Using JustBlogIt! extention for FireFox in conjuction with TopicClassificationAddOn

This topic explains how to install and use the JustBlogIt Mozilla/Firebird extension in conjunction with the weblog application for TopicClassificationAddOn. These two work together really well and provide the following features:

• Quick blogging of any web page by right-clicking a selection in the page and selecting JustBlogIt! When you do this, a new window opens with the CreateNewWebLog form so you can enter your blog.
• The URL and title for the web page are automatically copied and added to the appropriate fields in the WebLog form.
• Whatever text was selected in the

To use this, first you need to have TopicClassificationAddOn as well as the WebLog TopicType installed. We'll assume you already have TopicClassificationAddOn installed in the web where you want the blog (if not, see TopicClassificationAddOn). To add the WebLog TopicType to that web, use "Add new TopicType" form in the TopicType topic within the web.

To get the JustBlogIt extension, you can go to its home page, or if you're using a Mozilla/Firefird browser and are ready to install it, just click here to install it.

After you've installed JustBlogIt, configure it as follows:

1. Select the menu item Tools > Extensions.
2. Select JustBlogIt extension and click on the "Extension options" button.
3. The first tab "Weblog 1" will be selected. (Sidenote: one great feature of this plugin is that you can configure up to 5 different weblogs.) Here's my settings:
   • Weblog Name: I use the name site & web where this weblog will post. (Again, you can define up to 5 different ones.)
   • Window size: I use width 800, heigth 800.
   • Select weblog type: pull down menu and select "Custom."
   • In the custom setup, enter the url to your CreateNewWebLog topic along with the url parameters. Mine look something like this:

     http://sitename.com/bin/view/Webname/CreateNewWebLog?skin=plain&title=%TITLE%&url=%URL%&text=%TEXT%

4. Click OK to close the extension setup window.

That's it! To use it, go to any web page you'd like to blog and right-click anywhere on the page and select "JustBlogIt." A new window will open containing your CreateNewWebLog topic with the url and page name already entered into the appropriate form fields. Optionally, you can select some text on the page to be blogged prior to invoking JustBlogIt with the right-click and the text will be automatically entered into the "extended entry" field. This is very convenient for including a quote from the page in your blog. Remember to add a WikiWord name for your weblog entry and click on the "Blog on!" button. This will take you to the edit view will all the info pre-entered so you should just be able to click on "save."

(One small warning: if the "log entry" field in the CreateNewWebLog topic contains a url that includes a question mark, it messes up the urlparam for this field that is passed to the edit view, which can result in some of your text being dropped. I think there should be a way to fix this using ENCODE variable but I haven't figured it out yet.)

I've probably made this look more complicated than it really is by providing too detailed instructions. It actually takes about 5 minutes to set up and makes creating new weblogs a snap! Happy blogging!

-- LynnwoodBrown - 07 Dec 2005