Blogo is a blog publishing application developed by Brain Juice. It's weights in at a hefty 72,6 megabytes but since issues with storage is a thing of the past it's really not a problem. The price is 25$ and the application can be purchased online. I used Blogo version 1.2.8.
How Blogo works
When starting up Blogo you are greeted to a welcome screen where you enter your blog account information. Nice, since it gives you a clear starting point and removes the need to start fumbling with menus on application launch.
Then you are greeted with a quick set of instructions on how to get started with the application.
The interface for posting a new blog post presents you with controls for setting title, date, body and categories of the post. There is some shortcuts for common markup such as bold and italics. There are controls for uploading images and resizing and cropping them. From the outset the default is WYSIWYG mode, however there is an option to edit the post in HTML mode instead. There is no support for more advanced html elements such as tables.
The main window has two tabs one for new blog posts and one for editing blog posts. Editing posts is pretty straight forward. You are greeted with the same interface as when writing new posts plus a drawer to the side of the application where you can select the post you which to edit.
My impressions of Blogo
Generally Blogo is a pleasure to use even though it has some serious flaws. The wizard style setup used to guide the user is welcome. Brain juice has made a conscious decision not to use the standard Mac OS X widgets and have instead opted for a look that sets Blogo apart from the run-of-the-mill applications out there. Some purists might say complain that this is not really adhering to the Apple HIG but I think it is as much about taste and creating a user experience that sets the application apart. In my experience the UI works well even though I find that the custom buttons are to clunky and take up too much screen real estate. All buttons have tool tips but there are no labels for some buttons such as "Preview", "Save as Draft" and "Change Date".
Probably due too the fact that Blogo used custom UI widgets I found it hard to understand when I started using the application. But after a brief running-in period, what I initially found as awkward chunkiness begins to take on a certain charm. Generally speaking the screen flow matches my workflow and except for the strange icon on the button for saving drafts and the button for editing post date, most of the UI controls doesn't require any effort to understand. However, only the window is resizable as a whole and it is not possible to expand the blog post field separately but it's a minor grievance.
Most editors out there that work in html has a WYSIWYG mode as well as a HTML mode. Blogo has a pure html mode that is somewhat senile since it does not keep breaks that you manually insert into the html code when you manually move back and forth between HTML and WYSIWYG mode. Inserting tabs to make your code readable also doesn't work as they are forgotten as well. The WYSIWYG mode is not really a pure WYSIWYG mode since images are shown as placeholders and not actual images which is somewhat confusing from the outset. The are instead managed from two panel below the blog post body, one to control uploading images and one for cropping and resizing.
The preview mode is a nice feature where you can see what the blog post will look like when it's posted. You can set the css so that it matches your blog's.
This post has of course been made with Blogo.
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