Well you can see that I've been playing around with a rather large entry recently. It got me onto the idea of using some blog editing software - might make the pictures and wysiwyg stuff a bit easier too. How hard can it be? I consulted a list of Top 6 Free Desktop Blog Editors and a Blog Clients Review.
Tried Windows Live Writer. It kept trying to install other parts of Windows Live, and wanted to install itself as a Windows Update. I don't want something like that burying itself so deeply in my system, so I gave up.
Tried W.Bloggar - but it only has an HTML editor. That's not what I want. And it wouldn't keep a list of recent posts.
Tried Bleezer. When I unzipped it, it came out as a file that wanted to be encrypted, and my machine started warning me to backup my encryption keys. Scared me off! I think I had a quick go at using it too, but didn't get past the logging into the blog.
Tried Qumana. Seemed to rate well. It detected my blog nicely, but then froze. I couldn't get it past the splash screen. Seems many others have this problem. I reported it to the Qumana people, but we'll see what happens.
Tried BlogDesk. Doesn't work with Blogger.
Tried ZoundryRaven. Detected the blog, but had a few runtime errors. Wouldn't download any existing blog postings.
Tried Post2Blog. Clicked on the download button, but this software wasn't available any more.
Tried Semagic. Took me a good half hour of googling to be able to connect it to Blogger - not very helpful community (probably a bad sign). I saw a list of lots of previous posts, and could edit them, but only in HTML. Perhaps I can create new posts wysiwyg-ly, but that's not enough.
Tried ScribeFire. It's a firefox plugin, which isn't really what I wanted, but maybe. Discovered my blog nicely, and downloaded the 10 most recent posts. While ScribeFire was open, I posted a version of this entry, and then I couldn't get ScribeFire to notice the change. Minor point, though. I found it difficult to cope with the image upload process though. Difficult enough that I decided to try Windows Live Writer (WLW) again.
WLW was possibly the nicest interface I've seen so far. Once I accepted the fact that I'd need a Picasa web album set up, the image upload was smooth, too. Unfortunately, although it stores both thumbnails and bigger images on the Picasa, it doesn't work as nicely as when I upload the pictures directly in Blogger. I like to be able to click on a thumbnail and see the bigger image. With WLW, if I click on a photo, it just offers a chance to download the picture. Not what I want at all. So I've uninstalled Windows Live Writer. And the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant. And the Windows Live installer. (And you have to accept that it's an "unknown publisher" when you want to uninstall - much riskier than installing, apparently.)
Current plan is to use the Blogger web interface to upload photos, and then try editing text/layout in ScribeFire.
2008-03-14 Update: ScribeFire 1.4.7 now claims to support native Bloggger image upload. This could be good.
2008-03-31 Tried the image upload (in 1.4.8). Unfortunately, same problem as WLW - no thumbnail function.
Tried Windows Live Writer. It kept trying to install other parts of Windows Live, and wanted to install itself as a Windows Update. I don't want something like that burying itself so deeply in my system, so I gave up.
Tried W.Bloggar - but it only has an HTML editor. That's not what I want. And it wouldn't keep a list of recent posts.
Tried Bleezer. When I unzipped it, it came out as a file that wanted to be encrypted, and my machine started warning me to backup my encryption keys. Scared me off! I think I had a quick go at using it too, but didn't get past the logging into the blog.
Tried Qumana. Seemed to rate well. It detected my blog nicely, but then froze. I couldn't get it past the splash screen. Seems many others have this problem. I reported it to the Qumana people, but we'll see what happens.
Tried BlogDesk. Doesn't work with Blogger.
Tried ZoundryRaven. Detected the blog, but had a few runtime errors. Wouldn't download any existing blog postings.
Tried Post2Blog. Clicked on the download button, but this software wasn't available any more.
Tried Semagic. Took me a good half hour of googling to be able to connect it to Blogger - not very helpful community (probably a bad sign). I saw a list of lots of previous posts, and could edit them, but only in HTML. Perhaps I can create new posts wysiwyg-ly, but that's not enough.
Tried ScribeFire. It's a firefox plugin, which isn't really what I wanted, but maybe. Discovered my blog nicely, and downloaded the 10 most recent posts. While ScribeFire was open, I posted a version of this entry, and then I couldn't get ScribeFire to notice the change. Minor point, though. I found it difficult to cope with the image upload process though. Difficult enough that I decided to try Windows Live Writer (WLW) again.
WLW was possibly the nicest interface I've seen so far. Once I accepted the fact that I'd need a Picasa web album set up, the image upload was smooth, too. Unfortunately, although it stores both thumbnails and bigger images on the Picasa, it doesn't work as nicely as when I upload the pictures directly in Blogger. I like to be able to click on a thumbnail and see the bigger image. With WLW, if I click on a photo, it just offers a chance to download the picture. Not what I want at all. So I've uninstalled Windows Live Writer. And the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant. And the Windows Live installer. (And you have to accept that it's an "unknown publisher" when you want to uninstall - much riskier than installing, apparently.)
Current plan is to use the Blogger web interface to upload photos, and then try editing text/layout in ScribeFire.
2008-03-14 Update: ScribeFire 1.4.7 now claims to support native Bloggger image upload. This could be good.
2008-03-31 Tried the image upload (in 1.4.8). Unfortunately, same problem as WLW - no thumbnail function.
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