Blokkal: a Blogging Client

Blokkal is a blogging client that supports multiple protocols and blogging sites. Think of it as an alternative to web browsers in creating-and-editing blog entries. Blokkal's features include posting new entries into multiple blogs at the same time.

• Pro: cross-platform; it'll be available for Windows in addition to UNIX. Why? Because the latest version is for KDE 4 and KDE 4 is slated to run on Windows.
• Cons: no WSYIWYG HTML editing (whops, so many cryptic capital letters). This simply means that we won't get the typical experience of editing using a web browser:
  
  
  Instead, we'll be directly working with the HTML source code:
  
  

[FYI, this entry is completed using a web browser (i.e. the WYSIWYG editing route). Yes, I've been pampered with its convenience. But rest assure that Blokkal can really upload entries to your blog; this I've tested.]

Supported protocols:

• Blogger 1.0 (http://www.blogger.com)
• Blogger/GData (the recommended protocol for http://www.blogger.com)
• LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com)
• MetaWeblog API (http://www.wordpress.com)
• MovableType

Before we can use Blokkal to create/edit blog entries, we need to let Blokkal know about our blog account. Let's take a look at how to let Blokkal know about a Blogger blog — the technical way of saying this is “to add a Blogger blog into Blokkal”:

1. Start Blokkal, then “Settings” -> “Configure Blokkal”, and then “Add...”.
   
   
   
2. Select “Blogger/GData...” from the protocol list, then click “Next”.
   
   


3. Enter your Google's username on field “User Name”. Normally, if you have abcd@gmail.com, then your Google's username is abcd. Then, click “Next”. [Note: there's no need to touch field “Account Name”.]
   
   


4. Click “Finish”. If “Connect now” is checked, a new dialog will request for the account's password which is required to connect to the newly added blog.