A year or so ago, I posted a note comparing Ecto and MarsEdit (two offline Blog editors for Mac OS X), giving the final nod to Ecto. After using MarsEdit 2.0 (newly released this week), I’m ready to say that Ecto is still my offline editor but only because despite its many improvements, MarsEdit is not able send a “draft” post. I can’t imagine why this is difficult to implement (Ecto’s done it for years), but for me that’s a dealbreaker.
Of course, if you see no need for draft posts, there’s an awful lot to like in the new MarsEdit.
This is the first “Red Sweater” release of the product (MarsEdit was originally the work of Brent Simmons—best known for NetNewsWire) and it’s obvious that a lot of work has gone into this release.
One new feature, Flickr integration, is something I wish Apple would add to iLife apps (who knows, perhaps someday Yahoo! will sell Flickr to Google which might enable Apple to discover just how useful Flickr can be).
To include a Flickr image in your post, just hit the “Media” button on the toolbar, select Flickr and begin scrolling through your images. You’re given several sizing options (square, thumbnail, small, medium, large, original) and a few choices on alignment.
I’m not a heavy Flickr user but just to illustrate how it works (yes, I’m using MarsEdit for this post), here’s a Flickr image I shot on Monday (Labor Day) while enroute to Shepherdstown, West Virginia. My original plan was head over to the Shepherdstown Opera House (a great venue for independent and foreign films) to catch a screening of “No End In Sight.” Along the way, I decided it might also be a good day to explore a relatively recent addition to my neighborhood—the Hillsborough Vineyards. Wouldn’t you know, I never made it to the movie—will try again this weekend.
http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/
Update (9/6): As you’ll see in the comments, I heard from Daniel Jalkut (author of MarsEdit 2) and his interest in how people use his program was enough to get me to go ahead and register my copy of MarsEdit 2. Now I can really bug him to get the “draft posting” feature implemented 🙂