It has been many years
since Blogger was started (1999) and later on, acquired by Google
(2004). And Symbian platform has been around since 15 years.
Surprisingly, Blogger never thought of developing an app for Symbian
nor did the developers. To be fair to Blogger, the Android and
iOS apps were developed by them only recently. But at this point of
time, no US based service will probably invest their time and money on
developing for Symbian (Kindle is another such service).
But in the last one
year, Symbian has perhaps seen the birth of several apps for the
platform than it did in all those years of existence. But none of
them filled the void of a missing Symbian app for Blogger services.
That is why I was overjoyed when I saw this blog post by developer Anand Bibek.
The app went live last night on Ovi Store. But is it really worth the
wait or is it just another QT/QML app? Read on.
As you start the app, a
fairly simple Sign in/Sign up screen shows up. I would believe anyone
purchasing this app would already be an user of Google's Blogger
service and hence would not require using the sign up process. Still,
if you press the sign up button, it will take you to the native
browser for signing up process. On pressing the sign in button and
logging in, it will ask you to “allow access” to your
Gmail/Blogger account just like few of the other QT apps.
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| initial screen showing list of blogs |
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| confirmation dialog |
Once you are logged in,
the list of blogs which you own or part of, as a group blogger, will
show up. This being a pro version, there is no limit on the number of
blogs you can manage through this app (there will also be a free
version, I'm told, which is on it's way to the Store at present, with the limitation of three latest
blogs and blogposts in the list see update).
If you have used any of
the other popular QT apps for Symbian, then you would be familiar
with the UI settings of the Blob. From the top of the screen, you can
access the Belle notification bar and on the bottom of the screen,
there are three buttons, Quit, Reload and Options. One little thing
which I liked about this Quit (or the “back”) button is that you
don't have to worry about pressing it accidentally-I have many times
exited from Nokia Store unintentionally by pressing the X button. It
will ask for confirmation on pressing the back button. I hope other QT apps will come up with
similar arrangement.
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| Settings screen |
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| list of blog posts |
The options button
displays Settings, Logout and Quit options. In the settings menu, it
was a pleasure to see the way font size settings were implemented.
You can select any font size setting as you wish (from 8 to 18). But
the best part of settings menu is the option to enable white theme. I
liked the white theme better than the default black theme. I simply
couldn't go back to the default theme after using the white theme
(never mind the AMOLED screen).
It is written on the
about page (which is curiously same as the settings page) that “more
features and lots of updates are planned” I'm glad that app will
receive updates. Though we usually pay for the app in it's present
status, it is nice to know that there will be updates and
improvements.
Now, coming back to the
blog list, once you click on any of your blogs, the list of your
recent blogposts and drafts will appear in sequential order just like
it does on Blogger website. On pressing the settings button, one can
access “All comments”, reload (useful if you have any data
connectivity problems like me), settings, logout and exit. Settings
here are same as the settings in the home page of the app.
By pressing the “all
the comments” option, you can see all the comments of your blog.
But you can only do that. I wish one could post or delete comments
them from this screen itself. When I asked the developer, he said
that one could do so only from the individual blogposts where those
comments are actually posted. Hope this feature will be added in
future.
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| black theme |
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| white themed post editor |
The all important blog
post editor-the middle “plus” mark button at the bottom bar takes
us to the “create new” screen. As you can see, there are four
options below the “title”, text editor, text formatting, labels
and blog post scheduler for scheduling posts or changing the time of
the posts. Apart from the label settings, what impressed me most was
the rich text editor with bold, italics, underline, strike through, link,
paragraph break and embed image options.
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| text formatting |
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| landscape post editor |
Formatting is very simple too, select the written text
and then apply which ever formatting options you want to. The option
to upload photo does not exist right now. But when asked, Anand Bibek, the developer,
said that it was a planned feature. So, right now, you cannot upload
photos directly through Blob. But there is a workaround. Upload photos
through cuteBox or Dropian and then embed the link here. I know,
there are no formatting options for photos, but in case you are so
particular about uploading them, then this is the only way.
While on post creator,
if you wish not to upload the blogpost, you can save it as a draft
for later revision. Though offline saving of draft is not present
right now, I'm told it will be present in the upcoming update for
Blob.
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| blog post with images |
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| in-built browser |
Regarding the comments,
you can access the comments from the published posts by pressing the
comments icon from the bottom bar of that particular blog post. I
wish there was an option to reply to comments apart from the now
existing delete option.
One of the good features of this app is the in-built browser for viewing the links inside the blog posts. That is really a relief, since I do not want the app to open the default Belle browser just for checking the links (for that matter I do not want to open the default Belle browser for anything. Opera Mini and Mobile both do better job than Belle browser).
I have been using this
app since almost a month (beta testing it). And I have seen it
improve in leaps and bounds since the first version which I tested. To conclude, I'm more than impressed
with the functionality of Blob. All the basic features required for
the using the services of Blogger are present. Agreed, there are few
gaps (very few indeed) like absence of sharing options and not being able to reply to comments, but that is not going to stop me from recommending this app to
any Symbian user who uses Blogger regularly. With promised updates,
things can only get better with Blob.
Ovi Store link of Blob
Update: Ovi Store link of free version of Blob
Update 2: The limitation is actually with regard to creating of blog posts. One can only view and delete blog posts in the free version. But with free version you can have a first hand experience of the text editor of Blob.
Update: Ovi Store link of free version of Blob
Update 2: The limitation is actually with regard to creating of blog posts. One can only view and delete blog posts in the free version. But with free version you can have a first hand experience of the text editor of Blob.