MarsEdit 3.0

This week, however, MarsEdit 3.0 (ME3) was released, and is $40 or a $15 upgrade for current users. The biggest change or improvement is the implementation of a Rich Text Editor: No more futzing around with HTML tags to change header styles, for example. Instead, most format options are readily available from a right-click context menu, or from a drop-down from the menu bar. There is also a Format button in the upper right corner of the RTE window. All windows are identical:

MarsEdit 3.0 Format Dialogue

You can also (obviously) insert media directly; however, there aren’t a lot of options available other than alignment, alt text, and size. For example, I’m unsure how to display a reduced-size image in Lightbox, since I need to specify the file’s URL as a link. MarsEdit doesn’t upload files until you post the article. Obviously, I could upload the images via FTP, but that’s an extra step that I’d prefer to avoid.

ME3 does allow you to upload your post as a draft, which you can then preview and edit as needed from within WP. This is handy for adding the aforementioned image links to enable Lightbox. Server options are shown under the categories list:

MarsEdit 3.0 Server Options

By contrast, WP uploads images from a separate dialogue, and at that time gives you the option to include the file link for the image. WLW uploads images when you post articles as well, but it automagically includes the file’s URL to enable Lightbox display. Neither WP nor ME3 gives you the option to specify image margins without editing the HTML image tags.

ME3 grabs your blog’s categories, and has an option to prompt you to include the category (as well as title text, tags, and body text) before uploading. There is also a space in which you can type a new category name. The View menu includes an option to display a “Tags” field, or you can add Technorati tags if you’re so inclined.

There is a right-click context menu which is fairly consistent across selections, but gives you a couple interesting options at the bottom if you select and right-click an image or blank space:

ME3 Image Context Menu

On the other hand, if you select text, the context menu is slightly different (Spotlight is OS X’s built-in search function):

M3 Text Context Menu

Overall, MarsEdit has moved to the top of the list when it comes to native OS X blogging platforms. However, it still has some distance to go to match the functionality and ease of use of Windows Live Writer. For $40, I’m not convinced it’s a better option than the built-in WordPress editor, either. On the other hand, if I didn’t have WLW to fall back on, I might be more inclined to purchase MarsEdit 3.0. It’s clearly head and shoulders above anything else I’ve seen for OS X.

MarsEdit 3.0: Blogging Software for the Mac is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

 

Ever since I bought my MacBook Pro, over a year ago, I’ve been seeking a blogging platform for the Mac comparable to Windows Live Writer.

What I Want

• True WYSIWYG editing: What you see is what you get. Compare the screenshot below to what you’re actually seeing here on the Aerie. (Feed readers, you may actually have to visit the site!)

Note the “Preview” and “Source” tabs below the editing area: The former shows your article exactly how it will appear on your website’s home page, including site header, sidebars, etc. The latter allows you to manipulate HTML if absolutely necessary; I’ve only had to use it for <code> tags.

• Quick, easy, seamless insertion of graphics, with the ability to modify sizes, margins, borders, and more, without having to directly play with the img tag.
• The ability to save drafts both locally and to the blog (not necessarily simultaneously), including being able to save a draft to the blog and open it for editing online (within the WordPress Visual Editor).
• Plugins are nice!
• Free is better!

What I Found

During the course of my search, I found the following software, listed alphabetically:

• Blogo, $25,¹ 21-day free trial. Here’s what the sample pictured above looks like in Blogo:

The dropbox in the lower left makes it pretty simple to add images, but they only show up as placeholders in the document. Blog categories are not imported. Setting heading styles requires direct HTML editing.

• Ecto: $19.95, 21-day free trial. Unfortunately, my trial expired before I thought to take a screenshot; the one below is from the website.

I couldn’t find a way to add a category without going online and adding it in the blog itself. Note the HTML angle brackets in the format bar, the only way to insert different heading styles (h2, h3, h4, etc.).

• MacJournal, $34.95, 15-day free trial.

As journaling software, MacJournal may be very robust; once again, however, it didn’t support standard header styles without resorting to HTML. The only manipulation of graphics (which are “drag and drop”) was to resize to 75-, 50-, or 25-percent.

• MarsEdit 2: $29.95, 30-day free trial.

MarsEdit allows heading selection, but as you can see from the shot above, the editor uses HTML tags to display them. If you start getting very involved with design of your article, this can get very cluttered, and distracting.

However, there is a “real-time” preview pane:

The preview does include images, so it’s pretty close to WYSIWYG, at least as far as font sizes, headings, and image positioning is concerned. (Don’t look for an image here; I didn’t include one for this shot.)

And the Winner Is…

Believe it or not, the absolute best blogging software for the Mac is…Windows Live Writer! And that’s what I used to produce this article, as well as yesterday’s Carrot Cake post.

The drawback: WLW won’t run natively under OS X, even on Intel Macs. The workaround is to install Windows from Boot Camp, or use a virtual machine emulator such as VMware Fusion, which I use, or Parallels Desktop.²

Windows Live Writer was developed for one purpose: To enable bloggers to easily and efficiently prepare blog articles for a wide variety of blogging platforms. It works equally well with Live Journal and Blogger, as well as WordPress. It’s features are unmatched compared to any, or all, of the dedicated Mac products. It’s free, which is an excellent selling point³ Yes, you need to have Windows, and for many, that may be a deal-breaker, either because of the cost or because they simply don’t want anything to do with any product from Redmond.

(Incidentally, I’ve not found a better blogging solution for Windows, either!)

If you’re a Mac-based blogger, what software do you use, if any? I’d be interested from hearing from you, either in the comments below, or via my contact form.

Best Blogging Software for the Mac is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

 

What Do I Mean By “Software”?

Well…how about “not hardware”? Okay, too easy. In this case, though, I’m defining software rather broadly: Standalone applications, web-based applications, browser plugins…essentially, code in many forms

Why’d You Pick These, Kes?

The criteria were pretty simple: What has struck my fancy lately, works well, and is relatively simple? In other words, “Hey, this is pretty cool!”

I should add one caveat: The order in which these are listed aren’t necessarily a ranking (in fact, I may simply reorder them alphabetically…we’ll see).

Evernote is a web-based application, also available for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Blackberry. Here’s the description from “What is Evernote?”

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Did we mention that it’s free?

Basically, it’s a virtual 3-ring binder, index card system, or whatever other metaphor you choose to use. Find a great recipe you want to be sure you print out later? Copy to Evernote, or simply save the web page there.

Do you have a boilerplate collection of text items you use frequently? I do, for the blogs I add to the Twisted Nether Wiki’s Big List of Blogs. I used to use a Google Notebook for these, but Google is no longer supporting Notebooks directly, and some of the changes to Firefox and Google have made them less useful (e.g., copy/paste is no longer formatted, so I have to re-create links). Enter Evernote, and a “TN Bloglist” Notebook.

Evernote provides a free monthly allowance of 40MB; halfway through the month, I’m at 3 percent of that, so for most people, this should be plenty of storage. However, if you’re a real power user (or a real packrat), a monthly fee of $5 enables a 500MB monthly upload allowance and stronger security via SSL.

You can email just about anything from your computer or phone into an Evernote notebook, and you can even use twitter to add items. Right now, I can’t think of anything more flexible and more comfortable to use for capturing and storing “stuff” that I want to use or look at later.

I just found out about Prism today, but I must say it is pretty cool. Essentially, it allows you to turn a single website into a desktop application. Read more about it at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

The idea behind Prism is to allow you to have a window with one website in it. The most obvious use is as a desktop application replacement: Gmail, for example, for email and calendar (to replace, say, Outlook), or Meebo, for multi-platform instant messaging (instead of Pidgin, Adium or Digsby, especially if you can’t use those standalone clients in a business environment).

Yes, it does get away from the tabbed browser concept to some extent; on the other hand, if you use Gmail as your exclusive email client, as I do, it makes a lot of sense to be able to run it in a separate window, without all the overhead of a second browser instance.

Seesmic Desktop is a standalone Twitter and Facebook application that works much like TweetDeck. In fact, like TweetDeck, it uses the Adobe Air runtime platform. However, a major difference is that Seesmic not only updates Twitter, but Facebook entries from you and your friends as well.

Like TweetDeck, Seesmic is organized in columns, and you can create individualized lists for people and topics. But the big difference, of course, is that Seesmic also brings in Facebook updates as well as Tweets. For social networking power users (or even folks like me), this is really a very spiffy implementation.

Right now, Seesmic doesn’t have many of the customization options TweetDeck provides, but those are more esthetic than functional. Seesmic also doesn’t display Facebook notifications (Mafia Wars invitations/updates, for example); at least, not that I’ve found.

Personally, the jury’s still out on Seesmic, as I’m still evaluating the utility of Facebook for myself, but for those of you who regularly update or follow both, Seesmic could be a killer app for you.

I found out about Synergy through Gina Trapani ( @ginatrapani) on Lifehacker (a highly recommended website for your feed reader, by the way).

Synergy allows you to use a single keyboard and mouse between two computers: Two Macs, two PCs, or a Mac and a PC. (Yes, it works with Unix boxes too, but check Sourceforge to determine whether your flavor of Unix/Linux is supported.) The two PCs do not have to share the same operating system.

For Windows, Win95, Win98 and WinME are supported, as are all versions of Windows based on WinNT, up to and including Windows 7. Mac OS X 10.2 and higher are supported.

Sourceforge: "The Mac OS X port is incomplete. It does not synchronize the screen saver, only text clipboard data works (i.e. HTML and bitmap data do not work), the cursor won’t hide when not on the screen, and there may be problems with mouse wheel acceleration."

Configuring Synergy is not as intuitive as one might like, at first glance. However, again at Lifehacker, Adam Pash has come to the rescue with a detailed, well-illustrated tutorial for setting up Synergy.

Currently, I’m sharing the Mac keyboard and Logitech (PC) mouse between the iMac and Macbook Pro, both of which are running OS X 10.5.7 Leopard. Moving from one computer to the other is almost perfectly seamless, although there are some tweaks in responsiveness I haven’t tried yet. For my purposes, though, it’s a free and highly effective alternative to a hardware KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch.

One thing I have yet to try out is whether I can “Synergize” between a Winows virtual machine on one of the Macs, with the other computer. If anyone’s done so, I’d be interested to hear about it.

For those of you who don’t have two monitors, but do have a desktop and a laptop, this is truly the next best thing.

If you use Gmail, Google Calendar, or Google Reader, you owe it to yourself to check out this outstanding “theme” treatment of these signature Google applications. Especially if you are a fan at all of dark backgrounds, not to mention a very clean layout, Google Redesigned (GR) deserves a chance to win you over.

The program itself is a Firefox extension (so if you’re using IE, Safari, Opera or Chrome, you’re out of luck), which installs easily, and adds a little button in the bottom right corner of the browser. The button can be used to check for design updates, but you can also allow automatic updates.

One thing to keep in mind is that GR is developed independently of the Google apps it skins. Thus, when Google makes changes to the apps, those changes could “break” GR until the designers get caught up; on the other hand, they are pretty responsive to such things, and despite the plethora of updates to Gmail and GReader the past few weeks, GR has not been noticeably compromised.

That’s All for Now

So there you have it…this week’s Friday Five software picks. I hope there’s something here you can use; if so, how about adding to the comments to share your experiences with others.

I’m also open to suggestions for other “Friday Five” topics, although I won’t touch roleplay topics: TooManyAnnas has that covered pretty well.

Friday Five: Software is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

 

We have maintained our friendship ever since, and a couple years ago, when Mrs K and her mother were touring southeast Asia, they visited Mike and Karen in Panang, Malaysia, where Mike was working for Mattel.

After an excellent lunch at a local Mexican restaurant, we returned to their house for a couple hours of conversation. Mike is an avowed Mac power user, so I was interested in talking to him a bit about Macs. I wanted to get a few pointers on Mac software, since I don’t use the Macbook Pro (MBP) nearly as much as I do Windows apps.

Mike convinced me to get a copy of VMWare Fusion 2, to allow me to run Windows in a “virtual machine” process on the MBP. My brother-in-law and I made a visit to Fry’s Electronics this morning, but I thought I might do better than the $80 retail price by checking Newegg. In fact, I found it for $35.99 after a $10 mail-in rebate!

Then I started looking at other Mac software available from Newegg. I’m still looking for a blogging app as flexible and powerful as Windows Live Writer. (It occurs to me that once I have Fusion installed, I can run WLW under Windows on the Mac. Cool!) As a result, I’m writing this entry in MacJournal, from Mariner Software. I’ll hold off on shelling out $35 for it, though, until after I get a chance to install Fusion next month, and try WLW in a Windows virtual machine.

Thus, the purpose of this article, in addition to letting you know what I’ve been doing the past couple days (in addition to trying to keep up with the U.S. Open from Long Island), is to see how well MacJournal works as a blogging platform.

Playing With Mac Software is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie