Life of Andrew

Client-side Blogging Software – Ecto

Now that I have this blog, the question is “what do I do with it”. While I sort that little issue out, I am experimenting with some new client-side blogging software. Moveable Type’s web interface is pretty good, but there is nothing like a proper MacOSX interface for writing.

Currently I am trying out Ecto, I am using it to write this post. So far it seems to have some nice features that make the blogging experience a little easier.
One of the most annoying things about web interfaces is that there is no good way of uploading files. Sure, there is HTTP PUT, but its a pain to use on the client, and requires jumping through all sorts of ridiculous hoops server-side. Also, there is no way to do common actions such as resize pictures and automatically provide thumbnails. This annoyed me so much that I spent a lot of time writing FTPTool, a Java applet to do exactly these tasks. From a blogging persective, FTPTool is not so good. The interface is designed around uploading a number of files at a time.
What Ecto provide is a simple way of authoring posts that contain images:

It has options for resizing the images, thumbnails and specifying exactly how you want the image to appear on the page. The editor provides a spelling checker (less useful on MacOSX, which has one built in) and a fairly nice word-processor environment. The editor could be a bit more ambitious, there is no apparent support for DIVs. For instance, it would be nice if there was some way to automatically put the image about into its own DIV with a predefined style, so that it would automatically float to the right. You can still do it manually, but the whole point of blogging software is to avoid stuff like that.
The other bad feature is that it is not free, although for less than US$20, there are certainly more expensive software packages.
I will keep using it until the trial runs out, but I suspect that my search for client-side blogging nirvana will continue.

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