Bits And Buzz, by Jeremy Chone

I am in a quest for a good blog editor. I have some requirements, but I am faily flexible at this point. So, my first attempt will be with w.Bloggar. Actually, I am using it to write this post.

Overall opinion: Not too bad for no WYSIWYG editing. I need to play a little bit more with it. However, for a more involved post, I might be using Dreamweaver. BTW, it would be nice if Dreamweaver can add some of these blog posting capabilities … just a thought.

Here are my quick pros/cons:

• Pros:
  • Easy configuration: Not too hard to configure your blog settings (connects well with Wordpress). Easy to start blogging.
  • Useful preferences: Can be on system tray, can start with last open post, can configure proxy (per blog!!), and can export/import preferences
  • Good HTML tag support: For people who like to edit HTML code, it does provide a simple yet useful HTML code editor with a “helper” toolbar like Wordpress’s “quick tag toolbar.”
  • HTML preview: Good HTML preview tab.
  • Spell check: Good spell check capabilities.
  • Offline support: Simple but good enough offline support.
  • Support categories: It does download your categories from Wordpress.
  • Good post synchronization: This is pretty cool - you can go back to previous post from Tools>Post>Last 5 Posts. It will then download it back, and you can make your changes and republish it. Unfortunately, it does not sync with our local one (.post) that you created previously.
• Cons
  • No WYSIWYG editing: It does not seem to be that important in blogger’s world, However, I would really like that. Not saying that I do not want to still be able to look at the code. A program like Dreamweaver would be a good compromise. There are some blog editors that does offer this functionality, though I will try to profile them.
  • No source formating: This does not allow you to “XML format” your html code. Since it generates mostly XHTML, it should not be too hard, and will help readability for a complex HTML document. However, I guess that hard core HTML coders prefer having full control over their HTML code.
  • No tag autocomplete: Again, this is not a must but should be easy to do for a native application. The simplest one is to autocomplete the closing tags.

Posted: Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
Tags: Desktop Application, Quick Profile, Wish.
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