Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / January 2005

Whoops, that should be Movable Type.

Michael

Yep, heaps better. I still am unsure how you ever got ctrl-shift-a to
work... do you recall which browser that was? I notice that constructing a
new entry in IE on Windows gives you a few handy buttons for automatically
inserting such links and other HTML tags, but I'm not sure about a
keyboard shortcut. I seem to recall that this is possible/easier in IE
because you can get the cursor position and selection range in a editable
text box - unfortunately this extension is far from portable!

Anyway, back to your question, I'm not aware of any method that exists to
enable this in Safari. However, Safari supports javascript bookmarks, and
thus you could write the equivalent Javascript, put the bookmark in your
bookmark bar, and then invoke it with Apple-1, Apple-2 etc. As for the
contents of the Javascript, I'm afraid I fall terribly short.

It'd be something to do with:

document.entry_form.text.value = document.entry_form.text.value + '<A
HREF="blah"></A>'

but the details are a bit trickier. For that, I'd probably check out
Movable Type's support avenues. I'm sure this is a fairly common request,
and surely some hacker has posted a solution. I know it would really come
in handy to me! If you wanted it to work outside of your copy of Safari,
you'd have to look at inserting the Javascript in your own mt-static
pages.

Let us know if you find anything, and I'll do the same.

*______________________________________m_('.')_m_________*

It sounds like you are talking about editing a new entry on a Movable
Type based site (i.e., placing text into a form that Movable Type will
consume and form into a nice HTMLized blog entry.)  The keyboard
shortcut you mention is not a standard or common system or application
shortcut -- it is part of the Movable Type interface; and then only with
Internet Explorer on Windows.

Read it again:

"Entry-Editing Shortcuts

If you are using Movable Type on Internet Explorer for Windows, you can
make use of a couple of keyboard shortcuts while editing your entries,
to automatically insert HTML formatting tags. To use these shortcuts,
select the text you wish to format in your entry, then press the
appropriate keyboard shortcut combination:"

It then goes on to give the four examples, one of which is "Hyperlink."

This is a Movable Type, IE on Windows specific thing.  It does not
necessarily have anything to do with Macs or any browser than runs on a
Mac.  It is 100% MovableType trickery, likely done with Javascript or
something.  Nearly guaranteed not to be portable across platforms and
browsers.  This is generally considered a Bad Thing.

Just learn the MT markup langauge (or HTML, though this has limitations
for blogging markup even for those of us who develop on the web with
text editors.)  Or switch to Firefox, which is a better browser than IE,
and has all sorts of easy to use plugins that allow you to blog and
markup the blogs right from the sidebar.

This last feature is the only reason I'd consider switching my home-made
blogger to MT.