Draft Tabs
Just below the toolbar, on the main window, you will find a row of tabs. If you have just opened SharpMT, by double-clicking on its icon, you will see an empty tab named "untitled". As new drafts are created or as existing drafts are opened, a new tab will appear in this row, representing the new/opened draft. Drafts maybe be cycled through by pressing Ctrl+Tab or by clicking on a tab with your mouse. If there are too many tabs to be shown in one row, use the left and right arrows on the right of this row to pan tabs left and right. You may also close a draft by pressing Ctrl+F4, via the main menu, or by clicking
the X in the far right corner of the draft.
Additional information:
- All new drafts are created with a name of "untitled".
- When a draft is saved, its tab name will change to reflect the draft's file name.
- Drafts that have been modified will have a * shown in their title, until they are saved.
- Drafts that have been posted to the server will have a different icon than non-posted drafts.
- Posted drafts that are opened via the Server will also have a different icon and cannot be saved locally.
Working with Draft Files
SharpMT stores its drafts in the "My Drafts" folder in an XML format and with a unique SMT extension; it stores one draft per file. When saving a draft for the first time, you will be given an opportunity to name the file; it will default to a file name that best matches the current draft's text in the title box. It will also default to the current My Drafts directory. You can, however, save this file to a location other than My Drafts and with a completely different file name than the one it has defaulted to. The same thing applies for opening existing drafts; you can stay within the My Drafts directory or change to any other available folder. To confirm the current drafts path and file name, you can check the absolute path on the Advanced tab of the draft.
When a Draft is opened, it is added to the Most Recently Used document list, known as the MRU, which can be found under the File menu.
Also, when using Windows Explorer, you can double-click on an SMT file and it will open the draft in SharpMT; if SharpMT is running already, it will open in a new tab.
Posting to the Server
Posting to the server is simple and straight forward: make sure that the draft you want to post is the top most tab and click on the Post button on the toolbar (or via the menu or press Ctrl+Shift+P). SharpMT will contact the server, file the new draft, update the draft with the selected categories, send whatever Trackbacks were requested, and re-builds the Blog's content to include the new post.
There is also a multi-post option, available via the Tools menu, that can be used to post all of the drafts that are currently open; obviously this requires that you want to post all of these drafts at once and that multiple drafts are open.