Movable Type Compatable MS Windows clients

Since I didn't have much else to do this morning, I decided to hunt around to see how many different blogging clients I could find...

After eliminating Java based clients, I found four freeware clients:

w.Bloggar

Zempt

MTClient

SharpMT

I also found a couple of pay clients, but as they didn't appear to provide any additional functionality, I saw no reason to pursue them further.

All of the clients are relative small - less than 2 MB, and each provides a similar core set of features such as basic text formatting (bold, italics, underline, strike-through) and spell check.

w.Bloggar is the only client of the four that supports blogging hosts other than Movable Type. It allows you to define up to twelve custom HTML tags as well as providing a number of other HTML controls including table support. w.Bloggar provides a dialog for you to enter your desired table parameters and then builds all of the required tags for the full table - even so, since the entry is not full WYSIWYG, entry can be challenging for anything other than very simple tables. There are options to control text justification, font, and color. Buttons are provided to allow you to insert links and images, and there is a one-click interface to Windows Media Player or WinAmp to insert information about the currently playing selection into your post. w.Bloggar also allows you to post a single entry to multiple blogs. It does not support multiple category tagging in MT, nor does it support excerpts, but does support the extended entry feature. W.Blogger provides find and find / replace tools and menu bar links to its web site and on-line FAQs.

Zempt is more basic, although it does have an "Insert Currently Playing" button similar to w.Bloggar's. The entry screen follows the same basic format as the on-line MT entry screen.

SharpMT allows you to easily save drafts that you're working on to your local hard drive. A unique feature is its "one button posting" which allows you to send any of your drafts to the server with one button click. A tabbed interface allows multiple drafts to be open at the same time, and you can select more than one category for each draft published to the server. Neither font / color, nor alignment formatting is supported. Download existing posts - download the title and entry of existing blog enties from your server and store it on your hard drive for linking and editing. Another nice feature is its ability to edit server-based posts, allowing you to download server-based entries, edit them, and then upload the changes to the server. As with Zempt, the entry interface is similar to MT's native interface and also offers the ability to use MT's extended fields, such as publishing status, categories, and excerpts. As with Zempt, SharpMT allows you to upload any of your local images to anywhere within your blog and provides MP3 Player integration allowing you to add "now playing" information into Drafts with WMP9's blogging plug-in. Customizable tag support is providing allowing you to change the tags generated for bold, underline, italics and three custom tags. Unlike any of the other clients, SharpMT requires that you have the .Net framework loaded. The installer will check for the existance of .Net on your system, and if it is not found, the installation will not procede, and a link to Windows update is provided. SharpMT provides good control over comment status, as well as excellent support for URL pings and multiple categories.

MTClient does not provide font or color control, but does provide alignment, as well as table and lists HTML tag support. For tables, MTClient only inserts individual table, row, and cell tags; it does not offer a dialog like w.Bloggar to enter your desired table parameters and then build all of the required tags for the full table. There is also a button which provides a pop-up extended character pick / paste table. Extensive one-button url and image tag entry facilitates creation of these tags and image file upload is supported directly from the client. Find and search / replace are supported, as is undo. MTClient is the only client to not provide a WYSIWYG preview, nor does it provide a media player interface. Multiple custom HTML tags are supported, but no description is associated with each custom tag. The client does provide the ability to retrieve prior posts from the host. The interface is a simplified version of the native MT entry interface, and controls for comments and pings are provided, as is support for multiple categories.

One interesting flaw common to all of the clients is their inability to support setting the status of entries written to the host as "draft." Each client has a pick list to select "draft" or "publish," but all entries get written to the host with a status of "publish" regardless. In my research, I found one reference to a work-around involving reconfiguring MT, but that requires that the default for the native MT entry be changed from "post" to "draft," which I would prefer not to do.

Since all four of the clients are simple to install and use, the best way to decide which is "best" for you might be to download and install each of them so you can make a hands-on decision.

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Posted by David at January 26, 2004 07:23 AM