Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Textpad or other text editors

I've been testing out Textpad for a few months and much prefer it for drafting my posts than either Typepad or MS Notepad. I'm interested to know what others use, if anything and what the pros and cons are.

For me, the advantage of Textpad is that it's not on-line which means posts are less likely to get lost. It allows you to record macros, it has standard html coding already embedded - so, for example I can include accents on words with great ease, and the viewing screen is straightforward and uncluttered. In summary, it makes my blogging life a bit easier. As I said, I've been testing it but am now thinking I should actually buy it, but if there is better software around, I'd be interested to know.
cheers
Posted by Silverbrow

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Drafting longer posts offline is easier since I can add links with some keyboard shortcuts rather than typing out HTML, and check my horrendous spelling. Some editors allow you to post from them, but I'm fine with cutting and pasting.

I can only speak on Mac editors. I use BBEdit, but only because I use it for everything I do that goes on the web. It's features make it perfect for an offline writing or drafting editor. Awesome HTML tools, suped up find/replace, spell check, built in ftp, entity chart, hex color chart, etc. BBEdit used to be available in a very capable free Lite version, but they've replaced it with another free editor - Text Wrangler. It doesn't have the powerful HTML tools.

Two editors I know of for blogging - MarsEdit and Ecto. Ecto is available for the PC.

Jennifer Maiser said...

I think that one of the most important things we can teach new bloggers is the value of editing their posts offline. It's much safer because you are not subject to the inconsistencies of online software and your internet connection. *ESPECIALLY* if you are blogger user, as in my experience blogger is a bit more unstable than other platforms.

One thing that should be pointed out is that editing posts in MS products like MS Word is a bad idea, as MS tends to do strange things to text. Text editors -- any text editor -- creates a seamless transition from the software to your web platform -- when done, you can just cut and paste straight into your browser. And you'll have a back up of your posts.

I personally use EditPlus, but mostly because it's leftover from old days when I had to write a lot of database code, and I like how stripped down it is. There are probably much more user friendly options out there. Thanks for the Textpad rec, Silverbrow.

shahdkhan said...

if you are a programmer then it will help you alot notepad++ portable