On my 1920 x 1200 iMac, blogger.com gives me a field measuring 700 pixels by 250 pixels. All that crisp, clear, Apple monitor, and I can only use 11% of it for writing blog posts.
This and other blogger.com shortcomings have long frustrated me. However it is free, reliable, and does have some pretty nifty features, so I don't want this to seem like ungrateful complaining. It's just that the blogger.com UI hasn't advanced much in the last few years.
About a year ago I tried out every third-party Mac desktop client I could find for blogger.com. None of them impressed me enough to spend money, so I went back to the web interface.
A year is a long time in the software world, so I searched again for a desktop client for posting to blogger.com. I found what I wanted. It's called MarsEdit. I'm using it right now. I've been trialling it for the last couple of weeks and I am sold.
Major pluses for MarsEdit:
- General editing is much nicer
- Working with image placement is easier
- Real-time preview as I type
- It seems to be under active development with a vibrant user community
Minuses for MarsEdit:
- You have to manually enter HTML tags to get bullet point lists
- Resizing images is a chore
Posts
7 comments:
Not to rain on your MarsEdit lovefest parade, but if you used Safari, you'd be able to resize that Blogger.com textbox to your heart's desire with a simple click and drag. Not that I use Safari (egad, ads on the web!) but it's quite good for this sort of thing.
@Rob,
That's why I thought, but blogger.com has craftily put together the editing box so that it _can't_ be resized from Safari. :-(
Screenshot was taken from Safari 4.
Steve
O RLLY?
Resizable blogger post text box in Safari 4.
Rob.
@Rob,
Well that's puzzling. No resize box for me on that screen, although I get it on most other web pages with textareas.
Time for some Internet research...
@Rob,
Aha, the "Edit HTML" tab is resizable but the "Compose" tab is not. Your screenshot is "Edit HTML", mine is "Compose".
In any case, it is time Blogger did some UI improvements!
If you're avoiding to use Safari just because of ads, try GlimmerBlocker. http://glimmerblocker.org
Works fine on Snow Leopard and doesn't break with new Safari updates.
Ahh, I see! You're quite right about the UI generally for blogger - it's getting quite dated now. It's not just post composition either, writing comments is a jarring UI experience too.
Still, it's free 'n all.
@the other Rob - I haven't tried glimmerblocker, but I've given other Safari adblock software a whirl and it's just nowhere near as effective as FF / ABP, not to mention some other nifty plugins.
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