Tuesday, May 24, 2011

I got a Blogger app!

Yup, I made it myself and actually, any one of you can do it! In fact, it works for any web application, like Gmail (got an app for that), or Google Docs, Google Calender - you can tell I really like Google - Google Wave, Grooveshark... etc. (got an app for all of those actually; I just listed off most of the apps I've already made.)
Instructions for making your own Blogger app -
1. Download and install Prism at prism.mozillalabs.com
2. Download a suitable logo image for the web app - the one I used can be found below. It would preferably be of high resolution. If you don't know what this means, just make sure that it looks ok and is reasonably big (at least as big as the icon will display in the final application, like on your Windows Task Bar or your Dock.)
3. Open up Prism (whether you got the stand-alone version or the Firefox extension)
4. For the URL, type the web address of the web app. In this case, it's blogger.com (or www.blogger.com, if you prefer)
5. Type the name of your application. You can call it anything you want, but in this case it would probably be Blogger.
6. Select whether you want the navigation bar to be displayed. If you select this, a bar will display at the top of your window with the URL, which you cannot change, a refresh button, a home button, and back and forward buttons. The home button will take you to the URL that you specified in step 4.
7. Select whether you want to display status messages and progress. If you select this, a bar will display at the bottom of the window showing status messages on loading the web page and a progress bar on loading the page. It will also display a little gear, which will let you modify preferences (note that the only thing that the preferences let you do is modify the default font and color and proxy settings - if you don't get that, don't worry about it). The gear will also allow you to print, do a page setup (for printing I think), show the Error Console, and manage extensions and extension preferences. Personally, I don't really care about any of that except the extensions, but it's your choice. Any extension icons that would normally display in the Status/Addon bar of Firefox will display next to the gear.
8. Select if you want navigation keys enabled. Personally, I always check this because I figure, "why not?"
9. Select where you want the final application to be placed. If you like, you can move it later.
10. Almost done. Last, because the favicon that Prism retrieves from the web is probably crappy quality, select Settings... on the right of the image at the bottom and click Choose image...
11. Navigate to the picture you downloaded in Step 2. Select OK, then OK again.
Congrats! You're done!
One last thing worth noting. Since Prism isn't well known, some websites won't recognize it. This can lead to them thinking that you're using a browser that isn't compatible or up-to-date enough, and maybe even them not letting you use the site. For example, wave.google.com in a Prism app will tell you that your browser isn't supported by it. If it gives you a way to try it anyway (Google Wave gives a link for this) you might as well see if it works, chances are that it will. Good luck!
Blogger Logo - make sure to get the full-sized version, not just the small one here. I think you can click on it to do this.

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