w.bloggar Archives - Complete, Concrete, Concise

w.bloggar – How to Fix "Unable to parse the XML response" Error

richardsplanet — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 22:58:23 +0000

I am probably one of the few, if only people around who use w.bloggar for my blogging needs. While it is an old and outdated program, it has three essential features for me: (1) customizable edit keys (that’s how I input these coloured sections without typing in HTML code), (2) it is easy to upload images and (3) it doesn’t add bloat to the images (the images I upload are in no way, shape, or form modified by w.bloggar).

For most people, though, I would still recommend Windows Live Writer.

A few days ago, I began having problems with w.bloggar when trying to post or upload images. It would return the message: “Unable to parse the XML response.Parser Reason:Invalid at the top level”:

At first, I thought it was something funny happening at the server end of this site. I figured it would go away in a few hours. It didn’t.

Then I tried using Windows Live Writer. It worked.

Then I created a new account in w.bloggar through File -> Add Account…. This solved the problem.

For some reason, my original blog account info / setup / configuration has gone wonky. Creating a new account clears up the problem. (Of course, I still have the bother of recustomizing w.bloggar to my tastes again)

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Getting w.bloggar to use your site's theme

richardsplanet — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:51:50 +0000

I finally figured out how to get w.bloggar to use my site’s style settings to give me a more accurate preview.

Turns out the options for controlling the preview rendering are located under Tools → Blog Properties (or F2 using the keyboard shortcut):

Under the Preview tab, there are 6 edit areas to help you customize the look of your preview:

Body Tag: here you can set various attributes. There are some default values for you.

CSS Tag: here you can set the path to your site’s style sheet. This turned out not to be too useful for me – the WordPress theme I’m using sets the background colour to a very dark grey, then overrides that colour in the post. However, if you have a simple style sheet, or you want to knock up a simple version, you can always reference it here. In my case, I linked to my override style sheet – which contains the mods I made to the WordPress theme.

Title Style / Class: this allows you to set the font and size for the post title. I just made it bigger.

Post Style / Class: this allows you to set the font type and size for the post text. I just made mine bigger, the default size was too small for me.

Post Alignment: allows you to specify if your site left justifies, right justifies, centers, or full-justify your text (ok, full-justify was really awkward phrasing). This is obsolete (the way to do it is through CSS and not HTML), but, since it only affects the preview … who cares?

Post Width: allows you to specify how wide your site’s posts are in pixels. I set mine so the lines broke at about the same place using the font size I specified in Post Style / Class as my site. In this case, 1000 pixels did the trick.

This was the original “squinty eye” version (click for a larger image):

This is the updated version (click for a larger image):

Too bad it is no longer being developed. Despite some roughness, this client is definitely well beyond anything on offer now (aside from Windows Live Writer, but since WLW has an issue with increasing my image sizes, I’m sticking with w.bloggar) – it has a very flexible (albeit cramped) way to fine tune the Preview

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Day 2 with w.bloggar

richardsplanet — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 22:06:53 +0000

So far, I am pleased with my decision to change over to w.bloggar. Sure, it is not fancy, there is no WYSIWYG editing (but there is a basic ‘preview’ function), no incorporating your site’s theme, no “live” spelling grammar checking (you can invoke a spellchecker), and it hasn’t been updated in over 3 years.

On the positive side

it uploads (without modifying) my images;
I can upload both the thumbnail and full sized image at the same time and have them linked (AFAIK, only Windows Live Writer is also able to do this – albeit in a much nicer WYSIWYG way);
I can define up to 12 custom xhtml keys (a feature I find lacking in other blogging clients) – those coloured text blocks in my posts have been assigned to those keys. The basic xhtml formatting operations of bold , italic, underline, strike-through and

block quote

are probably all most people need. Sometimes, they are not enough. Sometimes, additional formatting styles are needed – and they shouldn’t be hard coded in the post, but applied as styles from the style sheet – and being able to access them with a shortcut key is much nicer than editing the xhtml;
it posts very quickly – in fact, it is the fasted posting blogging client I have ever used (this is because w.bloggar uploads your images as soon as you insert them into your post)

I also discovered how to change the editor font size so I don’t have to go blind squinting at the default font – which was too small for me. I also disabled a goofy “minimize to tray” feature – minimizing to the tray is a bad idea because I expect to locate my applications on the task bar.

(1) w.bloggar configuration options can be accessed from Tools → Options (or the F8 key).

(2) editor font options

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Why I Switched From Windows Live Writer to w.bloggar

richardsplanet — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:35:40 +0000

I’d been using Windows Live Writer (WLW) for about two years. There is no question that it is probably the best desktop client for writing articles for your website.

Yesterday, I discovered it has a serious problem – as do most blogging clients.

All comments about Windows Live Writer refer to Build 14.0.8117.416 en. This is the last version before Windows Live Writer 11. Personally, I doubt much has changed under the hood, but I can’t be sure.

Despite the issue I discovered with Windows Live Writer (and other blogging clients), I still think WLW is the best blogging client for the average user who does not use a lot of images in their posts.

Windows Live Writer has a very nice presentation and editing text is very easy (though, to be honest, it is pretty easy with other clients as well) and you can edit your posts using your website’s theme – all the colours and fonts show up, pretty much, as the would on the final page. What really sets Windows Live Writer apart from other blogging clients is the ease with which you can insert images into your posts: just insert the image, decide on how the thumbnail will look in your post, decide on the size of the version embedded in your text, add a watermark, do a little image processing – cropping, rotating, color effects, etc… (if you want) – and Windows Live Writer will automatically upload your image, its thumbnail and link the two together for you. In other blogging clients, you can insert your thumbnail version (the version that is embedded in your text), but you have to manually upload the full size image and manually link it to your thumbnail.

One of my concerns in uploading images is to ensure they are as small (in bytes) as possible to ensure the visitor is not put off by long waits for the images to download. I carefully massage the images using Gimp to get the smallest size I can.

The Problem

Yesterday, I discovered that Windows Live Writer rewrites my images when it uploads them and, in most cases, increasing their size – sometimes dramatically (I noticed one file went from 66kb to 960kb – a 15x increase in size. I was horrified! I would never image uploading a 1Mb file, unless it was absolutely essential – even then, I would warn the visitor that the image was large).

When I checked my image directory, I discovered there were 1080 images. What!!! I only had 19 posts on this site. A little investigation revealed that WordPress insists on creating 3 thumbnails images for each image I upload (that is a story for another day, when I figure out why or if this is really necessary) – so, in reality, I only had 270 images and 3x that number in WordPress thumbnails. Anyway, all those images totaled 39Mb of data. That seemed far too much.

I downloaded them. Examined a few and noticed that Windows Live Writer was rewriting my images. I had expected some increase in size because I use the drop shadow effect and add a watermark to each image.

Using XnView, I reprocessed all the images. I did two things: (1) converted the images back to 256 colours (WLW had converted them to RGB – 3 bytes per colour instead of 1 byte – I originally processed them to have 256 colours), (2) set the PNG compression to 9 (the maximum). This reduced the size of the files from 39Mb to 8.9Mb – a significant improvement. Uploaded them and replaced all the existing images with these newer (and smaller) ones.

Then I ran some tests with WLW to see just what it was doing to images. I used two test images:

JPG image : 1024×683 pixel, size 72,205 bytes
PNG image : 1042×1166 pixel, 256 colours, maximum compression, size 67,969 bytes.

I inserted them into a test post and tested 4 combinations of image effects using my standard of an embedded image (thumbnail) 480 pixels wide and linking to the full size image:

JPG Results (size is in bytes):

	480 pixel thumbnail	full size image
no shadow, no watermark	65,060	145,939
shadow, no watermark	66,850	145,939
no shadow, watermark	67,567	149,299
shadow, watermark	69,384	149,299

The full size image doubled in size and the embedded image (thumbnail) was barely smaller than the original.

PNG Results (size is in bytes):

	480 pixel thumbnail	full size image
no shadow, no watermark	130,552	84,112
shadow, no watermark	131,319	84,112
no shadow, watermark	133,789	168,830
shadow, watermark	134,505	168,716

When there was no watermark, the full size image size increased about 30% (but the image remained a 256 colour PNG). When the watermark was added, the full-sized image almost tripled in size! In all cases, the embedded image (thumbnail) was about double the size of the original (despite having a little less than a quarter of the number of pixels). sigh.

I tried a different test: I inserted the original photograph (4,037,612 bytes) into a post, set an embedded image of 480 pixels wide with shadow and watermark. Embedded image size: 65,452 bytes. Full sized image size: 1,958,549 bytes. Ok, so if you’re the type of person who willy-nilly uploads unprocessed images from your camera to the web, then using WLW will actually save you space and bandwidth because WLW will compress the image for you.

The Search for Solutions

Since I consider this behaviour (increasing the size of my uploaded images) a serious fault, I examined other blogging clients in more detail. I found none of them, except for w.bloggar, suitable. The main problem is that they do NOT allow you insert an image into the text AND link to the full size version (unless you want to upload the full size version to your website and then create a hyperlink on your image to it – which is unacceptable and too much work). I want a solution where I can embed the image in my text (most clients allow this) and link to the full size image – I don’t want to have to manage things at the server end. Only w.bloggar meets this requirement (and Windows Live Writer).

I tried Post2Blog, BlogDesk, WB Editor, Qumana, Zoundry Raven, and ScribeFire (the latest version 1.5). None of these allow me to upload the thumbnail and linked file in one step (ScribeFire doesn’t even allow me to upload a file – although my understanding is that ScribeFire Next is a complete reboot of the original ScribeFire).

The good news is that if you do nothing to your image (don’t ask them to do anything fancy), they will upload the raw image as you had prepared it. Bonus!

The bad news is that if you apply any effects they may provide, your image files swell in size. For example, I created a 480×537 pixel version of my PNG file, suitable for embedding in my text (it’s 51,309 bytes). If I ask Post2Blog to add a shadow to it, the image size swells to 80,291 bytes. sigh.

The w.bloggar Solution

While w.bloggar hasn’t seen any development in the last 3-4 years, I can easily embed an image and link to a full-sized version of the image.

It is a two step process: (1) upload the original image as a hypertext link, (2) upload the embedded image in place of the text for the hypertext link.

(1) Select Upload file from the Tools menu (or press Ctrl+D):

(2) Click on the Link to the file button, then click on the button in the upper right to locate and select the full size image. Finally, click on the Upload button. This will upload the file and embed the link in your post.

(3) Locate the link in your post and delete the text for the link (this is the text just before the closing . Leave your cursor there.

(4) Select Upload file from the Tools menu (or press Ctrl+D):

(5) Ensure the Image on the post checkbox is selected. Then click on the button in the upper right to locate and select the image to be embedded in the text. Finally, click on the Upload button. This will upload and embed the image in your post.

Here is an example of an image which links to a larger one:

While editing with w.bloggar is not as pretty or nice as using WLW (it is not WYSIWYG), at least I know my uploaded images are going to be the size I specified.

Now, all I have to do, is find some way of adding nice watermarks to my images.

You can download w.bloggar from here.

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