In this installment in our series looking at blogging clients usable with Microsoft Windows and Movable Type, we’ll look at the open source Portablog software.  Portablog is written in Java and therefore should run not just on Windows but on any platform that supports Java, such as Mac OS X and Linux.

I downloaded the client in the form of a “.jar” file from SourceForge.net.  The Windows XP virtual machine I was using for testing didn’t have Java installed, so I had to download it from Sun and install it first.  After Java was installed and working, double-clicking the jar file began an installation process which put the software on the computer.  I launched it from the desktop icon, whereupon it asked for login information.  I provided the information requested.

It didn’t take long to realize this client wasn’t going to do the job for me.  The editor is raw HTML only, though it does automatically insert formatting tags for you when you click appropriate buttons on the interface. 

It wasn’t able to pull down the list of article categories from my blog.  It didn’t support keywords, excerpts, or most of my other features.  To top it all off, it generated an error when I submitted an article, although the article did appear on the site.

Time to examine another client.