I’ve been exploring different Blog Editors lately, trying to find the best combination of features, speed and flexibility. I have been using MacJournal, which has some nice features, including a very cool full screen mode. Unfortunately, I have found that there are some issues with formatting and aligning images that required manual adjustment in the WordPress web interface. Most of these issues are probably related to the new version of WordPress, but nevertheless they have prompted me to look for alternatives.
I have tried Qumana in the past, and decided to try the latest version. It seemed promising at first, and the Q-Ads monetizing feature was intriguing. But like previous versions, I found Qumana to be far from perfect, at least on the Mac platform. Perhaps I didn’t give it a long enough test drive, but I soon found myself frustrated with entries not refreshing and quirks with embedded images. Ecto has a lot of features, but isn’t free. At $17.95, it’s quite reasonably priced, but I’m not convinced it offers much more than what is available in freeware applications. WBloggar is free, but is only available on Windows, and hasn’t been updated for quite awhile.
Then I discovered ScribeFire, a Firefox add-on that used to be called Performancing for Firefox. So far I like it a lot. What is great about ScribeFire is the ability to blog with an editor while in the browser. You can split the browser window in half, blog in one half while surfing in the other. ScribeFire has built-in support for Technorati tags and del.icio.us bookmarks, the ability to save drafts and notes, and three different editing views (WYSIWYG, code and preview). I’m currently testing it out, but so far it seems to provide a very useful environment for blogging. One disadvantage is that it only works in Firefox, and I’ve been mainly using the new version of Safari lately. I’d love to see a ScribeFire plug-in for Safari (or something like it).
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