MarsEdit Makes Blogging Saner

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.

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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

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