Blog Client: W.bloggar
Alright, the name of this blog client is nothing short of weird, and not very inspiring (it definitely makes me thinkof “beggar” each time I try to pronounce it, sorry). Going past this uneasy feeling to test it further was however a very good idea, for it turned out to be a pretty interesting tool. Moreover, it’s free.
The Pros:
- Clean-looking, with explicit icons for alignment and text attributes
- A wide variety of supported blog services and tools: Blogger, Movable Type, WordPress, b2, LiveJournal, Typepad, b2evolution, Nucleus, BigBlogTool, Blogalia, Blogworks, Drupal, Xoops, Upsaid, Blog-City, Squarespace…
- Clearly separated functions: the Editor tab allows direct HTML coding, the More tab lets you configure excerpts and ping/comments settings, while the Preview area shows you exactly what your entry will look like.
- Allows to either directly publish an entry, or to post it as a draft only on your blog for further review (similar to the Post and Post and Publish functions on Blogger).
- Lets you edit former posts (the last one, among the 5/10/15/20 last posts, or directly by post ID).
- Detailed functions, such as links or images insertion
- Pings to Weblogs.Com, blo.gs, Technorati and Ping-o-matic
The Cons:
- No easy function (drop pad, item in the right-click menu…) to quickly fire the editor if you find a website you want to blog about.
- The spellcheck function should be improved (yes, this one too doesn’t know the word “blog”.
- Limited WYSIWYG function: it’s easy to edit in HTML directly as well as to preview, but you cannot modify anything in the Preview area, which can be disturbing at times, when needing to go back to the text with all tags surrounding it.
- The file upload system may seem a little “complex” at first, as it asks for your FTP connexion information. On the other hand, anyone using WodPress, Movable Type or any similar system already knows what to do when asked FTP information (unless someone else is managing their blogs).
Conclusion:A tool that turned out to be pretty full of nice and complete enough features, both intuitive (explicit icons and functions) and allowing for a more precise type of editing. Too bad that it doesn’t come with a “blog this!” feature, whether in the shape of a pad, applet or menu item; this would make it really more convenient.
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Comments
Silly Girl
knock knock
hink
You know, I used to use w.bloggar back when it was only written for blogger.com. I loved it. Now I am decent enough with HTML that I can what I want without breaking a thought, so its sort of an extra step for me.But I had a few email exchanges with the guy who designed it (he’s from Brazil, as I recall), and he’s a very cool guy. Worth using his software, just for that. 😛
Yzabel
Ehe, technically I could also code raw HTML without a thought, but there are days when Im just lazy and like to work with a decent WYSIWYG editor. I hadn’t tried w.bloggar until recently, so I can’t compare with what it was before, when only for Blogger. All in all, it’s so far the editor that I’ve liked the most.