Ok, I decided.

Decided what?

A couple of posts ago I said I was trying three different software packages for blogging and I had to choose one.

Oh, that. So what’d you pick?

MarsEdit.

No, Blogo. Yeah, Blogo. No Mars … Well … No, Mars. Yeah Definitely.

Definitely etco.

You’re loosing it dude.

*Takes deep breath* Yeah, you’re right.

It’s a difficult decision. They each have something and they each lack something.

I wanted to like Blogo. It just looks so funky. The interface is clear and minimal. Even the grey boxes instead of images bit seemed right after a while – having the image there is a distraction.

But the thing that killed it was being offline.

I thought you said it was an offline editor?

Turns out is is and it isn’t. Blogo doesn’t keep a record of your posts for use when you’re offline. So, if you upload a draft of a post to your server, expecting to be able to work on it while you on, say, a shuttle mission, you’re out of luck. Mind you, the view might compensate in that case.

Scratch Blogo (sadly).

MarsEdit was a close run second. It does have lots of features, but the killer thing it lacks is Tag handling. Not that it doesn’t handle tags, just that you have to remember them, there’s no checkbox list or drop down menu. This can get difficult when you consider WordPress treats Hello, HELLO and hello as different tags. Yeah, case counts.

MarsEdit does manage Technorati Tags with checkbox ease, but I’d prefer the WordPress native ones.

So, ecto wins. Just.

It’s the least pleasant to look at (sorry guys) but is does have lots of control. Tags in a checkbox list (refreshed from the server), being able to specify the padding around images, adding borders and so on.

ecto almost lost out to MarsEdit for two reasons

1) I couldn’t send a draft to the server.

Nigel, you’re an idiot. There a button at the bottom left of the editing window.

Thanks for the vote of confidence there. Yes I found the button, assuming you can call something that’s 1¼ pixels square a button. It tries to represent a page in red (for draft) or green (publish), but really, there are ants that would struggle to notice it.

and

2) I couldn’t find a way to enlarge the text in the editing window without changing the font size on the website. Just in the nick of time I found the menu option: ecto / Settings / Weblog / Editing / Rich Text / Choose (font).

Saying that’s obvious is a bit like saying the plans for the Arthur Dent’s house demolition had been on plain view for the past couple of years, whereas when he found them, they were in a cellar, with no lights or stairs, at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.”

Ah, Douglas Adams. Funny guy.

Thanks.

Him, not you.

Ah. Right. Yeah, he was funny, very funny.

So, if I understand things, you were going to go with MarsEdit purely on the basis of FONT SIZE????

You obviously haven’t seen the Guinness bottle bottoms I use for spectacles.

Oh. Right. My turn.

That’s it for today. According the the etco word countometer a mere 664 words. Which means you got some extra time to bash in a few more pages on that epic you’re writing. You are still writing it, aren’t you? We’d be kind of disappointed if you’re just stringing us along.

Yep, still going strong.

Good.

And what about everyone else, have you tried any of the packages I’ve mentioned? Is it love of hate? Do you think you’ll be blogging twice as much now? Or, do you want to hang, draw and quarter me because the first time you used one it deleted the internet?

Let me know either way, although I’m going to kind of doubt you on the deleting the internet thing…

Cheers