15 Windows & Mac Blog Writing Tools Reviewed

Smashing Magazine – 15 Desktop Blogging Tools Reviewed

“Desktop blogging tools can benefit designers-bloggers in a number of ways. They provide extra functionality that can significantly speed up the blogging process for both newbies and professionals.

One of the main benefits of using a desktop client is the ability to comfortably write a post offline, and publish it later. Many clients also have a scheduled post feature, so you can define what time you would like to publish your articles. Some editors provide a spell checker, drafts saver, remote publishing and WYSIWYG-editor with advanced formatting options such as inserting media or structuring the post — they may be hard to deal with using standard online blogging-engines.

Let’s take a look at 15 desktop blogging editors which can speed up the blogging process. Some are free and some cost a few dollars, but in the end all of these editors can significantly improve your workflow, regardless of your skills.

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New bloggers will sometimes stay in their blog engine’s writing interface, thinking that this is the only place they can post from. Very quickly they learn that there’s a much wider writing world out there and they begin the hunt for a more complete tool.

Having lived that journey, I wish there had been a post like this. I’ve personally used about half of the below tools, ending up with my current favorite, Windows Live Writer.

Why WLW? For me, it’s the plugins. Having the ability to extend WLW to do things they writers never envisioned has made it a must have in my book. Plus the WLW is still very actively working on it, improving it and its API. That and the price is just right too.