Blog Editor

I don’t like to blog about blogging, but I’ll make an exception to talk about tools.

As I posted before, I’ve wanted to find a good cross-platform blogging client, but I’m finding that I need to reduce my expectations.

I haven’t had much success finding a good cross-platform editor; most of them haven’t been maintained in a long time. (Flock is maintained, but it is overkill for what I want to do.) ScribeFire is the best cross-platform tool that I’ve found, but at least right now on Firefox 3 on WinXP, keyboard shortcuts don’t work. I’ll keep ScribeFire around as a backup, but it probably won’t be my primary tool.

On Windows, I have to say that Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer is the best tool I’ve found. It’s easy to use, has great image-handling, and – most importantly – it “just works.” I rarely praise Microsoft, but I like Live Writer a lot.

I almost forgot about Zoho Writer; I like it, too. Its keyboard shortcuts override the browser’s shortcuts, so that shortcuts like CTRL-B/CTRL-I/CTRL-U work. And it’s possible to publish directly to Blogger, so that’s a big plus.

As for blogging from the Linux desktop, I need to do more research. Some of the “big” names in Linux desktop bloggers don’t seem to have been updated recently. Zoho Writer/Google Docs might be my best bet there, although I haven’t tested their image-handling abilities.

As I was searching for editors, I found this article very useful: 20+ Useful Desktop Blog Editors.