SECRET WEAPON FOR THE BLOGSPOTTED - UPDATED 9-15-05

It's no secret that Blogspot has had yet another bout of the not-user-friendlies lately, and in the comments to a post where Graumagus of Frizzen Sparks also noted this tragedy, someone commented that Blogspot's squirliness had cost him several posts.

Which is the worst feeling in the world.

But there is a cure for this. On a post about some of his favorite software, Reid of Photodude mentioned a program called NoteTab Pro, which has a free version called NoteTab Light that I've used with great success. I've tried several word processing programs in my day, but when it comes to writing up blog posts, NoteTab is without peer.

It's got 2 big advantages over composing your post in your blogging software.

First, while Blogger, Movable Type, Radio, TypePad, etc. give you a few formatting buttons, NoteTab gives you... well, ALL of them (technically, it's double-clicks in the sidebar menu, but it works the same as a button). Take a look at this (please note the position of scrollbar on the right, indicating more choices, and the buttons across the bottom indicating entire new menus):

(click to enlarge)

It's got "buttons" I've never even used, but if I need them, they'll be there for me.

Second, there's no squinting-tiny editing window. You get to use the whole freaking page. Saves a lot of time scrolling up & down.

The one thing it lacks is a preview mode (or at least I haven't been able to find it), but still, you can get 99% of your heavy lifting done with NoteTab, then copy & paste to your blogging software, and just polish up the rough edges there.

It's the best thing that ever happened to me, blogwise.

And I DID mention that it's free, right? And only a 1.8 Meg download.

Go get yourself a copy, and breathe freedom's sweet air.

UPDATE 6-11-05: Another advantage is that - unlike using Microsoft Word - NoteTab composes in completely plain text. MS Word sometimes uses MS-specific characters - especially for punctuation - which will show up as question marks after they're posted (see, for example, this post)

UPDATE 9-15-05: If you're the type of Blogger user who prefers to compose in "Compose" mode instead of "Edit Html" mode, NoteTab Light can still be your friend.

Just before you hit "Publish Post", click the "Edit Html" tab, then copy the entire post and paste it into NoteTab. That way, if Blogger eats your post, you can copy the entire thing back again.

UPDATE 5-24-05: [If you've found this post useful enough to blog about, send a trackback or e-mail the permalink to me at harvolson-at-gmail.com and I'll add you to my Bad Example Groupies blogroll. See this post for details]