MarsEdit 1.1.3
February 26th, 2007When the news went out last Thursday that Red Sweater had acquired MarsEdit, the reaction from the public was just amazing. I’ve never heard so much positive feedback in a single day. People are excited about MarsEdit, and they’re not afraid to let me know :)
How am I going to reward users for their enthusiasm? By releasing updates. With fixes. And features. And stuff. It’s been four days since the acquisition, and I’m happy to announce the immediate availability of MarsEdit 1.1.3, a free update for all registered users.
MarsEdit 1.1.3 is mostly a “bug-fix and rebranding” release. All the little spots where the app takes you to a web page or whatnot are now updated to point to Red Sweater instead of Ranchero. The release includes three pretty significant bug fixes. Two that should please long time users, and one that might prevent scaring off new ones!
- Fix a bug with LiveJournal blogs that contain Unicode chars
- Fix the infamous “Preview Flickering Images” bug
- Fix a slow memory leak when text filters are applied in preview
Another exciting change in this release is the addition of Sparkle for automatic software update support. I’ve tweaked the basic Sparkle Plus profile information so that users can, if they choose, include information not only about their computer and operating system, but about the blogging systems they’ve set up blogs for in MarsEdit.
So now when you “Check For Update,” you’ll also be sort of voting for your preferred blog systems. This isn’t about winning or losing, but about allowing me to be pragmatic in choosing which features to prioritize in which systems. Not to say I won’t look at support for new systems, but I’m very interested to see what current users are running, so I can do everything possible to keep them satisfied.
February 26th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
It somehow seems *faster* if that’s even possible. Nothing like a fresh build to make the user base feel good.
February 26th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Also, I just noticed the comments feed:
http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/comments/feed
Is that valid? Do you mind if it’s used?
February 26th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Steve: if you’re using preview with text filters applied, it’s possible it *is* faster, because it’s not spending all that time reapplying the filter. But, probably just a “new car smell” phenomenon :) I’m glad it’s working.
And the comments feed is there for your convenience, yes. Please use it!
February 26th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
This is a great start!
The “flickering images on preview” issue was pretty much driving me already to Ecto, but now I’ll give MarsEdit another chance to prove itself.
BTW, would be great if Midgard CMS (www.midgard-project.org) systems would be identified as “Midgard” and not “Other MetaWeblog compatible”. The engineName string in RSD files is Midgard CMS/, for example Midgard CMS/1.8.2.1
February 26th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Henri: good point about identifying the systems more carefully. I’ll work on that in the future. For the moment though I think it will help a lot just to know what API people are using, even if it doesn’t say exactly which system it is.
Glad you appreciate the flicker fix :)
February 26th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
I use ExpressionEngine (from pmachine) and it uses the MetaWeblog API. MarsEdit works best with EE on the “MovableType” setting. I guess that would come through as MovableType?
February 26th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Yes jon – it would – so, point taken! I will not interpret the data that is collected so much as “what system people are using” as “what API people are using.”
I will look into the possibility of adding the ability to identify both the API and the specific system that is being used for their blogs.
February 26th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Daniel:
I just gave MarsEdit a try last week for the first time after reading that you acquired it. I use Drupal for my blog and it doesn’t allow me to select the input format or category. At least the former issue is a problem with the version of Drupal I’m using (http://drupal.org/node/12484). I’m going to give MarsEdit another try after upgrading.
Long story short, I’m not using MarsEdit right now, but consider this a “vote” for Drupal. :)
February 26th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Thanks Tim – I hear your Drupal vote :) And will add your Drupal requests to my list of system-specific requests.
February 27th, 2007 at 4:29 am
Daniel,
Does this release fix the problems with new Blogger ?
Thanks
Dimitri
February 27th, 2007 at 6:15 am
I think you also need to look at what APIs would be best for each system. I have some outstanding requests on the NewsGator MarsEdit forum about support for Drupal. Currently, the “Drupal” API in MarsEdit is not up to date with the current state of Drupal, so it’s actually better to use the MovableType API.
Even this is not without problems. I’ve got it working just enough so that round-tripping posts back and forth between MarsEdit and Drupal 4.7 doesn’t corrupt the entries.
http://www.jaharmi.com/trying_out_marsedit_for_posting_drupal_stories_again
http://www.jaharmi.com/trying_again_to_get_marsedit_working_with_drupal
http://www.jaharmi.com/it_s_slower_here_without_marsedit
Perhaps you could have a choice for API _and_ blogging/CMS tool. I’m not sure how to best accomplish that, especially since these choices are so related and could even change with different versions of MarsEdit and/or the blogging/CMS tool.
February 27th, 2007 at 7:19 am
dimboo: The new blogger problems are not yet fixed, but I’m hacking away at it, and undestand the problem now. MarsEdit needs to support a special Google authentication protocol, which I’m currently adding support for.
Jaharmi: I think you’re right that providing “Software” and “API” would be a good choice. The Software would be a cue to MarsEdit about what API is probably best, but wouldn’t lock the user into that API.
Daniel
February 28th, 2007 at 3:40 am
Yes, and I see other people posted ideas in the comments to that effect. I didn’t have a chance to read all of them before I shot from the hip with mine.
I hope you’re able to see the issues that were brought up in the NewsGator forum.
I look forward to seeing how ME progresses, because I’ve been using clients to post to my blog since Radio Userland let me create stories on my Manila blog earlier this century. (I just love saying that!) ME is a decent one, although I don’t think anything quite matched the way RU worked with Manila – although the actual writing environment wasn’t as good as ME’s text editor, you could edit virtually every aspect and setting of the site with RU. I think that’s something to strive for. Maybe Atom will allow that.
February 28th, 2007 at 8:41 am
The link in my post above is supposed to point to http://drupal.org/node/12984. Sorry about that.