Since development on BloGTK 2.0 has restarted, there’s been a flurry of activity, which is pushing BloGTK towards a public beta release. There have been several fixes to the BloGTK backend, some new work on the interface, and some general tweaks along the way. For example, the current codebase now supports saving and opening posts to disk for offline editing. The new WebKit-powered preview system is working quite nicely, and was easy to implement.

However, there are some features that are likely to be left on the cutting-room floor (at least for the first release). For example, custom tags would be a nice feature, but isn’t something that is absolutely necessary for the first release. I would also like to have a much more refined offline blogging system in place. However, that will have to wait for a subsequent release,

It is likely that there will be a preliminary beta release in the near future. BloGTK 2.0 will be a quantum leap forward from the previous versions, with many new features and a much more convenient interface. Keep checking back here for more information leading up to the first public release of BloGTK 2.0.

Here is a preview of the new BloGTK 2.0 interface. This interface is designed to make the process of working with multiple blogs much easier. You can have all your blogs available from the main interface, no matter where they’re hosted or what system they use.

BloGTK 2.0 Main Window

Development on BloGTK 2.0 is still proceeding, although there are some big pieces left to go. Mainly, the first run configuration needs to be built, and the offline editing functions need to be put into place. However, as soon as BloGTK is functional enough to be usable, I do plan on putting the code out on Subversion as a developer release.

I should also mention that this blog will be getting a makeover in the near future as well. As nice as the WordPress default template is, BloGTK deserves its own style…

It’s only been a few days since the new BloGTK was announced, and already development is continuing at a more rapid pace than I would have expected. For a project being done in my limited free time, BloGTK is moving right along.

No, I don’t have an ETA for the first release. Other than “when it’s done,” of course.

So far, support for creating and editing new posts with Blogger, Movable Type, and WordPress is working. The UI is shaping up nicely—and that means that there will be some screenshots coming in the near future.

What’s left? The configuration system needs to be built, there’s a bunch of tools in the editor that need to be built, and then round after round of testing. BloGTK 1.0 was pretty buggy—I’m hoping that 2.0 will be better and more stable.

There will be more updates as development progresses. The website will also be getting an upgrade (with the old theme being given new life as a WordPress theme) sometime in the near future. Keep checking back here for more updates as BloGTK continues to push closer to release.