TypePad iPhone app

OK, so it's not entirely useless; it does make blogging on the move easier (well, that's if you only have a few words to say and don't mind your post looking a mess) and makes the posting of pictures considerably easier than inserting them manually (evidenced by the vast increase in the number of times I've posted here since getting the app). But, what is essentially a simple app has suffered from the same strange interface as it's online counterpart (I have still not moved to the 'new' TypePad; We Fear Change).

Example - the main screen. Three options are before you, when only one is needed:

Create a Post takes you to the main 'compose' screen.

Take a Photo opens your camera app, allowing you to take a photo as usual, then prompts you to scale the picture and position it within a square (no option is given to post photos taken in portrait in their full, rectangular glory unless they were taken in landscape mode), before taking you on to the main compose screen.
This option is unnecessary; surely if you wanted to take a photo you'd use your camera app?
Besides, if you were foolish enough to take a photo using the TypePad app and happen to either press cancel, switch apps or receive a call before entering text or pressing 'publish', your picture is gone forever.
Oops, I hope that photo you were so desperate to blog wasn't anything important...

Add a Photo takes you to your photos app to choose a picture stored on your iPhone. Once the chosen picture has been subjected to the same horrible square editor, you are taken to the main compose screen.
For some reason, it quite often publishes cropped pictures with a black edge on two adjacent sides.

However, on the main compose screen, there's already an option to add a photo, rendering those last two options useless.

Moving on...

So, you're ready to compose your blog post.
Here, we'll give you a teeny tiny space (5 lines at best) in which to compose it.
No, we won't let you use this app in landscape mode, to make it easier for fat fingers to type. We'll just use up some valuable screen space keeping 'categories' and 'photos' options in view while you type:

This post was initially composed on the iPhone, but seeing as I couldn't publish any of the screengrabs I had taken in their original rectangular size (and initially couldn't add more than one photo per blog post - but, strangely, I can now) or add any weblinks, I logged in online and wrote the whole thing out from scratch.

Besides, it's almost impossible to wrestle a blog post into shape when only 5 lines of text are available to view at any one time.

In fact, I've had to log in to tweak almost all of my mobile posts. This is partly because (as Kathryn reminded me) photos are automatically placed after any entered text, immediately after the last word, without a line or paragraph break or anything, making the published post look horribly ugly. Hitting 'return' at the end of your entered text sometimes stops this from happening, sometimes not.

Perhaps I'm wanting something more advanced than this app can deliver, but it would be nice to be able to format my post with html that would display properly in the finished blog post.
In the meantime, I advise you to use the mobile web interface via Safari for longer blog posts, it's so much easier - more on that at a later date.

See also:
How to use the TypePad iPhone app drafts and pending functions.
The basics of how to use this app are explained in this video.

Comments

[Kathryn]

Here here and ditto that. I've tried to use the mobile version a few times but find that equally frustrating to use so I keep my iPhone Typepad posting strictly limited to photos. Hopefully, they'll make an improvement on both in the (near) future.