Adrian Trenholm

Blog editor group test results

May 9th, 2005

I gave the game away earlier with the interim results: for my purposes, w.bloggar , used in conjunction with Markdown is the winner. Ecto , Zempt and SharpMT follow in that order, with BlogJet in a separate category. The operative phrase here is “for my purposes” - you may have different uses in mind and, for sure, different opinions. Bear in mind, also, that I work on Windows 2000 and it’s pretty late at night.

Taking you through my test criteria one point at a time:

1. Set up . w.bloggar does this so well - it’s just quick and idiot proof, select your blog engine from a drop down, type in your domain and you’re off. Even the instructions about not including the trailing slash on your domain name during set up are refreshingly clear. BlogJet comes a close second.

   Zempt and Ecto do a workmanlike job. SharpMT has a peculiar little “refresh” button, which caused me some head scratching, but I got there in the end. Ecto and SharpMT also lost points for forcing me to download and instal .NET upgrades, before I could instal the applications.

2. Multiple blogs, multiple posts . All of them - with two caveats - hooked up with WordPress and Typepad and let me see my recent posts and work on them. The thing that surprised me was that none of them could differentiate a draft from a published post. When using an offline editor, it seems that your workflow must be save drafts offline; “post and publish” only when the post is ready.

   w.bloggar and BlogJet shone again - you can specify the number of previous posts you want to see within either application - but w.bloggar makes you click File > Select Account to switch between blogs. That’s a small thing, but irritating if you have multiple blogs to manage.

   Zempt does a very nice job of managing previous posts in WP - the preview even worked with Markdown - but would only show the single most recent post in Typepad. Ecto does a better job for both blogs, with a nice three pane interface (blogs on the left, titles on the top, preview on the bottom), but the preview doesn’t understand Markdown or Textile. SharpMT is billed as a Movable Type / Typepad editor and, sure enough, it refused to download the bodies of my WP posts.

3. Writing and editing . BlogJet is a WYSIWYG editor, which is a boon for probably 99% of the world and a curse for the 1% of us who care - probably too much - about markup. I am in that 1%, so BlogJet, with it’s extraneous
tags and   s was never going to win my heart. But if you have never heard of the evils of Bed and BReakfast markup , then BlogJet wins on ease of editing.

   The others provide some basic XHTML tags through the toolbar, w.bloggar having the most comprehensive selection; it handles lists particularly well. If you are not using Textile or Markdown, w.bloggar is a clear winner among the non-WYSIWYGers for that reason alone.

   Zempt is equally fine for Textile or Markdown users, but it is not so hot when you have to mark up your lists by hand for Typepad. Ecto did not handle multi-paragraph blockquotes at all well. I had given up on SharpMT by this stage.

   The non-WYSIWYGers all provide the option to create and insert your own XHTML tags (or other text snippets), and all use colour to differentiate tags from text. Again w.bloggar’s high contrast blue for tags seemed much more fit for purpose than Ecto and Zempt’s more subtle hues.

4. Does it work properly? SharpMT threw a lot of .NET errors and I didn’t even use it to post; Ecto and Zempt threw the occasional error. Zempt also duplicated, rather than amended existing posts in Typepad - forcing me to open the Typepad page to remove the duplicates. To be fair, these applications may well be error-free and I need simply to RTM, but w.bloggar and BlogJet ran without error throughout, so I know which ones I will stick with.

5. Does it feel right? Of the five, again it’s w.bloggar and BlogJet which feel the sharpest.

So, BlogJet is not for me, because I just don’t get on with WYSIWYG, but I am happy to recommend it to those who do. If you want control over your markup, my choice is w.bloggar.

If this has helped you decide - or if you agree or disagree with my results, then leave a comment.

Entry Filed under: Blogging , Workflow