amit
amit
I have been working with David Merfield on a little side project. The idea started simple - what if there was a simple posting interface for Blot? In extension, something that one can use to write and publish a post to Dropbox. Blot is simple as-is for writing and posting (it’s all file... www.amitgawande.com
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jack
jack

@amit Nice! Created a post already. Need to play a bit more.

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kaa
kaa

@amit Very, very nice. My use of Blot won’t really make use of this but I can absolutely see the appeal. My only comment would be to add Markdown highlighting, apart from that, perfect.

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amit
amit

@jack Great! Do play with it. Let me know what works and what doesn't. I have been using it for writing all posts - both short and long - myself. Been working well for me. I primarily needed something simpler and cleaner for writing longer posts.

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In reply to
pratik
pratik

@amit This is absolutely fabulous. I can see this as a perfect complement to my writing more often on Blot. I assume this will let me use markdown in the body and also add meta-tags up on top, right?

BTW security-wise, the app requests access to Dropbox files but I hope this permission extends only to the Blot folder.

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amit
amit

@kaa Yeah, I think for many that would be applicable - Blot rules out this need. But there are times when I want to publish from a machine that's not my regular. With no app or dropbox setup.

Btw the editor is not markdown - it has useful toolbar for usual markdown. Try selecting some words.

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amit
amit

@pratik It isn't a markdown editor, but one with a toolbar. Medium style. Try selecting some text. But the post is published in markdown.

Security wise it is purely client-side application. There is no access to Dropbox on server side.

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humdrum
humdrum

@amit this is amazing.

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amit
amit

@kordumb Thanks! Adding date to frontmatter would be simpler. Would explore. As of now, title, tags are added in metadata if provided during publishing.

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humdrum
humdrum

@amit I saw that. I actually changed how my microposts vs regular posts are formatted to use tags rather than the custom metadata I setup so Wall would be more useful for me. Date/time is more for myself and not a big deal. This is awesome.

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Burk
Burk

@amit Very cool idea! This is a great extension to blot for sure.

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kaa
kaa

@amit Ah-ha! That is actually excellent. It's super polished. I do have one important suggestion to make however. Seems that the standard character count is 150 characters across. For things to be readable you want this to be limited to between 60-90 characters. Apart from that, excellent font choice (don't add any new ones), perfect options (new, download or publish).

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amit
amit

@kordumb Ok good to hear. It is pretty similar even for me. Wall has been useful, hence, for regular posting. Btw, I have just added support to include date as part of metadata. You can check once.

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amit
amit

@Burk Thank you, Jason.

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amit
amit

@kaa Thank you for that wonderful feedback, Khaled! We wanted to keep it bare, but functional. Non-cluttered as much as possible. As cliche goes, the blinking cursor should be the focus. That's all.

Btw, currently the character count across is ~110. I will take a look at this once.

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SimonWoods
SimonWoods

@amit Oooh nice! Congrats on releasing such a good app. 🥳

I love that you make things for the web first, rather than silos. Thank you for continuing to do that with Wall. 🙌

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kaa
kaa

@amit So I just checked that on an iPad Pro and that was the character count. Will take a look on a windows machine to see the difference. On an iPhone it’s 68 characters, but the design isn’t really suited for use on a phone (it’s doable but only just).

Maybe also something to look at for the next iteration?

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amit
amit

@kaa Yep, absolutely. Haven't worked out the responsive design yet. So possibly, iPad Pro must display more character count across. I agree it is unusable on smaller screens currently. Something that I plan to fix next.

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amit
amit

@simonwoods Thank you, Simon. Wanted a good, clean web editor first. And then hook it into a specific publishing workflow. Export option was introduced just so that it can be useful even for someone not using Blot.

With editor sorted out, more publishing options can be added.

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crossingthethreshold
crossingthethreshold

@amit This is very helpful. Thank you to both David & yourself for putting it together. Just playing with it now. Tried one post that didn't quite work out right, but my mistakes helped me see better how it works. Am I correct in thinking that it doesn't handle Markdown links at the moment? The "" format?

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crossingthethreshold
crossingthethreshold

@amit Oops, I meant to say []() for links.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@amit very nice ... very nice indeed ... lovely extension

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amit
amit

@crossingthethreshold Hey David, glad you liked it. This isn't a markdown editor. It is a rich editor with a Medium-style. Try selecting some text. But in the background posts are generated as markdown.

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amit
amit

@JohnPhilpin Thank you John! 🙂

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crossingthethreshold
crossingthethreshold

@amit Hi Amit, please excuse my ignorance as to how the editor worked. It doesn't lessen my appreciation for what you have created. 🙏🏼

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amit
amit

@crossingthethreshold Hey David, no need to apologise at all. We are all used to writing in Markdown now. And even wish at times all editors were Markdown. This is a good feedback. May be there needs a way to display md?

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@amit I’ve used - it has posted - it is appearing in my dropbox - but not yet rendering on the site ... anything I need to do with blot itself? Doesn’t seem so .. but I guess you never know.

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amit
amit

@JohnPhilpin That's surprising. Can you check the post file? Does the date in the metadata look correct?

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humdrum
humdrum

@JohnPhilpin try checking the filepath. If you’ve ever had more than one Blot blog, you’ll need to update the filepath in Wall to the desired blog folder and hit save.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@kordumb Thankyou yes .. that’s not it.

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