it defaults to the current time…
Didn’t know that behavior. Thanks for the tip.
Hi Randy
The tip doesn’t seem to work with Pocket SharpMT. The time stamp is always stuck at the time the draft is first started. Toggling the use server time checkbox doesn’t help.
Hm. Then I’ll add it to the feature request list :)
With MT 3.11 release, I would recommend that adding Unicode posting support…
Well, it’s never been up to me – I don’t even know it’s up to MT, since they handle it fine… It’s always been MT-XMLRPC that has blocked it – do you know if they fixed that?
I think it does. Because I created an entry using MT interface and then retrieved the post in Zempt. Zempt doesnt support Unicode but it does show every Unicode character as double bytes. I then modified the content by inserting some ASCII characters and posted it back to MT using XML-RPC interface. I then went to my test site, and Unicode characters are still preserved.
Nice! Bout time they got around to that… of course, I don’t run 3.x yet, so there might be some testing issues with it – also how to deal with people that aren’t running with 3.x and still want to use Latin-characters… internally, I’ve switched to UTF8 (and back again) at least 4 different times b/c of the RPC layer… .NET has made that switch easy, tho :)
Hmm, I don’t think it’s not bad for asking user to select a MT version in account properties. Or try dumping all characters as Unicode to older versions and see what happens :-) I will be more than happy to provide a MT 3.11 testbed site for you to play with.
I’ve installed Pocket SharpMT on my old iPAQ 3870 (WinMobile updated) and works fine over GPRS posting to .TEXT Multiblog. Now I’m trying to use it with my Qtek2020 (CPU Intel PXA263) over GPRS to post to the same blog; the application installs correctly but cannot reach the server… any idea? Maybe it depends on the CPU? thanks in advance…
sorry, I use the iPAQ3870 to post over WiFi, not GPRS…
Well, typically GPRS has a bit more configuration and proxy servers when connecting to the ‘net, when compared to WiFi. First question is can you get to other web sites using PIE. If so, did you have to set up anything special for proxies? Second, who are you using for GPRS and what type of plan to you have? Historically, carriers have limited what a user can and can’t send over GPRS. T-Mo used to limit their T-Zone plan to only include WML/WAP. The might have opened that up a bit more to include HTML, but does it allow XML?
The CPU shouldn’t matter (thanks to the .NET CF) but the connection doesn’t sound like it’s happily letting data through…
thanks Randy, now everything works fine.
I’ve got a colleague try Pocket Sharp on the same machine/connection as my Qtek and everything was OK. Then I’ve cleaned up the machine (too many betas…) and now everything is OK…
Now I’m trying to post images on the same .Text multiblog, but cannot figure out which is the right configuration.
On .text multiblogs the single blog gallery path are as follows: “http://servername/virtual directory//images/servername/username/…
I cannot get the first part of the path, I get as Blog url “http://servername/virtual directory/username/” whereas I should have “http://servername/virtual directory/”.
Any idea ? thanks in advance
Um. #MT only works with MT, as far as I know… was it working with .Text before?
Pocket Sharp works fine (posting & categories… now I’m testing others functions)
Ah neat. Well, odds are, the other functions won’t – a number of them are using MT extensions that “probably” won’t work on .Text… I think. Obviously it hasn’t been tried really!
I’re right, Pocket Sharp gets the categories from .Text and correctly posts items in selected categories. Everything else (excerpts, extended entries,…) doesn’t seem to work.
Probably metablogapi.aspx doesn’t expose all the services… I’m not sure, I’m only a user not a developer…
Anyway I’ll use Pocket Sharp for posting thanks to Randy :-)
Unicode, Unicode, Unicode.. Please ;-)
Love the app (and I’ve got a block post to prove it! http://tinyurl.com/675g8 Anyway, very quick suggestion:
In the next version, please auto-conver single quotes in the TITLE attribute to &# 39; and double quotes to &# 34;. This would save me a lot of time and would be proper.