Desktop blog editor BloGTK! released a new version – version 2.0 – back in September that, somehow, I missed news of!
What’s new
It would be easier to say what isn’t new with 2.0. The entire application has been re-written, sports a much more user-friendly editing and account management interface and includes support for even more blogs and blog features.
What’s not so good?
Given this is the first release of the newly re-incarnated BloGTK! it’d be wrong to be too critical of BloGTK!s deficiencies. It is slightly less capable than Blogilo (formally known as Bilbo Blogger) and both are still miles behind the “yard stick” of desktop blog editors – Windows Live Writer.
Composing isn’t WYSIWYG meaning you need to pay attention to parsing/formatting. The preview mode corrects some of the short comings here, but it would be nice to have a directly editable WYSIWYG mode.
You may have to hover over icons in the editor mode to check their functions. An option to have text with icons would be a sane additions.
No support for tags on Blogger blogs – as with Blogilo. I hope this is because of an API issue and not because, as another blog editors’ developer puts it, “blogger is not as good as wordpress”.
Looking Forward
The next major release, 2.1, is seeking to add image upload support via Picasa (for Blogger blogs) as well as native uploads for other blogging systems.
BloGTK is continuing to evolve, and I’m getting more and more assistance in making it better. Again, thank you to everyone who has contributed code and bug reports and feature suggestions. Every little bit helps.
Download/Install
Jaunty & Karmic users can add the following PPA to install and stay up-to-date with all the latest BloGTK! developments.