08.27.2003
Setting up the QuickPost bookmarklet
Posted by Mena Trott in How-To
Have you ever wanted to write a weblog post about something you've just read on an online news site, weblog or web page but didn't want to go through the TypePad interface to compose and publish your post?
If so, then you'll definitely want to set up the TypePad QuickPost bookmarklet.
To do so, visit the Your Weblogs (subscribers only) screen in TypePad. You'll see a blue box in the top right corner of the content area:
Click on the link and you'll then be walked through the steps to create a QuickPost bookmarklet.
In brief, you'll have to:
- Select the fields you wish to include in your weblog QuickPost form.
- Click the Create button.
- Drag the TypePad QuickPost link to your browser's menu bar.
Once you create the bookmarklet, posting to your weblog is even easier. The great thing about QuickPost is that it creates links and excerpts that you would normally have to do by hand.
Say I want to comment about a post written on a weblog I've just read. Not only do I want to link to the weblog, but I want to grab an excerpt.
1. First, I use my mouse to highlight the text area I want to quote:
2. Next, I click on the TypePad QuickPost link in my menu bar (I'm using Safari for the Mac, but all modern browsers should support QuickPost. Your menu bar, if not Safari, will of course look different.)
3. A pop-up window will appear with the posting options that you configured when building your bookmarklet. The screenshot below reflects the options I have chose -- you can, however, select additional or fewer items. In the screenshot below you'll notice that (1) If you have more than one weblog, you can select which weblog the post will be published to (2) That the link for the post or site you're writing about has been automatically generated (3) That the highlighted text that you wanted to appear in this post has been automatically placed -- I manually added the quotes around the excerpt (4) That if you have TrackBack items enabled in your QuickPost bookmarklet, you simply have to select the post from the pull-down menu to send your TrackBack ping.
Each of the tabs for the QuickPost bookmarklet have their own behaviors:
Weblog will publish your posts to a selected weblog
Link List will publish a link to your selected Link TypeList
People List will add a person's site your selected People TypeList
Reading List provides a shortcut to add a book to your Reading TypeList
Music List provides a shortcut to add a song/album to your Music TypeList
