My BlogJet Wish List

For the past few days, I have been using BlogJet to post articles to my blog. Overall, it’s a very nice program. It works seamlessly with TypePad, my blog server, and makes the interface so much more user-friendly. Best of all, it allows me to compose a post offline and then upload it when I am ready to “go live.” It has both a WYSIWYG interface and a code view (via tabs). See the screenshot below:

If you are a blogger or have thought about setting up your own blog, I strongly suggest you give this program a try.

However, the software is not perfect. I think it is missing some really important features. For example:

• Thumbnail Images. This is a very cool feature of TypePad and perhaps other blog servers. This allows you to enter a smaller version of the actual image. When the user clicks on the image, a full-size version of the image opens in a separate window. The workaround (which I used in the thumbnail above) is to create the thumbnail image in the Web-based TypePad interface and cut and paste it into BlogJet. It’s ugly, but it works.
  
  
• Extended Posts. I’m not sure how many blog servers offer this, but it’s a nice feature. It allows you to display the first couple of paragraphs of a post and then indicate to the user that he can read the full post by clicking on a “more ...” link. This allows you to get more posts on a page, so readers can quickly scan them to find those of interest. It also allows your page to load more quickly, especially if you relegate your images to the extended posts. Right now, I don’t see any alternative with BlogJet. I am forced to display the full posts on my page.
  
  
• Typographic Characters. Okay, maybe I’m a publishing snob. But as a book publisher of twenty-six years, it’s hard for me to give up real em dashes (- vs. --), open and close quotes (“this” vs. "this"), apostrophe marks (’ vs. '), etc. Fortunately, this is where ActiveWords comes to the rescue. Sadly, I had to reenter all the contractions by hand into the ActiveWords “wordbase.”
  
  
• Manage Categories. You can select categories to add to your posts. However, there's no way to manage categories. Maybe this is impossible when you are trying to support so many blog servers, but it would save me a step. Right now, I have to enter a new category into TypePad manually and then refresh the list in BlogJet.
  
  
• Custom Templates. I always like to end my post with a copyright notice. Again, this probably comes from my publishing experience. Other users make have other template formats they like. At any rate, ActiveWords again solves the problem. I just type “cpr” and ActiveWords inserts the appropriate notice.
  

I spent a couple of fruitless hours surfing the Web, trying to find another blogging client that would do all the above. I  couldn’t anything close. So far, BlogJet appears to be my best option. Also, it looks like the developer is actively supporting the program, so, I think I’ll go ahead and register it. Even without the features I have suggested above, it has saved me a ton of time.