MacMembraneThere are peels everywhere…

A desktop blogging client allows you to write and publish blog posts without accessing your blog’s browser-based post editor. The benefits of using such an application, however, may not be immediately apparent to a lot of bloggers. WordPress’s posting window offers convenient tools to add links, apply formatting to text, upload and align images and even gives you access to an html-based editor for fine tuning your output and calling custom CSS classes. Why would someone want to move away from browser-based weblog posting and post from a desktop application? Here are a few of the reasons that might motivate you to make the switch.

The Speed and Stability of a Lightweight Native Application

Safari and Firefox may be fast browsers, but it’s much faster to open a desktop application than it is to load an online editor, and moreover once you’re application is open you never have to reload a webpage during the writing process. A dedicated and well integrated application will always feel more responsive than an online service.

An Internet Connection is Required Only to Post. Not to Write.

Despite the apparent ubiquity of internet access, there are times when a connection is not readily available. On an airplane, for instance, or when visiting a rural residence. And I’ve travelled enough to know first-hand that the connectivity of the West is the exception – not the rule. With a desktop application you can write your blog posts offline and send them up to the web the next time you connect.

Save Backups of Draft Posts Locally

Saving your partially composed posts to your web-server (or your hosted blog) takes time and breaks the flow of writing. Saving a draft to your hard-drive, on the other hand, does not (its perceptually instant, actually). And if you do lose your connection at anytime during the writing process, your draft post will be inaccessible until you’re online again. A desktop blogging client saves your unpublished posts quickly and guarantees their availability even without an internet connection.

What You See is What You Get? Not Really.

WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editors don’t display your post to you as it will look once it’s published to your blog. They hide markup, show you what text is link text and are quick for resizing images, but unless your WYSIWYG editor also formats your content using your blog’s CSS styles, what you see in a WYSIWYG editor is nothing like what you will get. WYSIWYG editors promise far more than they deliver.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Although the WordPress post editor does support some keyboard shortcuts, most of these are non-standard. A good desktop blogging client will integrate seamlessly with your entire system and give you access to all your familiar keyboard shortcuts as well as any custom global shortcuts that you man have. This might be a power user benefit, but it’s something that I rely on all the time to send my thoughts up to the web.

Editing Published Posts Locally Preserves Their Markup

This might be just a WordPress problem, but the many times that I’ve edited a published post to fix a typo or change a word and had the republished post come out with unintended formatting changes has made me weary of ever touching something that I’ve already published. Using a blogging client takes the guess work out of editing published posts.

For me these are the most compelling reasons to choose a desktop blogging client over a web-based editor. My favorite for the Mac is MarsEdit from Red Sweater, but there are lots of choices so there shouldn’t be a problem finding one that works for you. Publishing from the desktop lets you concentrate your energies on writing by removing the obstacles that web-based editors inevitably present. Once you break the habit of blogging in a browser window you’ll wonder how you ever wrote your posts in that restrictive space in the first place.