Noodlings

Until now, I’ve always written up my blog posts in a combination of TextEdit for the initial draft and the WordPress web UI for subsequent drafts (mostly to get the formatting right) and final posting. Needless to say, it’s been painful. For a web app, WP isn’t so bad but, in the grand scheme of things, it’s lacking. I know this will probably draw the ire of all of you who think web apps are going to take over the desktop but seriously, it’s not going to happen with the current state of the art (unless users are willing to sacrifice a good bit of usability).

I am now switching over to MarsEdit. Resizable editing area. No html tag buttons whose key equivalents conflict with my use of emacs key bindings. No waiting 10 seconds to preview or save because of a laggy internet or server. The markup macros are editable (so I don’t keep having to type in target="_blank" on every link). The UI is quick and responsive. All the niceties of a native desktop app. Yeah, I’m sure I’ll bump into problems but at least a desktop app can fix most of those. With the web app, there are fundamental problems with the paradigm that make it clumsy and slow.

I know you’re thinking, “well, if the web app sucked so bad, why did you use it?” Simply enough, momentum, or lack thereof. Also, there is my ambivalence towards blogs. I resisted investing in any blogging tools as I didn’t want to admit that I was taking this seriously. I wanted to keep it painful so I would have a reason to hate it. Though now I’m still a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to blogging, at least I’m willing to concede it’s not worth doing things the hard way.

In any case, MarsEdit 2 is out now. If the thought of writing up a blog post makes you wince, then you should check it out. Who knows, instead of hating it you might end up liking tolerating it.

Oh, and yes, the same Daniel Jalkut who convinced me to start this blog is also responsible for MarsEdit 2. So once again, this is all his fault.