This will be the first in a series of articles on this site looking at various blog client packages for Windows which are compatible with Movable Type. It’s based on our initial article discussing my requirements for a Windows-based blog client. In this article, we’ll look at the commercial client called “WB Editor 3“.

Installation

The client is downloaded from the vendor’s web site as an EXE file. This file checks for the prerequisites needed to run WB Editor 3 on your PC. On my test PC, a virtual machine running Windows XP Pro, the installer placed Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on the system before going on to install itself. The installation was simple enough and required only a few mouse clicks to complete, upon which the software launched automatically.

Configuration

Once the installation had been completed, the software prompted me for the URL of my blog, the “service URL” for the blog, my user name, and the service password (which for Movable Type is different from my login password). It took under a minute for the software to communicate with my web server, pull down the information about my multiple blogs hosted there, capture images of what the site looks like, etc. When finished, it displayed a screen showing the 7 sites I have running on my server, along with information about recent posts.

Creating a Post

When you’re ready to post something to your blog, you click the “Create New Post” button on the screen. This displays an editor window similar to the following:

In the first red box you enter the title you wish to use for the post. In the second you edit the content in a WYSIWYG format. The editor allows for changes in font, font size, bold, italic, underline, strike through, superscript, subscript, left alignment, center alignment, right alignment, numbered lists, bulleted lists, indentation, changes in text color, changes in background color, and hyper linking.

During configuration, it imports the categories used for your blog(s) and allows you to select the desired categories with a simple check box.

The time stamp for an article may be adjusted as desired. The article can be set to a published or draft status.

Under the tools section, you can do a spell check, edit the HTML source of the post, insert information about the music you might be playing at the time, insert an image or file, or perform find-and-replace operations.

Image Uploading

Uploading an image to your blog, especially a Movable Type blog, is a fairly simple affair. First, you bring up the tools pane:

Then you click the “Insert image or file” option, which will bring up the image insertion and uploading dialog:

After the image has been uploaded, it will be displayed on the editor page where it may be resized, centered, etc.

Spell Checking

I found it interesting that when I spell checked a partial draft of this article in WB Editor 3 that its spell checker stopped first on the word “blog”. It apparently couldn’t recognize the word and wanted me to use “bldg” (the abbreviation for “building”) instead. Strange that a blogging tool doesn’t recognize the word “blog” but easily corrected by adding it to the dictionary.

Apart from that, the spell checking tool was fast, easy to use, and did the job.

Posting Articles to the Blog

It didn’t take long to master the basic use of WB Editor 3, which is a credit to its designers’ and programmers’ work. I used it to post a sample article to one of my blogs to see how it worked. It took the software a while to make the post, after which it generated an error:

The article did, however, make it to the site. It took only a single mouse click and a few seconds of waiting to get the article posted.

Unfortunately, it exposed what appears to be a significant bug in the software. I set the time stamp for the article to 2/12/2009. When posted on the site, however, the article appeared immediately (instead of being a scheduled post) and with today’s date rather than the date I selected.

Conclusion

So, how did WB Editor 3 stack up to my list of requirements for a blog client:

• Both WYSIWYG and raw HTML editing of entries: The WYSIWYG editor responded well from a performance viewpoint, contained the layout features I typically use, and didn’t exhibit any problems. HTML editing is handled through a separate window that highlights the HTML syntax, making editing much simpler than many tools I’ve used.
• Ability to create and store blog entries when offline: WB Editor 3 does offer the option to store blog entries offline and publish them later. It wasn’t obvious at first where the draft went after I saved it, however. I spent a few minutes clicking around to find it again. When I finally did re-open the draft, WB Editor 3 no longer knew which site I had written it for, what category I’d selected for the article, or the time stamp I’d provided.
• Spell checking: As discussed earlier, this option exists and works well.
• Post-dating of blog entries: While the option is there to set the time stamp of a blog entry, my experience after submitting a few test articles is that the time stamp entered by the user must be getting ignored by the software. An entry set to appear 11 days later was published immediately instead of being stored as a scheduled post. That’s a deal-breaker for me. Another article I’d instructed it to save as a draft (meaning “don’t publish this yet”) also went up as a published item, with the time stamp again ignored.
• Access to multiple blogs: This feature is present in the software, is relatively intuitive to work with, and appears to work as designed.
• Access to all my article categories: This feature works well and is easy to use.
• Support for keywords, excerpts, and tags: Unless I missed something, this feature does not exist in the software. While not a deal-breaker it’s definitely a big disappointment.
• Automated image and file uploads: This feature worked well and was in some ways more intuitive than other tools I’ve worked with. It was able to transparently and easily upload the images in this article to the server directly from the Windows clipboard.
• Netbook screen support: Based on my Asus Eee PC 1000H’s screen resolution of 1024×600, this tool would work just fine. I tested it even at 800×600 resolution and was able to access all functionality.
• Microsoft Windows support: The tool runs fine under Windows, generally responds quickly, and didn’t crash in my testing.
• Portability: Given the tool’s use of SQL Server and other Windows technologies, it’s not easily portable on a USB memory stick or other device. While not a deal-breaker for me, it was a significant disappointment.

On balance, I thought this was actually quite a good blogging client for Windows. It met most of my criteria well, but unfortunately didn’t meet some of the criteria I considered vital or important. That makes it unsuitable for me personally, but possibly just what you may be looking for if your needs differ from mine.

I will be continuing to look at other blogging clients to see if I can identify one that is a better fit for my needs and preferences. Watch this site for more news.