Blog Editing Client

I have tried a few different clients that allow me to edit my blogs but have not been impressed, until I met ecto. Blog clients allow the blog writer to edit and create blog entries using a standard desktop application rather than using the web-based interface. This allows for entries to be created while not connected to the internet or if you have a slow Internet connection it removes the painful waiting for each page to load.

ecto is a simple client for Mac OSX that provides full capabilities for editing and adding blogs. I use MoveableType of the blog system on the net and when I first started ecto is led me through a VERY easy wizard to set up the client, it even guessed correctly what blog system I was using. Once set up you are able to download a list of current entries so that you can edit them. As the editor in ecto is using the standard OSX text components spell checking is automatically provided (extremely useful for me!). The complete list of features are:

• View and edit existing entries
• Supports multiple blogs from one or more sites
• Support categories
• Preview of entries before saving
• Upload of files
• Full editing of entries (main text, extended text, summary, keywords, trackbacks, pings, date settings)
• Integrated with iTunes and iPhoto
• Advanced photo upload facility

ecto and other blog clients work by using the XML-RPC interface provided by the different blog systems. This simply allows clients to connect to the blog system by sending and receiving XML documents over HTTP requests. This is not the same as SOAP as it does not wrap these XML messages in SOAP messages.

From using ecto for a while I can not find any problems and would recommend it to any OSX blog user. You can download ecto from their home page which allows you to use the software for 2 weeks in the demo period before you have to purchase the software.