Recently David added bookmark support to Blot which makes use of bookmarks dragged out of Safari into a folder named Links (but it could be anywhere in Blot’s app folder). Since Apple now only provides Safari on platforms OS X and iOS, Blot subscribers not making use of a Mac are left out.

For my daytime job I am making use of a Windows based machine, so if I during the day come across a link I want to share on the link blog I would have to make sure to remember (yeah, sure…) this when I get home and have access to my Mac.

Luckily these OS X bookmark files are just plain text files with a specific content. Meaning that you will be able to make use of this feature regardless of your choice of computing platform.

Format of OS X bookmark file

An OS X bookmark file (extension .webloc) has the following format/content 1

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>URL</key>
    <string>http://apple.com</string>
</dict>
</plist>

The line of interest in the above piece of code is on line number 6. This line contains the actual URL for the link surrounded by <string> and </string>.

When saving this file (after putting in the correct URL of course) using the extension .webloc into the folder Dropbox\Apps\Blot\Links it will be converted into a new post. The name of the file will be used as the title of the entry.

Just an example

The file named Bookmark Support.webloc with the following content 1

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>URL</key>
    <string>http://news.blot.im/bookmark-support</string>
</dict>
</plist>

would result in the following entry to appear on my blog

Bookmark Support

Closing note

Be sure to either follow the Twitter account @blot__ (Yes, two underscores) and the RSS feed http://news.blot.im/feed.rss. Or just regularly visit http://news.blot.im/ to stay up to date on interesting news surrounding Blot.im.