Looking for the good blog editor for your Mac? I’ve always been a Windows user and I’ve always used Windows Live Writer for all my blogs. When I bought a MacBook Pro last year, I wanted to start writing posts from OS X since I was using it as my primary machine.
Unfortunately, nothing I tried worked nearly as well as Windows Live Writer! And I tried a whole bunch of blog editors for Mac. It was amazing to me that no one had written a program that could match the features of WLW.
I had even tried out MarsEdit version 2, but it was horrible to use. That’s why I was skeptical to try out version 3 when it was released recently. However, after installing it and using it for an hour, it was the clear winner out of all the blog editors I had used on my MacBook!
It still can’t match up to Windows Live Writer, but it can pretty much do everything you need it to. Firstly, the interface is simple and straight-forward. You have your list of blogs on the left hand side and your posts on the right-hand side.
Adding a new blog to MarsEdit is also a piece of cake. I have all my blogs on WordPress and it was simply a matter of entering the URL, the admin username, and the password.
Once you have the blog setup, you can select it and then choose Edit Settings on the Blog menu option.
Here you can set all kinds of options, which is really nice. On the General screen, you can choose the platform, the API, etc. You can also decide how many posts and pages should be downloaded locally.
On the Editing screen, you can decide whether the preview window opens automatically (I turned it off) and you can choose a default size for images to fit. So if you know an image can’t be wider than certain number of pixels, then you can constrain the images when they are inserted into the post. You can also specify if the post should be published to the site when submitted or sent up as a draft. This was a big deal for me because most of the blog editors only let you publish posts immediately and I never do that.
On the Posting screen, you can specify whether you should get a warning if you forgot to choose a category or forgot to write a title, etc.
The other huge issue was formatting! I loved the fact that Windows Live Writer let me blockquote text or insert bullets or change the heading, etc. Now with MarsEdit 3, you can do all the formatting! In the post writing window, there is a drop down box in the top right called Format.
You can insert links, make the text bold or italic, smaller or bigger, change the heading, align the text and images, add lists, and change the font type, size and color. This definitely made it a lot easier to write posts!
In the post writing windows itself, you can insert tags, choose your categories (or add a new one) and choose how you want the post uploaded.
Inserting media is also pretty easy, though I wish it had a few more options. If you are taking screenshots of your desktop or anything, you can use the Mac shortcut of Command + Shift + 4. Then you can copy the image from the desktop and paste it into your post.
You’ll then get an options screen where you can change the name of the file, change the alt text and change the alignment and size of the image. One nice thing is you can choose to have the post stored locally and upload all the pictures at one time along with the post. Or you can upload it immediately.
If you click on the Media button at the top of the writing window, you can browse images from certain locations like iPhoto, Pictures folder,etc.
You can also pull in images from Flickr. It’s ok, but it can certainly be improved. I like how Windows Live Writer integrated with SnagIt to capture images right into a post.
Another nice option is that you can edit the HTML code also from within MarsEdit, so that way if you want to do some advanced work, you are free to do so.
Overall, it’s a very nice update and MarsEdit is well on it’s way to becoming the best blog edit for the Mac! If you agree or disagree, post a comment and let us know why! Enjoy!
