Solo Technology

I really like the latest release of Windows Live Writer Beta 2. However, it still doesn’t like posting to my blog (as mentioned before, it appears to be a conflict with the Bad Behavior plugin). I’ve exchanged some emails with the folks at Microsoft about it.

While waiting to see how that resolves, I thought this would be a good time to check out Post2Blog. Post2Blog is another blog editor that seems quite powerful at first glance. I’d never tried it before, but it just recently became Freeware (via CyberNet News) so it suddenly became much more interesting to me (yep, I really am that cheap).

12 reasons to use Post2Blog 3:

• WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor with complete hot-keys support
• Built-in “Live” spellchecking
• “Portable Mode” support
• Images are uploaded automatically (supported uploading types: Flickr, file area of your blog, imageshack.us, picturelli.com, custom FTP server)
• Post text and/or images from Firefox or Internet Explorer to your blog with 2 clicks only using plugins for Firefox (check example) and Internet Explorer (check example)
• Compose new posts in MS Word and post them to your blog using Post2Blog toolbar for MS Word
• Integration with RSS Bandit and Sharp Reader - you can post selected items from these RSS readers using Post2Blog plugin
• Post files, images, documents from Explorer or any other program using “Send To -> Post2Blog” command
• Add Technorati, Del.icio.us, Buzzwords, 43 Things tags to your posts
• Automatically send trackbacks, ping web-services to notify about updates in your blogs
• Earn money using “Insert Amazon Link” feature
• Use built-in smiles for use in your blog

I’ve just started to use it (this post is my first effort) and I already have spotted one feature that I absolutely love and isn’t listed above. While writing a post, I’m often referring back and forth to my web browser for urls. When I select the text that I want to make a link and hit Ctrl-K (the hyperlink shortcut) the link is automatically filled in from the windows clipboard.

That’s very slick and a nice little touch. Being able to run it in portable mode is very welcome also.

The image handling is great too.  For WordPress (the only way I’ve tested) it is just as seamless as WLW. Add the image, set a few options and when you publish it to the site the image will be uploaded automagically.

The “live” spell checking is a bit annoying… it’ll often flag a word as misspelled whilst still typing it. A minor annoyance and easily remedied by switching to spellcheck on demand instead.

Overall, Post2Blog certainly isn’t as “polished looking” as WLW, but I’ve yet to see anything from a feature perspective that makes one stand out over the other.  If you’re looking for an alternative to the built-in editor, this one definitely seems worth a look.

One Response to “A Quick Look at Post2Blog”

1. andy on June 3rd, 2007 4:07 pm
   

   I have always used the wordpress write page to post all of my articles. I will try the WLW. Thanks for the great review.

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