BlogJet 1.5

BlogJet 1.5

www.blogjet.com

Free Download for 30 days

$39.95 with 30–day money back guarantee

 

I’m writing this review with BlogJet.  It's blog editing software that allows you to compose and upload your blog directly from your Windows desktop without opening your browser.  I’ve been using the original version of BlogJet for awhile and am happy to say that this updated version has added lots of improvements.

Here is a list of many of the new features:

• Image resizing and thumbnail generation
• Support for GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and 10 other image formats
• Extended entries
• Date/time, excerpts and keywords for posts
• File attachments
• Text statistics (words, characters, paragraph count)
• Typographic characters (with auto-replace)
• Auto-replacement of text smilies with images
• ”Edit last post” feature
• XML-based draft files
• New Code editor: improved code completion, highlighting
• BlogJetThis! for Mozilla Firefox
• Drag-and-drop in Normal editor
• Better support for HTML entities
• Improved Categories selection and Properties tab appearance and usability
• Saving of toolbar sizes and lock state.
• SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) support

Yeah, I realize you probably don’t know what half of those things are — neither do I. But that’s one of the beauties of BlogJet — you don’t have to! 

BlogJet has a simple design that’s easy to use and makes drafting and editing posts a breeze.  You can either use the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface or a plain text version to add your own HTML coding.  If you can use Microsoft Word then you’ll be right at home with this software.

And BlogJet supports lots of different blogs services, including:

Blogger
b2evolution
Blogging.com
BlogHarbor
Blogware
DasBlog
DeadJournal
DearDiary
Drupal
LiveJournal
Manila
ModBlog
Lockergnome.net
MovableType
pMachine
PUSHlogs
Squarespace
TypePad
.Text
WordPress
Blogger API
MetaWeblog API

Take a look at this screenshot:

What could be simpler?

It has a nice spell checker and a preference box you can check that allows you to automatically run the spell checker before posting. That’s a nice feature for folks like me who dash off a quick post without always being careful enough to check for spelling errors.  (The spell checker needs to be updated -- it thought the word "blogs" was a spelling mistake!)

BlogJet works with Internet Explorer, FireFox and FeedDemon.  All in all, this software has a lot going for it.  This new version even has support for things that I haven’t tried yet — like music detection and voice attachments.

There are, however, some problem areas that still need addressing. First and foremost is the Help button — it sends you to an online Wiki instead of the typical help file or even a downloadable PDF.  This is less than satisfactory.

In addition, the Support page on the BlogJet website has a list of Frequently Asked Questions that only lists a dozen questions or so.  If you want support for something not listed, you need to submit a question to a user forum for an answer.  I doubt that most folks want to pour through forum posts in order to have their questions answered. (There is a contact form on the site that says you can ask your question directly but only if your question isn't addressed in the FAQ or the forum.  Sorry, I want more support than that for my software.)

In summary, this software works well, has plenty of features, and comes with a free 30–day download.  It’s well worth a look.

 

 

Comments

[Drug]

nice

[Jack Payne]

Call me old-fashioned, but I long for the return of the IBM Selectric, with the magic spinning ball.

Wonder how long I'll have to wait.