Four points so far.

1. When trying to open Qumana, XP Pro opens the "Install Frotn Page SR!" dialogue. I have to cancel it three of four times before it gets the message. FP is installed and operating on the system

2. When opening a new posting, the default title is "New HTML Item". Although I replaced the title with my own, and it uploaded to the blog OK, when the post retires to the left column, it reverts to its default title, although saving the content OK.

3. The Drop Pad does not appear to work at all with Opera. I have tried to select trext and drag but upon clicking the text Opera simply assumes that I want to select some different text. I have also tried dragging images but the drop pad does not accept them.

4. While loading the blog settings is good and works well (I especially like the ability to just select Typepad as the server) Q doesn't find or load my categoreies from the server.

Suggestion.
The drop pad should work like the Furl bookmarklet. When I select some text on the page and click the bookmarklet, Furl picks up the URL, the page title, the selected text and pastes each into their appropriate fields.

It also gives me a rating option which wouldn't be necessary for Q and allows me to select the categories which _would_ be useful once I can get them to load.

As well there is a text field for comment which would, again, be valuable for a quick note. If Q could then save that data to the drop pad I would be working much more efficiently.

PLUS (You did ask)
Being able to add the content to Furl, spurl, delicious etc with the same click would be awesome.

No doubt, more to come.

Have no forms to do that, hence my previous prolix posting.

Really appreciate this post. It’s hard to sort the good from the bad sometimes, but I think you’ve nailed it!
ranking software

By using Opera and Furl I can both save and comment on sites I find on the net, as well as generate RSS feeds from furl. Since they are heading towards collaborative blogs, this could be important to keep running.

However, I can then view the feed in Awasu, which uses IE as its viewer. From there I can drag information to the Q DropPad and work effectively.

LOGICALLY THEN, Q should have an option in the DropPad window for viewing RSS feeds. That way i can drag and drop content from the feed into the working window and create posts using content from multiple feeds, aggregated into one.

The Workpad publish feature is first class. I love the ability to collect some information, order it, then publish to the posting tool and get on with the real work. I also like the fact that it picks up the URL of the content.

Adding the page title as well would be even better.

However, because the information is dropped into the workpad through the Drop Pad, and I might collect thirty different items in a day, with many different categories, it also means that I have to

1. manually organise the material from the workpad/Drop pad into folders
2. delete the dropped material from the workpad
3. drag the material I want from the folder back to the workpad and publish.

Too many steps.

Going back to my suggestion of the Furl type interface. It would be much more useful if, when I logged into the blog, Q picked up my categories and created library folders with the same names.

Then ,when I want to save a piece of material through the bookmarklet, Q asks me to choose a folder. It then drops the material into that folder directly.

Then, when I come to use it, Q should offer me multiple ways to sort the folder contents, by title, by date (and date reversed) and by base URL so that, if I want to review what material I have from the same source I can find it all together.

I should also be able to make multiple selections and drag the lot to the Workpad in one hit.

Having problems posting which I guess are because I am behind a corporate firewall. Do you have a roadmap for supporting either HTTP proxy or SOCKS proxy for the post function?

If you are set up for port 80 the fire wall should not be a problem. Can you tell us what the error you get is please?

socket error #10060 connection timed out

...how does Qumana know to route via the proxy if there is nowhere for me to tell it what that is?

We are working on this... sorry Julian, you will have to escape the firewall for the moment.

Two feature requests - I can't drag content from Lotus Notes to Qumana. Also, I have more than one blog available from my blog site. But I can only add one Publisher at a time. I'd like to select multiple blogs at once when adding Publishers.

One tip - Qumana can be used with Nucleus CMS (http://www.nucleuscms.org) using a manual setup for the Publisher. Click on Publish.. Edit Publishers.. Click on New.

Blog Server type = Blogger API
Host = yourhost.yourdomain.com
Endpoint = /blogname/nucleus/xmlrpc/server.php
Port = 80

enter your username and password, and voila!

One bug - I can't edit my Publisher settings. I get an error when I select a Publisher and hit Edit "Cannot focus a disabled or invisible window"

This one should be fixed, however if you clock on the OK in the error you can then edit the settings...

Another bug cropped up... When I shut Qumana, I get two error messages...

Box titled: "Qumana.exe - Application Error"
Message: The instruction at "0x00475146" referenced memory at "0x012e2564". The memory could not be "read". Click on OK to terminate the program.

When I click OK, a second error message pops up:

Box Titled: "Application Error"
Message: Exception EAccessViolation in module Qumana.exe at 00075146. Access violation at address 00475146 in module 'Qumana.exe'. Read of address at 012E2564.

This should be fixed in the next build... if you have registered you will get an email when it is available.

When trying to set up a Publisher for a Wordpress blog (Wordpress claims to support Blogger, Moveabletype and Metaweblog APIs) Qumana will ony work if you choose the simple Blogger API.

On the other two when you press "Test connection" the web server complains "Incorrect paramters passed to method: Wanted string, got base 64 at param 3. Error code 3"

This should be fixed in the next build... if you have registered you will get an email when it is available.

Julian ... we will be getting back to you as quickly as possibble, with as specific and useful feedback and fixes or improvements as we can provide.

How come url doesn't come with dropped text?
Where is the blockquote tag? Lots of blogging is about quoting people.
What's with all the DIV tags and a FONT tag in the text. I never want to see a FONT tag in my blog.
Many people using MovableType have a link blog, and use the more text MT tag to add text. How do you support this?

It hung after my first attempt to post again, and had to be closed with Task Manager.

Since you were nice enough to comment on my blog and write up (but not proof or spellcheck) some beta doc, I took a second look at your product, but I must confess I found it vastly inferior to what I currently use, w.bloggar.

Clearly your intentions are good, but you need to improve the execution and design a long ways before I would call this beta.
Thanks,
Tim

What about getting this to work with Moveable Type? I see the MT APC listed on the publisher config, but what is my "endpoint"?

What about getting this to work with Moveable Type? I see the MT APC listed on the publisher config, but what is my "endpoint"?

Nick;

I believe (but I'll ask my colleagues to check) tha the endpoint for MT is the same as for Typepad ... which is (I think)


/t/api

One Q: Is it possible to edit old posts using Qumana?

Is that part of the crippled "Blog Manager" feature? (And if not, what does Blog Manager do? -- I guess that's a second question).

Not yet, but that is in the works and part of the plan. Currently you can delete posts, but not redit them.

The vision for Qumana is that it can become a tool that will help you manage all your blogging activites. So post, delete, re-edit, etc. Also you'll be able to post to other locations like Intranets, e-mail, and PDF (currently Qumana supports posting/saving to blogs, HTML, and RTF.

Thank you for your question and watch the blog for updates.

What I don't like is that the wysiwyg editor forces me to choose a font, not even let's me delete the corresponding code from the html source. This means that my CSS will be overruled unless I specifically set the font to what it is in my CSS. This is a pain in the ass when using different places to publish to, potentially with an equal number of different font settings. (In my case it is only two font settings in 7 blogs.) Wouldn't it be enough to be able to do B I and U, or selectively switch complexer formatting of (I can imagine using it to publish to stand alone documents for instance). I use this tool to group, digest and reform information, not to design it's appearance. With CSS I finally got my content, design and technology seperated, and I see no obvious need to reconnect them in Qumana.

Also the Qumana droppad causes Windows XP Pro to not shut down. I have to exit the drop pad manually and then shut down the laptop.

When installing the beta I could not get it to automatically take over the publishers settings from the previous version, nor could I get it to automatically detect them anew.

Crediting sources is a problem: when I select texts, it does register the source but it is not in clear view, hidden in the properties. Source crediting is important in blogs, but also in other types of documents, and I'd like the source to automatically be included when I put a piece in a blogpost. Furthermore, the majority of my selected content intended for blogging I paste directly from my newsreader. It then takes the locally stored copies as source. This is understandable from an engineering point of view, as I can imagine it is pretty hard to do it otherwise, but it is very counter intuitive. Would it be possible to drag the corresponding URL (which is always present in the news reader) and then easily use it as a source credit when returning to the drop pad? Not ideal, but it works around the diversity and unpredictability of different forms of newsreaders current and to come.

When I create an item from scratch I cannot edit the title in the editor, have to right-click and rename the item on the workpad instead.

Ton,

Thank you very much for taking the time to comment. Some of the problems (like having to shutdown Qumana to allow XP to shutdown) have been fixed in a more recent version. Please download and install the latest one.

Still there are some tweaks you can make...
I'll tackle the easiest one first (and one that, frankly, drove me batty as well). The font selection problem has been eliminated from the default HTML element, but you also should edit the Publishing styles (Publish menu, edit styles). For example I really like the Reporter style, but didn't like the font face additions. So I deleted those references and I added a non-breaking space in the Item template to make commenting easier.

When I do blog credits I usually drag the text I am commenting on into DropPad, then the URL from the addressbar. Two steps, but it works well for me. Your idea sounds a lot like the "Blog this..." features in Blogger, etc. I know something like that is being tossed around.

Tris

You have made some great usability comments, that I can't address, but I know that Fred, Victor, Jon, and Graham will consider them (I also agree that HTML source editing is important).

Some answers to your points, we are very interested in the feed back, so pleae keep the comments flowing.

the wysiwyg editor forces the font

We agree with your comments about the font ans seperating content from design. The <FONT> tag has been removed, you can change the look of your post by using the style sheets.

Qumana droppad causes Windows XP shutdown problem

This problem has been addressed, the current code will close correctly for a windows shutdown.

Installing beta not retaining the publishers

Sorry, the current version will allow you to keep your publisher settings, this is a chore of beta code we change things and compatibility with the old beta is not on the agenda - rest assured, it is important for the released product.

Crediting: The sources are not in clear view

With an item dragged from Internet Explorer you will get the source URL included in the blog post, other browsers and applications this may not be the case. Please let us know the applications you are using and how you would like to see us handle the sources?

Can't edit the title

The title field is now included in the editor, there is also a properties tab that allows you to edit other information associated with the item.

Also Elmine posterd her comments to the qumanabeta.blogware.com blog:

http://qumanabeta.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2004/9/30/151756.html

Hi,
Awesome post! Interesting info to know.
canon ink