Qumana vs Ecto vs Performancing for Firefox Blog Posting Tools
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Don’t want to be boxed in by your blog’s posting software? ContentRobot did a head-to-head test of some popular external blogging editors. Here is what we found:
Pluses
- It’s free
- Can set up for multiple blogs
- Full WYSIWYG and source editing
- Select categories, comments, trackbacks, and pings
- Spell checker / Thesaurus
- DropPad allows you to gather links, text, and pictures by dragging them to a resizeable, always visible desktop pad
- Drag and drop images (will automatically upload images to your server) with image resizer and alignment tools
- Shows existing posts from any of your blogs
- Offline editing to work at your own pace
- Draft support
- Technorati tagging - one click insertion of tags, with editing option
Minuses
- Hard to fix image alignment / sizing via WYSIWYG if you don’t like the placement (work around through HTML editor or reuploading)
- Couldn’t get software to work on my windows machine with my overly stringent firewall
- Often typed quicker than the blog window could display the text
- No preview of post
- Seemed more complex than it needed to be - focus is to add ads to posts
- Link editor doesn’t allow you to launch a new window (we like to do that to keep your blog always in the background), but you can always add target=”_blank” in the HTML editor
Ecto
Pluses
- Can set up for multiple blogs
- Full WYSIWYG and source editing
- Spell checker
- Select posting entries with continuation, summary, keywords, multiple categories, trackback, text-formatting, comment options
- Easily change the posting date of entries
- HTML-rendered preview of entries
- File and image upload tool (supports thumbnailing images)
- Draft support
- Link editor allows you to launch new window
Minuses
- Cost - $17.95 per copy
- Difficult to connect to WordPress blogs
- WYSIWYG was sloooooow
- Slow with software updates
Performancing for Firefox
Pluses
- It’s free
- Can set up for multiple blogs
- Full WYSIWYG and source editing
- Select posting entries with multiple categories (often commenting and trackbacks are already set up globally in blog software)
- Technorati and Delicous support
- Trackback and ping support
- Draft and preview support
- Click on the “notepad” in the bottom corner of firefox browser to quickly launch editor
- Fully-integrated with Performancing metrics tools
- Fast and easy to use
Minuses
- No spell checker
- Images are not uploaded, but they’ll use image’s original path to display correctly
- Manipulate images via HTML source
- Can’t see the blog’s existing posts or manage old entries - better for one-shot posting
- Link editor doesn’t allow you to launch a new window (we like to do that to keep your blog always in the background), but you can always add target=”_blank” in the HTML editor
The Winner!
Hands down for easy, barebones blogging with Mac and Windows support was - Performancing for Firefox … While not perfect (they know what’s missing and are working to add features all the time), it was easy to use and post with. We agree that you still need to go into your admin tool to manage your blog for certain things, but for quick stories with images and links, it’s the bomb. We are also big fans of the Firefox browser.
The Bottom Line
We at ContentRobot are either control freaks or old-school (or maybe both). We actually prefer to work in raw HTML mode so we can create posts that are clean and free of any rogue code that all external editors like to add.
What Do You Think?
Do you use an external blog editor? What do you like or not like about your choice?
I also use Performancing for Firefox (PFF) and I couldn’t be more pleased however, due to the shortcomings you listed I only use it as a “pinch-hit” editor. For my main editor I use Zoundry’s BlogWriter and even though it’s main purpose is for product reviewing, it makes an outstanding blog “for the sake of blogging” editor as well and there’s no requirement to sign up for a Zoundry account plus it’s free also. Real professional layout as well. Stable as a rock and no, I’m not associated with Zoundry at all. I just know a good product when I see it.
Yeah I just started using Zoundry and it seems like quite a piece of software!
We are also impressed with Adobe Contribute as a great all-around editor.