Comparing Desktop Blogging Clients
During the last 24 hours, I have evaluated many desktop clients for both Apple and
Windows, looking for the perfect app to blog with. Using the online WordPress Editor is OK but I wanted something that would let me save my blogs offline and maybe do some image effects like drop shadows.
Must Have Features:
1. Must be stable and render properly in local edit window or at least in a local preview window.
2. Must be able to save old blogs locally and be able to edit and re-upload them later.
3. Must be able to “follow through” after the blog upload and launch the blogsite homepage to check the results.
4. Link notification to the Blog Aggregators such as Feed Burner and Technorati.
Wishlist Features:
1. Image editor with effects. All of them resize, add margins and alignment choices. Some add drop shadows, torn paper effect, sepia, rotation in addition to sharpening, blurring, contrast adjust, even screen capturing!
2. Scrap clipboard for text and images.
Here is the cream of the (free) crop that I picked:
Windows Live Writer (Windows Vista and 7 only)
Pros: Most feature packed blogging client, has lots of image effects, integrates very well with blogsite, modern GUI. Many others who have reviewed clients consider this one the best blog clients. It has assorted plug-ins too, for fetching pictures off your Flicker or Picassa site, etc.
Cons: For starters, Microsoft pushes you into downloading Windows Live Essentials which is 200M and includes Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Movie Maker, MSN Messenger, a Photo app program, in addition to Live Writer. It takes 20 minutes to get it all downloaded and installed (assuming you have a screaming 10M/sec ISP). Since Live Writer integrates with the photo app, I somewhat see their logic.
The bigger dealbreaker for me was that text wrap around images did not render correctly in the local edit window or the borwser preview pane. However, once you upload your blog entry and use the browser to go to your site it looks fine. Despite this flaw, I am torn on whether to use this for my blogging.
Pros: I’m using it now for this blog. The footprint is small, it is free and the GUI is modern looking. The editor window looks exactly like it will when you upload. The learning curve is really fast, too.
Cons: Technically, it is still in Beta (even though it is at version 1.0.375 and last updated in 2008) but it does seem quite stable, but probably not being worked on actively. Some commonly needed features such as image attributes are buried in right click windows. It won’t do drop shadows, just basic image alignment, sizing and margins. In fact the online WordPress editor has more image manipulation options. The font size option did not work when loaded on the actual blogsite. I found this true in most all the editors though and now don’t trust using that option on any of the blog clients, period.
Qumana (Windows and Mac OSX)
Pros: This became my choice on the Mac. It has a modern stable GUI and some novel features, like the ability to add inline ads (which you can get kickback for).
Cons: There is no direct link back to your browser to see the uploaded results. The Windows version has an awful non smoothed font for the default editor font. Of course the editor tracks the font you use on your website so if you pick Arial to make the editor usable, that’s what gets uploaded too. The image editor is very basic, like in Zoundry Raven.
Here are some other Blog Clients that didn’t make the cut with reasons why:
Blogo (Mac) – costs $25, the image to text alignment doesn’t track from the editor to the blogsite, no font colors. It does have drop shadows, though. I thought the editor window was funky even for a mac user.
MacJournal (Mac) – costs $40. I already owned this so I had high hopes. The image and text srap rendering in the editor did not track to the blogsite. It’s mainn use is to be a diary, not a Microsoft One Note replacement or a dedicated Blogging Client.
Ecto (Mac and Windows) – costs $20. Image editor inserted and image OK but I wasn’t able to easily edit the image after the fact. I didn’t try the Windows version, only the Mac version. This IS a highly recommended blog client by other review sites.
BlogDesk (Windows) – It is free. The GUI is Windows 95ish and a little clunky to use. Also there is no browser preview feature.
ScribeFire (Windows, Mac, Linux) – It’s a free plug-in for Firefox and works equally on all platforms. It has the essential tools – no image editing. There is no link for this since you get to it from inside Firefox by browsing add-on’s for “ScribeFire”.
Microsoft Word 2007 (Windows) – Amazing no one is talking about this but you can set up blogging from right inside of Word and it seems to work well with image effects and everything. The function is not there on the 2004 version of Microsoft Word for the Mac. There is no link for this as it is a built in function, not an add-on.
Summary:
Unless someone builds the perfect blog client with built in screen capture and a full featured image editor, I probably will use Zoundry Raven on Windows and Qumana on OSX. It seems development on blog clients peaked in 2008.
Written July 16, 2010 by Vic Richardson
