Dejal BlogAssist

BlogAssist is a handy tool to help weblog and website editing by making HTML markup easier. There are three easy ways to use it: you can use whichever one you prefer, or all three as desired.

BlogAssist adds a small menu to the right-hand side of the menubar in all applications. You can simply select and copy some text into the clipboard, choose a suitable operation from the menu, then paste the result in the desired location. The text will have been transformed like magic. BlogAssist also appears in the Services menu, available in most applications. This is really easy to use: just select some text and hit Cmd-< to display a small panel. Simply choose an operation and click OK to drop the marked up text back into your document. The previously copied text also appears in the panel; useful for operations like Web Link that use two values. Copy a URL, select text to use as the link label, hit Cmd-< and choose the operation, then click OK, and you have a web link nicely formatted and inserted. The Floating Window: this is similar to the Services menu panel, but can be left open as long as you like. It floats above all other windows, always available. It can be hidden and shown via the BlogAssist system menu. With the floating window displayed, you simply drag text to one or both of its Value fields, choose an operation from the included pop-up menu, then drag the formatted HTML from the Result field. Like the Services panel, this window includes a convenient preview of how the HTML will be rendered in a web page. BlogAssist comes with several useful operations, including web and e-mail links, bold/italics/strikethrough/etc, LiveJournal tags, and more. But you aren't limited to those - you can add, change, or remove them via the Operations Preferences.

What is new in this release:

- Added a Substitutions preference page, that optionally replaces symbols and accented characters with the HTML entity equivalents. It can also be used to replace URLs, e.g. to strip off a base URL for your own domain, or change it to localhost (or anything else).
- Updated all three BlogAssist modes to support the new substitution preferences.
- Reimplemented the auto-launch preference to work with Mountain Lion and sandboxing.
- Removed the quit confirmation preference.
- Added a license button to the Preferences window, when unlicensed, to make it easier to buy the app. (Standard edition only)
- Removed the in-app purchase options, since not compatible with 64-bit, and rarely used. (Standard edition only)
- Fixed display of license entry date in the Licenses editor. (Standard edition only)
- Updated German and French localizations.
- Updated the User Guide.
- The standard edition of the app is now signed with a Developer ID to support Gatekeeper on Mountain Lion. (Standard edition only)
- The app is now fully sandboxed, providing increased security.
- BlogAssist now requires a 64-bit Mac and a minimum of OS X 10.7 (Lion).
- Many other behind-the-scenes improvements made possible by dropping older OS versions, PowerPC and 32-bit support.