Monika Mundell of EasyWordPress.com has published an excellent article ( A Snapshot of several blog editors ) that briefly highlights the cream of the crop in terms of free blog editors. External blog editors are perfect to use if you are a mobile blogger or are having serious issues with TinyMCE. What ever the case may be, Monika has provided the information you’ll need to know to choose a blog editor that suits your tastes. Also, if you feel like paying some coin, the article also highlights a few different PAID FOR solutions.
So far, I’ve really enjoyed using the Scribefire Firefox Extension. This is one of the blog editors that Monika talks about in her post and it’s been a real time saver for me, especially when it’s tied directly into my WordPress powered blog through the awesome XML-RPC feature.
Do you use a third party blog editor? If so, which one is it and why do you prefer to use that program over the built in publisher?
6 thoughts on “Brief Rundown Of Multiple Blog Editors”
Thanks Jeff,
You do have me a bit confused though. I know for a fact that you don’t have to sign into a “Windows Live” account in order to use Windows Live Writer. There’s not even a place in the writer to do so. I haven’t messed around with the technical preview of the up and coming version but I haven’t heard that it requires anything like that either. Perhaps you could tell me what you’re seeing? You definitely got my curiosity up.
Awesome reply Kirk. I see a majority of people really enjoy using Windows Live Writer. I downloaded it the other day but realized that I needed a Windows Live account in order to use the software. What a bummer. I didn’t want to go through the process of getting a Live Account just to use a piece of blogging software. I’d like for them to allow the program to be used without an account. Other than that, I’ve been using ScribeFire and so far, it seems to fit me quite well.
…and after enabling the XML RPC API (but not the old Atom) via the Admin I can publish just fine from my local blog editors.
And speaking of that, I currently use 3 different third party editors. My “heavy hitter” for both posts and pages is “Windows Live Writer” which has always been a favorite of mine (except for the non-standard toolbar setup which aggravates me to no end). This editor now directly supports custom WordPress blogs via a wlwmanifest.xml file which in my case is really handy. It also has the option to publish in either HTML or XHTML so the author has a choice and also has support for inserting just about anything from tags (all types) to maps and videos.
My main editor for standard type posts though (no videos and such just text and images) is “BlogDesk”. It’s stable, reliable and I love the simple, clean and functional interface. It doesn’t do pages but then again how often do you do write up/edit pages? And the newest addition adds full support for the WP 2.5 series including tagging. There’s a bit of a learning curve to the basic setup and where to find the extra features and such but once that’s done it’s a breeze to use.
And I’m still using “ScribeFire” as my “pinch-hit” blog editor and have been since Jed brown released the first version of “PFF” and Chris is doing a great job on the “ScibeFire” developement. The only thing that bugs me about this editor is that it still uses line breaks instead of paragraph tags on a hard return (“Enter”) which has been a problem since the beginning. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be without it.
Okay then, that’s my 52 cents worth. Wordy ain’t I? 😀
No need to worry Raj. This is confusing news but what is happening is that, in WordPress 2.6 and up, XML RPC will be disabled as a default option. It won’t be removed, those who use the feature will need to go back in and turn it back on after they upgrade.
In simple terms. If you use XML RPC, it will be turned off when you upgrade. For those installation WordPress 2.6 as a new installation, the feature will be turned off by default.
I don’t like the way they have implemented this feature disablement and hope they change the way the feature is turned off.
DaveE: Performancing for Firefox (PFF) was changed to ScribeFire and has not been a Performancing product for well over a year now. So there’s no reason there needs to be a disclosure.
Jeff: I love ScribeFire too, but according to James’ post about WP 2.6, the WP dev team are making drastic changes and disabling XML-RPC. This bit of super bad news means that if you use ANY blog editor that functions via XML-RPC to post content, you want to avoid all versions of WP2.6 and up. Unless I’m missing something, every single such blog editor will cease to function with WP 2.6 by default, unless you turn XML-RPC back on. (Hopefully there’ll be an option in the Admin panel.)
I’m pretty sure someone else mentioned Scribefire in a recent Performancing post, and had the good sense to mention that it is (or was?) a Performancing product.
It doesn’t sit right when that disclosure doesn’t appear each and every time you mention it in a blog post, such as this one. Whether legitimate or not, there are reasons we declare conflicts of interest – to ensure everything is, at all times, above board.
Comments are closed.