ecto

How do you create your blog entries?

I’ve been entering mine directly into Movable Type using Safari on Mac OS X. The only problem is when I have to add some simple html such as bold text or hyperlinks. A lot of the time I’ll forget a bracket or a quote and break the layout of my page.

For longer entries I’ve been using BBEdit which allows me to check my syntax and spelling but BBedit is better suited to coding than writing.

Lately I’ve been using the trial version of ecto for my blog entries. This is a great piece of software that integrates well with Movable Type. It downloads all of your entries making it easy to browse/edit previous entries. There are the usual text formatting and html tools and you can assign categories to entries inside of ecto.

A simple but smart feature is that it remembers any links that are in the clipboard. After you find your link in Safari you just copy the address field, go into ecto, select the word you want to hyperlink and ecto will create the code for you. Clean and simple.

Another bonus is that the software is well-supported. Movable Type 3.2 just went into beta and ecto already supports it. Impressive.

Posted in OS X Software at 4:14 PM