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Shawn Blanc on MarsEdit 2.1
Even though we can't use a tool like MarsEdit to post here at TUAW, some of us are still big fans of the program and use it when creating content for our other, more personal sites. Like Ecto, another very good tool for this type of content creation, Mars Edit allows you to compose blog entries, complete with text, links, photos or whatever, on your own computer and once finished, post them directly to your blog.Of course, we're not the only fans of MarsEdit using it to put up content around the internets. Shawn Blanc, writer, Mac guy, drummer, Tae-Qwon-Do blackbelt and enthusiastic Mars Edit user has posted a very in-depth review of the application at his site. Among the program's many virtues, Blanc praises it for having a "perfect preview" of draft content, that it functions very well as a text editor and the "blatant absence of a WYSIWYG feature" which makes him "extremely impressed with how well it serves the writer." MarsEdit 2 may not be the right choice for your blogging needs, but if you've never considered it before, this review might just make you want to give it a try. It's $29.95 for a new license, and $9.95 for an upgrade from ME1.
TUAW Tip: endo's keyboard shortcuts rock
Hi, my name is David Chartier, and I'm an RSS-aholic.[your collective response: Hi David]The last time I refreshed my newsreader was... well, probably a minute or two ago, and then 30 minutes before that. You see, I'm obsessed with news, and I've been using some sort of a newsreader for around three or four years now. Since I began writing for TUAW and Download Squad, I've probably tossed my OPML (an exported list of your RSS feeds) into more newsreaders than I can imagine, and one of my greatest loves has always been Adriaan Tijsseling's endo, which we've mentioned a few times before on TUAW. While I typically use NetNewsWire as my main reader, I'm giving endo a thorough run-through again as it has really matured into a great, stable product, and it has a lot of pleasant surprises and unique features that make sifting through large amounts of feeds and headlines a pleasure. In fact, with how well things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if endo upset my newsreader balance, at least for my regular reading. See the rest of the post to find out why...
ecto3 alpha released
Adriaan Tijsseling has been tweeting about the development progress of ecto3, his powerful Mac blogging app, for some time now. After a sneak peek and more teaser screenshots, Adriaan has generously offered an alpha version for us to play with. In other words: it's pre-beta, which means stuff is very, very likely to go wrong; play with this at your own risk. Speaking of risk, however, there is certainly an upside to testing out this ecto3 alpha: it uses a completely different set of data and storage from the current ecto2, so you don't have to worry about blowing away your old settings or accounts.That said, let's get on to the good stuff: what's new. First of all, ecto3 is apparently a complete rewrite from the bottom up. It has a new rich text editor based on Apple's own Editable WebKit, which offers a number of handy new writing abilities (such as the slick nested list in the ecto3 alpha announcement post). Another major new development which we had previously heard of is a new plug-in architecture for ecto3, allowing anyone to add support for more blogging systems, integrate media and even text formatting such as Markdown. It's a great step towards allowing ecto3 to become a blogging hub that can do just about anything for anyone.Speaking of media, I also noticed that there is a new media browser that has access to all the typical stuff, such as iPhoto and Aperture photos, and even your movies. There are all sorts of new goodies in ecto3, so definitely poke around to see all the hard work Adriaan has put into this so far.If you download the alpha, be sure to read through Adriaan's ecto3 alpha announcement post for a few tips and gotchas with getting the ball rolling. There are a few minor things he hasn't gotten to yet, such as adding all the sites to ping when you publish a post, but a simple 'add defaults' button will get you squared away easily. Once it's finished, ecto3 will surprisingly be a free upgrade for existing registered users (a single license is a mere $17.95). Until then, however, be sure to swing by the support forums to post bugs and discuss ecto3.
endo: powerful RSS reader updates for Safari 3 beta
Since Adriaan Tijsseling makes one of the Mac's best blogging clients, it only makes sense that he also has a slick RSS newsreader called endo that we honestly don't stay on top of as much as we should.With features like a custom Growl-like alert window which allows you to read snippets of feed items before actually bringing endo to the front, a powerful subscription manager, and a feature-packed download manager with options for adding media to iTunes and even BitTorrent controls, endo brings some clever stuff to the table with a unique UI. Upon opening endo for the first time, a short setup process allows you to enter users names and URLs to track activity and comments at sites like your Flickr account and a personal blog. The headline list on the left features favicons for your individual feeds to help you pick out items from different sites easier, as well as color labels for subscriptions and even a customizable summary + tag display below each headline. To summarize: if you want features and power - endo is a great choice. I bring all this up again because endo was yet another app that is affected by the Safari 3 beta, which includes a new version of the WebKit rendering engine than many Mac OS X apps, including endo, use to display web content. Fortunately, Adriaan has produced an update that accounts for this fix, which you should be able to grab by starting up endo or heading over to kula software and downloading a fresh copy.Another perk of endo is that, even though it's one of the most powerful and feature-packed RSS readers on the market, it only costs $17.95 for a license. Adriaan even offers a bundle deal that includes both endo + ecto for a savings of $10 at a mere total cost of $26.95 - those are some good deals for blogging + newsreading software.
More ecto 3 details, a screenshot and roadmap revealed
Adriaan Tijsseling, developer of the Mac OS X version of the ecto blogging client, has been teasing us with sneak peeks and development details for some time now, but he's just posted another more revealing screenshot of ecto3, along with more details and a basic roadmap. Adriaan has touted ecto3 as a complete rewrite from v2, ushering in a new plug-in architecture that should make the app far more extensible. Also on the notable changes list is the replacement of the rich text editor by Editable WebKit, a new, more WYSIWYG feature of the engine that is used to power Safari, many other browsers on Mac OS X and even HTML rendering in Apple Mail. While Adriaan doesn't have any kind of ETA for a shipping version or even a beta just yet, it does sound like development is wrapping up well. Since support for different blogging platforms has moved to the plug-in format as well, he still has to build support for the latest Blogger (yes, it'll be in ecto3) and WordPress. As a final note, it's always nice to hear a developer using their own product, as Adriaan is using ecto3 "heavily" to try and catch as many bugs and problems as he can before unleashing it in one form or another on the masses.
Put iPhoto on a diet
Avid users of iPhoto who also count their megs and gigs typically notice that the darling iLife app can quickly gobble up a good chunk of the hard drive. One practice that is sure to help inflate the size of your library is editing images. As it turns out, whenever you make edits and save, iPhoto duplicates the image, creating a backup; hence the usefulness of that 'Revert to Original' option. One problem with this system is that all these duplicates can pile up fast if you're an avid iPhoto editor - but thanks to some simple instructions in this MacRumors forum thread, you can put iPhoto on a diet. If you don't want to read through all the posts, Adriaan Tijsseling, the developer of ecto, endo and 1001 (an excellent Flickr client), has whittled out the meat to help get you on your way. Adriaan's post contains the simple commands to run in Terminal (along with an explanation of what is going on) that will effectively remove all the original copies of any images you have edited in iPhoto. While this obviously means you'll lose the ability to use that 'Revert' option (in case you try it, you won't break iPhoto; it's just that nothing happens), this could be a useful trick for anyone trying to reclaim every last byte of free space.
Five blogging apps I'm thankful for
We are a thankful bunch around TUAW today, in honor of Thanksgiving here in the states. Since I spend most of my waking hours blogging I thought I would give some praise to the five applications that make blogging a breeze on the Mac. This is not meant to be a 'Top Five blogging tools post,' if you're looking for something like that, check out Glenn Wolsey's post on ProBlogger (though I have some problems with his post that I won't go into at this moment). Read on to get the skinny on the five blogging applications I am most thankful for this holiday season.
Intel build of ecto 2.4.1 now available
Fellow ecto users running on Intel Macs - rejoice! While Adriaan has been teasing us with snippets of ecto3 details, he recently posted on his blog that it's taking a bit longer than expected to develop, largely in part because it's a complete re-write from the ground up. With that said, he has announced an Intel build of ecto 2.4.1 (Finder says it's Intel, not Universal), though it is not fully tested, nor will it be supported (hey, he's just one guy). If you've been using the previous PPC version on your Intel Mac, I am happy to report this Intel build starts up in the blink of an eye, or rather: the bounce of an app. One bounce in the dock on my Core 2 Duo iMac and this new ecto is ready for action.This new ecto 2.4.1 Intel version can be had from this ecto blog entry, as the standard download link from the site still points to the PPC version.
Sneak peek at ecto3
I prefer blogging with a desktop app. It just makes the experience that much better. One of the most widely used, cross platform, blogging apps is ecto. Ecto's developer decided to completely rewrite the app from the ground up for version 3. Here is now giving us a sneak peek over at his blog.Check if out for some screenshot goodness.
Wordpress to ecto plugin
It's the general consensus of most Mac users I know that ecto is the blogging client of choice. One thing I find very important about casual blogging is being able to quickly and easily go from viewing content to posting content. This is done in many online blogging environments by javascript bookmarklets, and ecto offers the same thing. Simply click the link in your bookmark bar, and a window pops up ready for a new post. Chris Barna decided to go one better and integrate this functionality directly WordPress by way of a plugin. Once a user has installed he wp-ecto plugin on their site, readers will see, along with any other social bookmarking icons so common on many sites today, a little ecto icon. Pressing this brings up a new post within ecto complete with title and URL already filled in.
Mac DevCenter: palettes or sidebars?
Following a dilemma that Gus Mueller faced when designing the UI for his latest release of VoodooPad 3, Mac DevCenter has posted a request for feedback on this most heated of UI topics: palettes or sidebars? Preferences can easily sway in either direction, and I personally miss the old-school functionality of Mail's pre-Tiger drawer (yay for column widths that don't have to be constantly re-adjusted), though I will concede that the drawer look is old and ugly by today's slick UI standards of palettes and sidebars.But what do you TUAW readers think? Do you prefer palettes, like in Photoshop, OmniOutliner, iWeb and Pages, or do you prefer the sidebar UI of Tiger's Mail, ecto and NetNewsWire's subscriptions panel (though it's interesting to note that NNW also uses a drawer for its site catalog)? Sound off.
A collection of all available QuickPicks for Backup 3
Wishingline, a web design studio, has done .Mac members a favor and collected most of the QuickPicks that are available on the web for Apple's Backup 3. There are quite a few QuickPicks out there for everything from ecto to PDF documents, Photo Booth pictures to Shiira bookmarks, OmniOutliner documents and much, much more. Wishingline went so far as to list a number of the QuickPicks individually, or simply offer an encompassing package of everything they could find (scroll down about midway on the page for these goodies).The QuickPicks package is offered free from Wishingline, but remember: they didn't have anything to do with creating these (as far as I know); they just tracked them down and zipped them. If you want a QuickPick for one app or another, you should probably consult the app's author or check out these resources for creating your own.[UPDATE: Scott from Wishingline dropped us a comment to let us know that the QuickPicks linked from Wishingline are, in fact, home grown. Thanks for some rockin' QuickPicks Scott!]
Ecto3 development details posted
Adriaan of Kula Software, developers of such excellent apps as endo and my personal favorite blogging app - ecto, has posted some juicy development details to his blog on the upcoming ecto version 3. One of the biggest changes Adriaan mentions is a new plugin architecture, which should make it much easier for code ninjas to let ecto work with many more APIs. The account manager has also received an overhaul, and users will be able to create accounts without having to go through a wizard. Filtering and searching entries have also been improved and sped up, and a new rich text editor is based on Mac OS X's editable WebKit. Finally, Adriaan is also beefing up template support to "[handle] templates in a more transparent way".Alas, if your mouth is already watering (like mine), it's going to have to stay that way, as Adriaan hasn't posted any kind of ETA for the new version. On the bright side, he'll be updating his blog with details as development progresses, and you can be assured we'll stay on top of things for you.
Screencast of endo's ability to handle event feeds
The endo blog today linked a well-produced screencast (.MOV link) of endo's ability to handle event feeds, an RSS microformat. The screencast walks through endo's feed discovery, pin-pointing a specific event feed from a blog, and then endo's ability to add these events to iCal, complete with a choice of which calendar receives the event.This is a really slick and powerful feature that I haven't seen in other newsreaders, not even the mammoth NetNewsWire. Kudos to Adriaan (endo and ecto's developer) for being on the cutting edge.
Is the Mail.app look being copied too much?
Fraser Speirs, developer of apps like FlickrExport and Xjournal, posed an interesting issue on his blog the other day: is the general look and UI of Mail.app being duplicated by too many other developers? Fraser doesn't necessarily dislike the Mail.app look and feel, nor is he taking a jab at developers, but since he's running Mail.app, NetNewsWire and Yojimbo, he's making a few errors in Exposé simply because these three app windows (not to mention others like Ecto) look very similar.Fraser poses a valid point, and it's a good question I thought worthy of mentioning for you TUAW readers. What do you think? Are too many apps using the same (handy) UI and cluttering up your desktop and Exposé views? Sound off.[via Hawk Wings]
Favorite Blog client
The Apple Blog wants to know what your favorite blog client is. I have made no effort to hide the fact that I enjoy using MarsEdit for a number of reasons. It is fast, the UI is well thought out, and it just gets out of your way.Ecto, for my money, has a tendency to over power you with the number of windows and choices that you have. MarsEdit gives you less in the way of options, but I think that actually makes the product much more usable. What do you use to blog?
20% discount on Ecto
There's plenty of us here at TUAW who are big Ecto fans for our personal blogging needs, so I thought any of you TUAW readers nodding your heads in agreement might want to know that Ecto is going on sale. Between Dec. 23-26, the developers of Ecto are offering a whopping 20% discount off the regular price of a mere $17.95. All you need to do for the discount is check out their announcement post between the sale dates and click on the big ol' discount badge image that's included. This should take you straight to their store where you can place Ecto in your shopping cart, and you should find that the discount code of “CHRISTMAS2005” has already been applied. That's all there is to it.If you're unfamiliar with Ecto, check out our previous posts on this fantastic, full-featured blogging app or just head straight to the horse's mouth. For a quick run-down: Ecto is a robust blogging client with support for boatloads of blog systems. I think one of the app's main shining strengths is its customizability and media functionality. Ecto can pull images from iPhoto, song titles from iTunes, and you can easily enter affiliate information for link and revenue programs like Amazon's Associates system. Definitely go check it out if you've been looking for a better way to blog.
ecto for Mac OS X 2.3
ecto has just been updated to version 2.3, which is a free upgrade. Tiger is a definite influence in this release, and so gone are the drawers that were previously used in the interface. They have been replaced with 'panels' that Tiger applications seem to favor.That's not the only change though:New toolbar iconsKeeps track of Technorati, flickr, and del.icio.us tagsLonger Trail period (21 days, up from 14)Status messages appear in the footer of the entries window Not too shabby considering the price.
