Roo Reynolds - What’s Next?

In search of the perfect blogging tool

Posted by Roo - 13/05/08 at 08:05:38 am

I’ve been hunting for a Mac equivalent to Windows Live Writer. Here’s my personal checklist/wishlist of what an offline blogging tool should do.

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	Ecto (Mac & Windows)	MarsEdit (Mac only)	Qumana (Mac and Windows)	Windows Live Writer (Windows only)
Easy (mouse-free) way to add links by selecting text	+ [1]	+ [2]	+ [3]	+ [4]
WYSIWYG / rich text editing	+	-	+	+
WordPress categories	+	+	+	+
WordPress tags	+	+	-	+
Scheduled posting	+	+	+	+
Easy to add Flickr photos	+ [f]	+	+ [e]	+ [!]
Easy to add YouTube (etc) videos	+ [e]	+ [e]	+ [e]	+ [!]
Undo	+	+	+ [w]	+
Creates nice clean HTML	+ [u]	+	+	+
Post to blog as draft	+	+	-	+
File upload	+	+	+	+
Web preview mode (what will it look like on the blog)	-	+ [f]	-	+ [!]

+ = yes
- = no (or if it’s there, I couldn’t find it)
[1] = ⌘+U (or Shift+⌘+U to use clipboard text and bypass the dialog)
[2] = ⌥+⌘+A (or Shift+⌘+A to use clipboard text and bypass the dialog)
[3] = Shift+⌘+L
[4] = Ctrl+K
[f] = with a little bit of fiddling
[e] = via HTML embed codes
[!] = really stupidly wonderfully easy
[w] = only in WYSIWYG mode, for some reason
[u] = Generally not too bad, but <span style=”font-style: italic;”> rather than <em>? Urgh.

Windows Live Writer is by far the best blogging tool I’ve ever used, but sadly it’s Windows only. It’s the benchmark by which I’m judging the others, but it would get big additional bonus points (if points were being given) for making it stupidly, wonderfully easy to insert Flickr photos and YouTube videos, without even needing to paste any HTML. Pasting in the URL for a Flickr photo / YouTube video into the editor is enough to make it do the right thing, which is a wonderful timesaving feature. The web preview auto-detects what your blog looks like, which makes an accurate preview trivially easy too.

Qumana is free, but a bit ‘monetized’ (there’s an Insert Ad button I have no interest in using, and the website says things like “Make money from your blog content by inserting the ads of your choice…”) but it’s nice enough. Each post automatically includes a “Powered by Qumana” link, which can be deleted by hand. The biggest problem with it is that alt+left/right doesn’t do anything, and instead you have to use ⌘+left/right to jump left/right by one word which is just wrong (or at least grossly inconsistent with every other Mac app I’ve ever used). Given my desire to use the keyboard for just about everything I do, this alone is a showstopper.

Ecto costs $17.95. Flickr support comes via a plugin, but sadly the output doesn’t follow the Flickr terms of service (the image should link to the photo page, but doesn’t until you add the link yourself). Rich text editing is nice though.

MarsEdit costs $29.95. It’s Flickr tab makes it very easy to add your own photos. No rich text editing but does have nice support for macros. If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty with some HTML, it’s great.

Depending on whether you like hacking HTML or really need a rich text editor, you’ll probably prefer MarsEdit or Ecto respectively. I’m enjoying MarsEdit enough to stick with it for now. I still have yet to find anything quite as nice as Windows Live Writer on the Mac though. Have I missed any?

Mac Fiddling

Posted by Roo - 07/02/08 at 02:02:50 pm

A big thank you to everyone who provided me with some handy hints on becoming a new MacBook Pro user. Frank’s tip about fixing the Home and End keys using KeyFixer (and KeyFixer for Firefox) has really helped. I’ve also disabled the Dashboard, saving me some RAM and CPU since I never really used the widgets in the dashboard anyway. Instead, I’ve mapped my freed-up F12 key to Visor, which is a drop-down console-like terminal (remember how you’d bring up a console in Quake using the ` key?). It looks like this.

Geeky, eh?

By turning on Full Keyboard Access (Ctrl + F7) so that I can tab between everything and not just text fields, and in conjunction with QuickSilver, I’m able to do pretty much everything without taking my hands off the keyboard now.

I’m also enjoying Nocturne for late-night reading. Even better, using the light sensor that controls the screen brightness and keyboard backlight, it can be set up to turn on and off automatically based on light levels.

You might also have noticed that my Dock is way over on the right there, auto hiding. I opted to move it when I realised that it was getting in the way at the bottom of the screen and I wanted to be able to get to it without sacrificing window-height. It’s a wide-screen after all, so I thought I’d use the additional width.

Also recently installed are Twitterific (quite nice, especially when running Growl for subtle notifications). Ecto (sadly not nearly as good at Windows Live Writer), OmniGraffle (not dissimilar to Visio), iStat Menus (much nicer than the widget version), Calico (the Mac user’s answer to Autostitch and much easier than DoubleTake), Adium (for multi-platform chat) and Skitch (to supplement Snapz Pro X for annotated screenshots). TextExpander is the next thing on my list to install and buy, and Light Room (or Aperture. I need to try both really) which I don’t think I really need until I pick up the Canon 450D.

Every tribe has its talismans - on buying a MacBook Pro

Posted by Roo - 25/01/08 at 01:01:31 pm

Every tribe has its talismans. Here and now, mine seem to be:

• Moleskine notebooks (if you’ve never owned one, I dare you to pick one up and not fall in love)
• digital cameras (I’m rather excited about the new Canon EOS 450D / Rebel XSi)
• Macs. PowerBook, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, … pretty much everyone I know carries one. Outside of IBM, at least; with few exceptions, most IBMers have use of a Lenovo ThinkPad for work.

Although I’ve actually owned a Mac (Mini) for years, but never really felt like a Mac owner until now. Even having bought a MacBook Pro (I went for the 2.2 GHz, 15.4″ version) of my own I have not exactly switched so much as finally bought a laptop which actually belongs to me. I’ll continue to use my ThinkPad T42p for some worky things (and it’s nice to have both), but I’d expect to use the Mac more and more.

Photo: iLove by Julian

Some observations after a few days use.

Quality

Like the Moleskine (which I’m convinced is what a Mac would feel like if it were made of paper) the MacBook Pro is a machine which asks to be touched. Everything about it looks and feels good. It’s full of surprises too. The LED next to the camera wasn’t a surprise (I’d wondered if it had one) but it was nicely hidden. The way the screen dims and the keyboard illuminates automatically, based on the ambient light in the room, continues to surprise and delight me. In fact, putting my hands over both speakers is still my favourite party trick.

Applications

Of course, the machine is a small part of the story, and like so many small parts, It’s what you do with it that counts.

Before I even bought it, I ordered the Mac Heist bundle, which includes

• VectorDesigner (which I really like)
• Snapz Pro X (which I really like)
• Pixelmator (which I am not sure about yet)
• CSSEdit (which I have not used yet, but looks promising)
• iStopMotion (which I really like)
• TaskPaper (which I really like, but can’t help wishing I would sync with Todoist. I’m unlikely to use both)
• … and lots of other things which are interesting but not the reason I bought the bundle.

I bought iWork with it, and also installed Quicksilver (on the sage advice of a friend who follows the 43 Folders blog more closely than I), Firefox (I still prefer it to Safari) EVE Online and Second Life. I’m thinking I probably need/want TextMate, Aperture, … what else am I missing?

Quirks

There are some things I’m still trying to get used to. I’m not going to point out the power of right-click, because Ctrl + click is fine. Honestly. But even the keyboard still baffles me somewhat, mainly because I’ve spent many years perfecting my keyboard navigation skills in Windows . If I used the mouse more, it wouldn’t matter, but in my head, Ctrl + left means jump left one word. Combine it with Shift and you select the previous word. I’m struggling with doing this with different modifier keys, and it’ll take a while before it feels natural. I’m not saying the way it’s done in Windows is right, just different.

A bigger issue is Tab. I try to use only the keyboard as much as possible, especially when typing. Tabbing between fields in a form is much faster than pointing and clicking. Firefox continually surprises me by not treating non-text fields (such as checkboxes) as something I can click by Tab, then Space to toggle the checkbox. Am I missing something? Tab jumps over the checkbox altogether (often taking focus back to the address bar) and I’m forced to take my hand off the keyboard, point, and click. [Update: found it. Ctrl + F7, or System Preferences | Keyboard Shortcuts | Full keyboard access: if windows and dialogs, press Tab to move the keyboard focus between: Text boxes and lists only / All controls]

When a dialogue box pops up, does Enter mean OK? It seems to, but what if I want to click the 2nd button. Normally I’d hit left, or Shift + Tab or something, then Space. By I don’t get any on-screen hints as to which is the active button, or what keyboard shortcuts I can use.

Veteran OS X users are probably laughing at me for all of this, so please do share your mouse-free power user tips.

Why not an Air?

I’ll be the first to agree that the Air looks great, and would be even nicer to carry around than the Pro. For me, the power/price/weight ratio was wrong. What I wanted was a 12″ MacBook Pro. The Air isn’t that. It’s small, yes, but not powerful enough for a primary machine. Add the CPU upgrade and it costs more than the cheapest 15″ Pro, which outperforms it in every way except size and weight. No contest (for me), and at least the Pro is still no heavier than my ThinkPad T42p. I’ll still drool when I do pick up an Air, of course.