ecto
Practically everyone has been raving about ecto lately. ecto is the next version of Kung-Log, which is a widely used weblog posting tool. Inspired by Chuq and Judi’s praise, I downloaded ecto and gave it a shot.
Unfortunately, I can’t stand it. The first thing I noticed was that it uses metal windows. I don’t have a problem with metal windows in general, but they rarely seem to stand out as much to me as they did in ecto. It uses metal sheets! Safari and the Finder don’t do that. ecto uses lots of drawers, too. I don’t find those easy to interact with. I found myself trying to resize one of its drawers wider to see the contents of a text field. Unfortunately, the drawer was at the bottom of the window, so I couldn’t make it wider.
I was also confused by the multitude of windows. My weblogging needs are simple — I have one weblog, no categories, and no special features. I don’t even customize my HTML except under extreme duress. (It’s 2004 and I still don’t know how to write a style sheet.) I’d like to type in my weblog settings once and never see them again. With ecto, though, I started off with something like six different windows on the screen…including a confusing error message because I guessed at the RPC URL for my weblog and got it wrong at first. I then flipped through its preferences briefly and got lost in the plethora of options there. I quit it and deleted the app.
I think ecto is aimed at power bloggers. Actually, it has to be aimed at power bloggers, since that’d be the only market for a weblogging tool trying to compete with Blogger, LiveJournal, and other free tools. There’s nothing wrong with aiming for that market, and in fact I think it’ll be a great tool for those folks. I’m just not one of them. NetNewsWire’s weblog editor is good enough for almost all of my needs, so I’ll stick with it for a while longer.
A View From Home Said,
January 11, 2004 @ 5:17 am
So ecto isn’t for everyone
Eric Albert doesn’t like ecto. He’s right. It’s a lot of windows. But I don’t find it a terrible thing and I keep closed the windows I don’t need and it doesn’t bother me. And I certainly don’t disagree with…
brian w Said,
January 11, 2004 @ 8:10 am
Ecto isn’t meant to compete with Blogger or LiveJournal; you’re meant to use it with those services so you can post entries through something other than a web interface. But it’s a pity that it has lost sight of the simplicity of Kung-Log & NNW; neither “power bloggers” nor ordinary folk don’t want to mess around with a bajillion metal windows!
Buzz Andersen Said,
January 11, 2004 @ 8:13 am
I wish that guy would include screenshots on his site. I hate it when apps don’t provide screenshots so I can see what I’m getting before I download it.
As for the metal, I’m constantly amazed at how horrible most non-Apple metal apps look. I particularly hate the way people make an app’s secondary windows metal in addition to the main window. That is definitely against the Apple UI guidelines. The metal sheet is a whole other story! The other big mistake people make is to include waaay too much blank space in their metal windows. Those things look awful with too much metal showing.
Fortunately, one of the main reasons I like Blosxom is that it prevents me from having to use any kind of specialized weblog editor. Good old BBEdit works great (except for spell checking :-).
Fraser Speirs Said,
January 11, 2004 @ 10:07 am
LiveJournal has a couple of clients, including my own, Xjournal. It’s not brushed metal and it tries to stick to the HIG
Rhonabwy Said,
January 11, 2004 @ 9:29 pm
2.65 upgrade, Ecto, etc…
yeah, my whole RSS feed reset itself - sorry. I finally got the MovableType upgrade done to migrate to 2.65…
Eric Czarny Said,
January 14, 2004 @ 1:11 pm
I’ve been planning on tackling my own weblog client application for a few months now, and have finally gotten around to writing the XML-RPC framework. OS X needs more applications like this, there just aren’t enough options.
As of now I use the weblog editor in NetNewsWire, but I want to get the satisfaction of using my own software, you know? If you’re at all interested in my current project, let me know, and I’ll be sure to let you know when I make significant progress.
chaotic intransient prose bursts Said,
January 18, 2004 @ 4:47 am
ecto 0.2 release notes
Release notes for ecto version 0.2