How Do I Really Feel About MarsEdit?

I started writing a “What’s wrong with my favorite apps” post almost a year ago (May, 2006). It’s been sitting in my MarsEdit drafts folder ever since (yay, MarsEdit drafts!).

I stumbled upon it today and found this choice bit of commentary on MarsEdit itself. I find myself frequently responding to the concerns of users by saying “Yes, I agree! I want to fix that!” Well, this isn’t proof that I really mean it, but it’s pretty good evidence:

MarsEdit. MarsEdit is, like NetNewsWire, extremely helpful to my daily routines. I tend to write a lot of blog entries, so I keep MarsEdit open even if only to capture vaguely bloggable ideas. In fact, this entry has sat in MarsEdit for a few days [UPDATE: Almost a year :) ] as I accumulate enough applications and opinions to make it worth posting.

My biggest complaint about MarsEdit is its lack of a search facility. This has everything to do with this “capturing ideas” behavior of mine. At any given moment I have the last several of my published blog entries as well as a number of drafts stored in the application. Right now there are 31 items in the Drafts folders. That’s right, 31 items that you don’t have to read (yet!). [UPDATE. Now it’s 52]

When I want to resume work on any of those drafts, it’s infuriating to not be able to easily pop it open by searching on a unique keyword. I went so far as to write an AppleScript aimed at performing the search for me, but alas MarsEdit’s scripting interface doesn’t allow access to the text of drafts, either.

MarsEdit needs a search field just like its cousin NetNewsWire has.

So, believe me! I care. I want this thing to rock, and I’m in a very good position to make sure that happens.

Oh and incidentally, I wonder sometimes if people will suspect me of “carpetbagging” this target audience. I mean, here I am I just pulling into town with a truck full of shiny new blog editor. But I have been interested in writing a blog editing application for a long time! In fact, I’ve even got some stale abandoned projects around here somewhere. In 2003 or so I noticed Michael McCracken’s open-source Blapp and seriously considered diving in. I thought with support for a few more blog systems it could really kick ass. You know, like MarsEdit.

A few years later I was deep into WordPress and again considered writing my own custom client. This time I was using MarsEdit, but hoping for even better integration with WordPress. Luckily, I never started that project. Also luckily, I am going to be able to finish it.