A few posts ago, I said that Ecto would suffice as my Blogging Client on OS X. Sadly, I can’t take the little fucker any longer. What a horrible program, I don’t believe I’ve ever used a more buggy and unstable application in my life.
Seriously, I was writing a witty post making fun of Airlines using Windows XP in their kiosks based on this image…
…and right after I finished with it, I went to the source to center my image. Lo’ and behold, there wasn’t any source to my post. I found this a little odd, because as any idiot knows, the text you write would show up in the Source View. So, I went back to my WYSIWYG view to find that it decided to re-parse my page from the source, which there was none, and ultimately deleted my post.
Was it a long post? No, this post is actually longer by a few paragraphs. It’s just really fucking annoying. Couple that with it’s total lack of understanding for basic CSS, even the CSS it comes up with itself, an upload feature that barely works, and it’s pokey performance, it’s just a waste of time.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why nobody has written a decent Blogging Client for OS X! Everyone that I know, who blogs, uses one. The majority of them use Writer, and if they don’t, they are generally laughed at until they realize that Writer really is a very well written program.
I don’t have that luxury. Now, I don’t plan to switch back to Windows for any reason, especially not because I’m overtly dependent on WYSIWYG, I’m a programmer for Christ’s sake. HTML doesn’t worry me, hell, it’s second nature. The point is, I shouldn’t have to see the source of my web document. I should be able to format it however I want using nothing more than a one button mouse, and it should be at least as reliable as… say… everything else on my system.
Trust me, if Leopard looks and runs this well on my system, a system that only gets 50FPS on Open Arena, y’all can write a decent WYSIWYG editor that works with movable type.
The only upside is that, due to a shitty Client Experience, I’ve been forced to customize and automate all the various types of objects I use on the blog. This has led to me adding a plethora of plugins that scan my posts and parse any custom tags I have. Which, although I think a drop-in type system is easier, therefore superior, at least my blog is looking tighter and better constructed. It’s really only skin deep, but it does look prettier. Not to mention that the more time you spend in code, the more control you tend to exert over how it looks.
But still, I’m damned close to starting to lobby for one of the blogging client publishers to start addressing this issue of their software sucking so bad. It’s getting ridiculous.
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Wow, that indeed sucks and I’m sorry to hear that happened. Have you tried to revert to an earlier saved version using File->Restore Revision? It should be there if you saved it before. You can still access it by opening the post. If so, please send me the contents of one of those revisions, so I can see why it borked.
Well, let me first say that your comment makes up for Ecto’s short comings. Perhaps all those years using software on the flip side has jaded me against developers and their commitment to the software they produce, and perhaps I dismissed Ecto too quickly.
As far as the post in question, there aren’t any saved drafts listed in the Entry List window. Like most of the things I write for this blog (like this post, for example) I wrote it up real quick and post it as is. Generally, I’ll correct any problems with the post retroactively, publishing the first draft and then making improvements an hour or so later after making it live. This site isn’t exactly the most visited site on the web, so I don’t worry about making small changes a few hours after posting.
It’s not an isolated incident, though. An empty source code view has happened to me a few times since I started using Ecto. It seems to happen when I write the post totally from the WYSIWYG editor and then toggle source view when I’m done. For the post in question, I did it to center the image on the page.
The last time it happened to me, I was having a problem getting an image to float to the right using the ‘Edit Image’ pane, and I was going to add the CSS manually just to get it out of the way.
Anyways, what I’ll do is I’ll continue to use Ecto and I’ll be mindful to what I’m doing and see if I can reproduce the problem. I guess your forums are where I’m expected to file a bug report, so the next time it happens I’ll file one and help out in any way I can to fix it.
I’d even go so far as to lend a hand in any way you need to take Ecto over the top. The reason I started using it to begin with was because it’s close to what I’m looking for. I think it could use a few more features that it doesn’t currently have, and it does have a quirkiness to it, but on the hole I’d really like to see a client shine. Once you polish the brass and get some of the fancy features that Writer has, you’d have a very compelling app on your hands.
Anyways, sorry for bashing your software so hard… and thanks for stopping by.
If you find a reproducible case, yes, please email it to me. Do you happen to use custom CSS in the editor? Check ecto->Settings->Weblog. There’s an advanced button in the editor pane that shows if there’s custom CSS used for the template. If so, let me know that. Perhaps it’s related to that.
Btw, which fancy features of Writer are you referring to?
I wrote another blog post about the features I’m looking for…
http://superterran.com/shrine/2008/02/24/a-discussion-about-ecto/