Ecto is another visual weblog editor, and from a cursory look has more features than MarsEdit. I’m typing this now in Ecto, and whilst not as WYSIWYG as BlogJet on Windows, it’s not too bad. It features integration with iPhoto, iTunes, Amazon, supports file enclosures (a la Podcasting), previous posts, categorisation, image uploading, trackbacks… See their website for a full feature list.
Continue reading ‘Weblog Editors: Ecto’
Archive for the 'Apple Mac' Category
I am currently testing the use of MarsEdit, by those clever folks at http://www.ranchero.com. It’s Mac only, and very well designed. It allows you to easily post to your blog, but is still rather clunky in that images have to be uploaded, then an HTML string inserted into your post. Other than editing it by hand, there is no way of specifying an alt tag for the image that I have found, so it’s not yet as WYSIWYG as Ecto. I’ll continue though, as it looks like there’s a lot of potential in it. NetNewsWire is a great RSS reader, also written by Ranchero, and integrates with MarsEdit. Watch this space…
I installed Tiger on Monday, and I have to say it does live up to the hype.
I backed up my system and opted for the “Upgrade” option rather than format and install or archive and install (essentially copying my old system into a folder in case you ever have to revert back to it). I backed up everything onto a stack of DVDs (which I should have done a long time ago), and took the plunge.
Installation took about 40 minutes, and worked perfectly. The one thing I did change during the installation, was to customise the install. This allows one to stop OSX installing the default suite of printer drivers. All 1Gb of them. That’s right - 1Gb of printer drivers, and not one of them was for my Samsung laser printer! 1Gb of drivers that I’ll never use, 1Gb of wasted space.
When OSX 10.4 booted for the first time, it was immediately apparent that all of my settings had been preserved, thankfully, so my system was up and running, and ready to be used.
Everything works as expected, and I’ve found Dashboard to be incredibly useful. I can even post to this blog via a simple ‘widget’. Push F12, bang, there’s the Dashboard, type some stuff into Dashblog, hit “Post”, hit F12, bang - it’s gone. That’s impressive, damned useful. I’ve even got Tetris on the Dashboard :-)
Spotlight took a good few hours to index my system, and it won’t let you use it while indexing. This is to be expected given the amount of files on my hard drive. The way you can view images as a contact sheet or full screen slideshow is a nice touch.
I’ll post more of my experiences here as I go along. Meantime, if you’re reading this and would like some tips, head along to macosxhints.com.
Apple new OS is due to be released on April 29th. Visit Apple’s MacOS X website for full details.
Continue reading ‘Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger’