Playing with BlogDesk, another desktop blogging application

We’ll see how this one goes. At least it hasn’t crashed yet. 🙂

  • BlogDesk Version 2.8, build 400 from 22 February 2009
  • Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP and Vista
  • Free

Considerations

  • The forum is nearly dead. Infrequent posting. On the other hand, very few threads have no replies. It has both English and German sections.
  • There’s help, FAQs, and so on on the site, along with integrated help in BlogDesk itself.

BlogDesk desktop blogging application

Bugs

  • Again with not being able to download more than 100 posts from the server. At least the developer is honest about it, posting this in his forum:

    There is nothing I can do – the interface between BlogDesk and WordPress only allows to read the last x posts from the beginning. And at some point, that’s too much. If you want to edit very old posts, you need to login to WordPress.

  • Except that there is, he either doesn’t know about it or doesn’t want to deal with it. One way, and the easiest I can think of, would be to allow an import of a WordPress database. And this bullet really belongs with the bullet before, but there’s no easy way to properly format this in BlogDesk, so while this is not a bug, it’s not great, either.
  • Downloading posts from the blog server – also did duplicates and triplicates. I figured out why, I think – it has to do with revisions in WordPress and how WordPress keeps adding them to the database. Thing is, I talked to Fahim about it, and he mentioned that he had to deal with that when revisions were added in WP 2.6 with Blog, his program, so he knows it can be done. The developers who don’t deal with it are either clueless or lazy. Or, he added, how revisions are handled may have changed since then, and it may be that WordPress is being shipped with defective code. I have no way of knowing.
  • It looks like those blog entries that I downloaded may have disappeared. They’re now gone. Next day – yup, they’re gone. I guess I have to re-download? Am I going to have to download them each time I want to use them? Are they never stored in the database or something?
  • I can find no way to re-load posts from my blog server into this program. Either it’s hiding, or it doesn’t exist. I don’t know which, but I’ve looked pretty much everywhere. 🙁

Feature enhancements needed

  • ladybug picture for testing purposes, don't'cha know?While I can apply H1, h2, h3, etc., I have to do it in Source view. There’s no way to do it in Normal view. And I have to do it by manually editing the HTML code. But, oddly enough, now that I’ve manually added h2 to the headings, they’re clearly visible as such in Normal view, so it’s partially handled. Odd.
  • Only basic formatting is available, and I mean basic. Bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, foreground colour, background colour, justifications, bullets & numbering, and blockquote. But that’s it. More needs to be added.
  • inline ability to view images would be nice. And while some HTML formatting is added when images are posted, it’s not excessive like other desktop blogging apps.
  • Inline viewing of images would be nice.

BlogDesk desktop blogging application

The good stuff

  • The interface isn’t pretty or beautiful, but it’s pretty enough and certainly functional enough.
  • Ten minutes in, and it hasnt crashed yet. Twenty minutes in and it hasn’t crashed yet. Next day – it hasn’t crashed yet. Looks like this one is stable. 🙂
  • It didn’t lose the post I started writing yesterday. Well, howdy!
  • It’s functional where it claims to be functional. Yes, this is a basic blog editor, but it’s functional.
  • Features, like adding images or links, are available through a right mouseclick, along with cut, copy, paste, and so on.
  • HTML wraps properly in HTML view.

The summary

BlogDesk is stable and does what it claims to do. It’s not overly pretty, but it’s pretty enough and fairly intuitive. It doesn’t do funky odd unwanted stuff like some of the other programs. However, it’s too limited in its feature set. It’s… okay. It’s what I would expect from a desktop blogging app built about, oh, five years ago. In fact, Fahim’s Blog, when I started using it over six years ago, had more features than BlogDesk has now.

Still, if all you need are basic features in a desktop blogging application, this would definitely be a reasonable choice.

Meanwhile, these are the desktop blogging platforms that remain on my list to try out:

  1. Qumana Blog Editor – ad centric
  2. Windows Live Writer
  3. w.bloggar
  4. BlogMate plugin for TextMate
  5. Thingamablog
  6. Stuffr
  7. Elicit 1.1.7 by Bingo Bango Software (domain appears nonexistent, software not updated since 2006). Not sure if I’ll give this a try – likely too old to work well with Windows 7.
  8. Bytescout Post2Blog 3.0.1, 28 June 2007 (date added to downloads.com)

The ones I’ve reviewed:

  1. BlogJet 2.0.0.10, released 13 September 2007
  2. Zoundry Raven Beta 1.0.375, built on 08/05/08
  3. Anconia RocketPost 2 Pro 2.5.441
  4. BlogDesk Version 2.8, build 400 from 22 February 2009

Ones that are otherwise out for me:

  1. Bleezer – mac only
  2. Blogo – Mac only
  3. MarsEdit – Mac only
  4. Ecto – Mac only
  5. Zoundry Blog Writer – it became Zoundry Raven, reviewed above
  6. Scribefire – Firefox plugin, not desktop blogging platform
  7. AIRPress. AIRPress no longer exists. Its domain is owned by squatters.
  8. Flock – web browser with built-in blogging, not desktop blogging platform.

If you know of other desktop blogging clients for Windows, please let me know. I’ll add ’em to the list and take ’em for a test drive. 🙂

Author: LMAshton
Howdy! I'm a beginner artist, hobbyist photographer, kitchen witch, wanderer by nature, and hermit introvert. This is my blog feed. You can find my fediverse posts at https://a.farook.org/Laurie.

3 thoughts on “Playing with BlogDesk, another desktop blogging application

  1. Very good post. I’m just starting to use BlogDesk and I agree with you: the basic editing features are indeed too basic.

    It is also quite difficult to see how the article will look on your site. You have to change the default.css. In Raven, downloading themes and apply them is very easy.

    One thing I really like however is the ability to do basic editing to images and the possibility to upload drafts.

    Thank you so much.

  2. SmartXBlog is desktop blog editor for both windows and mac , it has WYSIWYG editor, image editor, online news, image and video search, drag and drop option, bookmarks , rss feed available from nearly 100 popular websites and you can even add your own rss, pop up alerts of your comments and you can preview and publish your post directly to your wordpress account .I think it is best available blogging desktop editor for windows and mac. Free trial can be downloaded from

    http://www.smartxblog.com/

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