My endless quest for a blog editing client – back to MarsEdit
I’m still one of those bloggers who loves a good client-side blog editing tool. For a few years, as a serious PC user, it was Windows Live Writer, a fantastic (and free!) tool from the ex-Onfolio team when they joined Microsoft. It’s simple, intuitive, works well with all varieties of blog platforms, and had a nice plugin capability.
When I made the full time switch to Mac, Live Writer was the #1 piece of software I missed. The OSX options seemed, at the time, slim pickings: ecto, MarsEdit, or some browser-based options. I’ve since tried them all, and finally fallen back in love with the one I originally dismissed as too complex while paradoxically lacking in features: MarsEdit.
Why? Better media and Flickr support for starters. Tag and Tumblr support help. Also, it turns out I was just being lazy, and not really learning the power of the customizable markup options.
See, MarsEdit provides a kick butt live preview window, but no true WYSIWYG editor. Adding a bulleted list is still fairly painful as a result, but the ability to fine tune your markup is something I’ve come to adore (as do others). No more hunting about in a WYSIWYG editor trying to figure out why the hell my blockquote now indents three times instead of one, or why an extra word is captured in a hyperlink.
Also, I contribute to (at least) four blogs on a semi-regular basis, and the ability to bounce across all of them, adding posts on the fly, is a breeze. That alone pretty much sold me.
Finally, the guys at Red Sweater seem to be committed to updating the app, unlike so many abandoned blog editing tools for both Windows and OSX. To keep them at it, I gladly contributed my 30 bucks.
Are there shortcomings? Sure – the image editing needs some work, with more flexibility around in-post resizing (I have to use ImageWell for that right now). But nothing that blocks my workflow or forces time-sucking workarounds.
So hats off to Red Sweater – if you blog on a Mac, go grab yourself a copy of MarsEdit.
Related posts:
Thanks for writing about your MarsEdit experience. You're totally right on about some of the current shortcomings. But you're also right on about my commitment to keep working on the app. Look forward to better and better things!
Daniel
Thanks for writing about your MarsEdit experience. You're totally right on about some of the current shortcomings. But you're also right on about my commitment to keep working on the app. Look forward to better and better things!
Daniel