Desktop Blogging Clients - fancy term for ‘text editor for blogs’
In my quest to create a perfect environment for my blogging activities, I decided to look for a text editor that allows me to write posts away from my browser and save them onto my PC’s hard drive. I believe the correct term is ‘desktop blogging client’, or something in that vein.
Anyway, you might be wondering why I even need another editor. After all, if I really don’t want to use the wordpress editor, I can always use ScribeFire (awesome firefox plugin). But I want more.
You see, this morning I started my day by checking out ProBlogger.net, and I happened across a video where Darren explains how he goes about taking a post from an idea to a published post. The video was very insightful, and I definitely suggest that you check it out. After I saw that, I kinda got into thinking how cool it would be to have a desktop editor (like word) where I could start writing posts, and save them onto the desktop till they were ready to be published. That way I could do what Darren talks about, which is have a folder full of post ideas, except that when I refine the idea to the point that it can be published, all I have to do is hit the publish button and magic happens.
So I started searching, and found some cool stuff, some free and some not so free. And to save you some time, I’m going to be a pal and list the three editors that appealed the most to me (so far)
- Windows Live Writer - This one looks real nice, and I’m actually writing this post with this editor. The one thing that stood out for me, and that I don’t like about it, is that you can’t specify which directory you want to save your drafts into, they automatically go into ‘my documents\my weblog posts\drafts’. The reason why I like it, is cause it’s easy to use and looks so cool. If you want a better review for ‘windows live writer’ check out this post.
- w.blogger - With w.blogger I can choose which folder I want to save my drafts into, I like that, but that’s about all. It’s a very ugly looking editor, and not very user friendly, judging by my very limited user experience.
- BlogDesk - BlogDesk will probably become my editor of choice, it is very simple, user friendly, and I can choose the directory to save my drafts into, and it even looks goodish (not as good as option number 1 though). All in all, I’m quite chuffed with this editor, and look forward to some happy blogging with it.
A really cool feature that all of these editors have is the ability to set a future date and time to publish the post.
That’s it, I know it isn’t a very detailed review of either of them, but that’s because you have to test them out for yourself. Oh, and in case you’re wondering why it’s so important for me to specify where I save my stuff, it’s not cause I’m organized or anything, cause I’m not, but it’s actually because I have like a phobia of ‘my documents’ I’ve never saved anything there in my life, and I only go in there when it’s an emergency, true story; maybe things will be different when I get a Mac.
Cheers all, and good night
Simon
I use Windows Live Writer. It is far from glitch free but with a few manual work arounds it is great for me.
one thing I don’t like is when you publish the draft goes away… good for space concerns on your computer - bad for Wordpress glitches. After I publish, I hit Save as Draft again to make sure I have a backup
Yeah, one other thing I realized with Live writer, after I published this post, was that it uses
tags instead of line breaks so it makes it a bit of a hassle when you want to tweak your post after it’s been published.
I tweak the HTML when needed manually in Live Writer. It usually accepts my tweaks.
It likes to use the tags… I like having the handy… and big spaces it uses  
“one thing I don’t like is when you publish the draft goes away”
Actually, the draft just moves to the “My Weblog Posts\Recent Posts” folder. When you open an already-published post from your blog in WLW, it will look for the post in your Drafts folder and in Recent Posts. If it finds it in Recent Posts it will synchronize the contents to match the server if necessary. If it finds it in Drafts, it won’t–it assumes that the changes you made locally are the ones you want to keep.
If you think about how this process works, it makes sense that we can’t allow you to just save your draft files anywhere–we need to know where to find them so we can get at your original metadata (such as where your source images are located, what effects were applied, etc.). Other blog editors simply retrieve the post from the server and don’t have any of this metadata available.
Hope that helps!
Thanks Joe, that was quite helpful, at least now I know why you won’t let save it where I want. It isn’t really a big deal, I could just make a shortcut to the weblog folder and place it anywhere I want.
Besides that though, I think I’m more irritated with the tags that live writer uses, it makes the post very messy and a pain to edit after it’s published, but I guess that wouldn’t matter if you’re editing with live writer itself.
Simon
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