Trying the free blog editing client app Bleezer - it’s a cross-platform java app. A little rough around the edges, but has a pretty decent UI (but categories are provided in a popup, so you can select only one category for a post).
The editor is not WYSIWYG, but toggles to preview mode easily. It doesn’t grok the convention of skipping p and br, so the preview is spaced oddly. The app provides an interface for direct FTP uploads of images etc. as well.
This one’s close, but still isn’t exactly what I’m looking for. Back to the WordPress web UI…
So far, Performancing and Flock are the closest thing I’ve seen to an ideal blog management client app, but even that doesn’t make me hate using the WP web UI…
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I wrote Bleezer. And you’re right - I didn’t grok the convention of skipping p and br. Could you explain what you mean?
I’m adding WYSIWYG support currently. The product is only 2 months old, and it will get better.
I love Performancing but I wasn’t impressed by Flock. What would you need in Bleezer that would make it more useful for you?
Larry, it’s a pretty nice app - and I’ll be keeping an eye on it.
What WordPress does is convert carriage returns to br tags, and empty lines (double return) marks a paragraph. In the same way that this comment is converted into a couple of paragraphs just by hitting return a couple of times. Bleezer wasn’t doing that in the preview. It’s not fatal, but is a cosmetic oddity.
wait - bleezer`s two months old? dude, nice work. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it
D’Arcy, how did you find Bleezer compared to Mar Edit and Ecto?
And Larry, for two months work this is excellent progress. Keep going and I look forward to the wysiwig version. Would be good if this hooks up to rss aggregators like Blogbridge.
Thanks Nick. The comment I hear most frequently is “no frills but it does a nice job”. I’m ok with that for now, but it will get better.
I’m looking at connecting to aggregators as well as a bookmarklet in a future version.
Bleezer feels like it’s already close to par with MarsEdit or Ecto. It lags behind in some areas (mostly the fit and finish, but for a 2-month-old app, that’s totally understandable
), and ahead in others (cross-platform, simple), and about the same in others (no WYSIWYG).
Addition of bookmarklet support would be cool, as well as being triggerable by other apps (including aggregators as the preferred ‘blog client’ app).
Other than that, the ability to select multiple categories for a post (and ideally to add a new category), as well as following the convert-newline-to-paragraph convention for previewing, and it’s a pretty solid option!
Web 2.0 for Tracking Web 2.0
Before I start on this post, I want to note that I am writing it in the