Ok, so I’ve just been over to Sebs website and noticed that he had a review on a blogging tool called Qumana. It wasn’t a glowing endorsement but I thought I’d download it and give it a go anyway. I also found a comment somewhere, not sure where, about another tool called BlogDesk. Both were free, and we all know free is goooood, so I decided to check them out!
Qumana
Installation is straight forward and once installed you setup your blog. It supports a vast variety with WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, MSN Spaces and TypePad being a few of the more popular ones. It automatically downloaded my categories as well as previous posts which I could edit/delete etc.
It quickly downloaded my previous posts & categories and then presented me with the ‘Drop Pad’ screen, a kind of area to ‘drop’ links etc to automatically create a new post. Didn’t do much for me and confused me for a few seconds. Here’s the ‘New Post’ screen.
I didn’t really get much past here except for playing around with it’s image functions, which were fairly basic, as I just didn’t like the feel of it. It has built in spell checking with is pretty cool. All up though its interface has a very ‘bloated’ look to it. So! Onto the next product we go!
BlogDesk
You install the program and then have to setup your connection to the blog. Connecting to your blog was pretty complex, in comparison to Qumana, but straight forward for the able minded. My categories were automatically downloaded but my previous posts were not. To do this you have to access a separate screen and manually ‘download’ your previous posts – no biggie but Qumana does this automatically on program start up (admittedly this slows the program start up). BlogDesk doesn’t support many blogs unfortunately but it supports WordPress so that’s good enough for me!
This UI I like. No bloated icons or wasted space on the icon bar, just a nice clean interface. It’s handling of images is far superior to Qumana too with the ability to resize on preset sizes (small, medium, large or original), crop, rotate, set image alignment to text etc. It too has spell checking capabilities, though not in line ala MS Word, and even supports multiple dictionaries which is handy for us that prefer English (UK) not English (US). You know, for those of us that prefer to spell organisation the proper way not the incorrect organization way. 😉
Wrap Up
Qumana’s advantage is greater blog support, auto download of previous posts & inline spell checking via a clunky interface. BlogDesk’s advantage is a clean interface, great image handling & spell checking dictionaries. Umm, after saying that it sounds like Qumana’s better right? But it’s just not for some reason which is hard to explain. So here I am writing this post in BlogDesk after having originally started writing it in Qumana… but don’t take my word for it, try them both out!
PS. I haven’t used any other offline blogging tools so if someone knows a good one, let me know!
Tags: blog-client, BlogDesk, blogging-tool, blog-tool, Qumana, review
Olorin Sledge 
This review is great man! I love it! Where did you get the idea to review Qumana anyway? 😛 I will have to check out BlogDesk. Like I said in my review of Qumana I did not like the “feel” of the offline blogging tool. It felt on the “hmmmm” side. Required too much getting used to.
They look like very similar interfaces from the screen shots you had there. Blog desk does however look more professional. Smaller icons etc.
Don’t take our words for it 😉 -Sebastian (SEBRT.COM)
I have several reviews of blog clients if you would like to visit them on my blog. I also have one for Qumana, BlogDesk and seveal others.
The lastest review I did for a blog client was for WBEditor2.
http://www.keithmccall.com/keith/?p=126
Hi Keith,
You’ve got some great reviews on your blog! I’ve checked your WBEditor2 one out plus a few of your other reviews – keep up the good work.
I recommend people visit Keiths blog if they are looking at a large variety of blogging tools… chances are he’s reviewed it!
Hey, Olorinsledge!
I just read your review of Qumana and BlogDesk. I think you have missed one point: Qumana is slow. It is slow in image handling and in spell checking. Also, it loads pretty slowly. But the coolest feature is that it can insert Technorati tags automatically.
One interesting thing to note about Qumana is that it is one of the only ways you can add ads to a wordpress.com blog.
I downloaded performancing for firefox last night but haven’t tried it yet.
MyScribbles: Qumana is pretty slow, no doubt. BlogDesk can also do Technorati tags, you’ll notice my recent posts using them!
TheShortFatKid: Hadn’t thought about the ads ability of an offline blog tool – you raise a good point, though I didn’t think it was possible to put ads on wordpress.com blogs.
I’ve heard of Performancing for Firefox but I prefer to use a forms based app instead of web based, that’s just my personal preference. I will however check it out.
Thanks for your comments guys!
Thanks for the review. I want to do off-line editing, then upload, but I also want clean software, otherwise I’ll just get used to notepad and HTML!
I’ll try blogdesk out.
As you might guess from the name of my website (www.dougs-travels.com) I like to travel ans write about what I see. For this reason, I wonder if Blogdesk, or any other good blog client works as a portable app? If not, my posts from the road will be pretty unformatted – all the formatting and linking will have to wait until I get home!
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