While listening to Mac Power Users do a workflow show with Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I opened MarsEdit when writing a blog post, it wasn’t even installed on my computer anymore. I even wrote that it was the best desktop blogging tool for Mac users, and I still believe it. So where did MarsEdit go?
What I’m Using Now
The best place to start is with what I am using now and why. Currently I have all my blog posts in nvALT with names that include the intended blog for the post. I started doing this because I write in Markdown which is really just text. Using nvALT also allows me to work on my posts from my iPad or iPhone with Writeroom (read the review). This workflow means that I can’t just attach my images in nvALT and have them uploaded to my site nor can I send posts from nvALT to WordPress without a copy/paste routine. While the theory of working on both Mac and iOS is sound in the abstract, I’m not really sure that it is reality.
I can probably count the number of times that I have worked on a blog post from my Mac and my iPad on one hand, since I’ve owned an iPad. I have written 3 or 4 posts on just my iPad when it was not convenient to get my Mac. That brings the total number of posts that had some work done from the iPad to maybe 10, in a year. I’m not really using my iPad as a content creation tool.
Do I Find MarsEdit Again?
The workflow I struggle with this week (maybe longer) is, does MarsEdit have a place in my life again? As I said I’m rarely creating content from my iPad so the ‘sync’ portion is only really desirable in the sense that New Year resolutions are made, it sounds good but never actually happens.
While I wait for Daniel to have an iPad version of MarsEdit I’ll at least be looking at a way to sync my work to my iPad so that I still have the option to write posts from it. If I can get sync going then MarsEdit probably does have room in my blogging routine, if not then it might. The thought of moving all my posts in nvALT in to MarsEdit feels daunting and I’m not sure that I want to tackle it.
It’s probably also time to take a hard look at MarsEdit and see where my pain points are in other areas (like WordPress featured images) and see if I can work around them. Maybe a plugin for WordPress is in order that helps MarsEdit along by automatically making an image featured on the WordPress end of the equation?