Okay, so I know that the Apple iPad is supposed to be the savior of the Western world and all that, but I am a simple blogging sort of guy. My question: if I am running Movable Type (MT), not Wordpress, can I create new blog entries from the iPad itself?
You absolutely can. In fact just about this entire blog entry (other than the image editing I did to make it flow mire easily and make a bit more sense) was written on my one Apple iPad, and mine is just thewifi version. So, yeah, it works.
But that is the joy of standards, actually, because the version of Safari on the iPad is pretty darn functionally identical to that on the Mac, other than the special code for the pop up keyboard and the lack of Flash, so why would you think it wouldn’t work?
Heck, I am starting to wish that autocorrection was part of my computer experience, not just my mobile/iPad experience, but that is another story entirely!
Anyway, once you have logged in to your Movable Type backend, just tap on the Create menu as always:
Once you do, you’ll see a standard Movable Type (MT) blog entry screen:
(it’s kind of small here, but looks fabulous on the iPad)
For this particular entry, I started by scheduling it for the 23rd by clicking on the “Status” menu:
Then tapping on the tiny calendar icon adjacent to the date gives me the ability to specify the desired publication date of this entry (I actually wrote it on the 17th).
With that done, I tap on the text input box adjacent to “Title” and it gives me the ability to enter the title of the blog entry by popping up the virtual keyboard:
Once I’ve copied in the question (and tweaked it slightly, shhh) here’s what I see on my iPad screen:
I tap on the “Extended” tab and start typing in my response. Here’s what I see at this point:
A bit more typing, some fiddling with graphics on my MacBook Pro, which is unavoidable due to my inability to edit and scale graphics as I desire on the iPad itself, a few keywords and I tap “Save” and the blog entry – no, this blog entry! — is ready to go!
Congrats to Apple for doing such a good job with Safari on the iPad, I must say.
Oh, and if you’re looking for more iPad help, well, ya just found it. I’ve been writing all sorts of iPad articles here, and if there’s a question that I haven’t addressed, please don’t hesitate to submit it as a question!
More importantly: Are you able to upload images too?Which app are you using? Or are you on Safari?
Found your page in a search about using Movable Type on the iPad. It was a big help, but I do have a question, though. How were you able to add the photos? When I go to “Upload File”, it opens, but the button allowing me to “Choose File” is disabled. Was this not the case on your iPad?
I’m aware of the 2-finger flick, but it scrolls the whole page, not the contents of the list of categories. Clicking on the link for “text format” led me to a social networking site rather than anything helpful. Thanks anyway.
Benjamin, I’ve been digging around and unfortunately, there isn’t yet a solution for composing blog entries on the iPad that can then connect with an MT backend and post it for you. Frustrating. Perhaps the MT team at SixApart can shed some light on this and/or fund a developer building a nice solution for us MT faithful?
MT has a “text format” pop-up that includes “Rich Text” as an option. Now, whether it works on the iPad is a different story, I haven’t tried that yet… in terms of scrolling a region on a page, try a two-finger downward stroke rather than just a single finger. I find that sometimes it requires me to have my fingers rather far apart (1.5-inches or so) rather than immediately adjacent.
Have you figured out any way to use Movable Type in Rich Text mode? Also, I have more categories than fit in the “Categories” window, and I can’t seem to make my iPad scroll down to view the hidden categories.
Hey i am using wordpress for my Ipad and i can say it is great. Of course i do most of my entries from my PC, but when you are on the road it comes in very handy.
Hey, thanks for the heads up. Have you had any experience with doing offline blog creation for movable type? There’s always the ‘write the txt in notes and copy paste away’, but is there something for the iPad that you know of to make the experience better?