Many of you have been waiting patiently for MarsEdit 2.3, featuring support for Tumblr. Today, I’m happy to release a public beta with these updates. Please feel free to download and give it a try! I would also value your feedback on what I’ve done so far.

Click Here To Download MarsEdit 2.3 Public Beta

Special note for current MarsEdit users: It’s a good idea to make a backup of your current MarsEdit Application Support folder. You’ll find it in your home directory at:

[Home] -> Library -> Application Support -> MarsEdit

For this initial Tumblr support, I have only endeavored to support the Text, Quote, Photo, Link, and Chat post types. Audio and video are on the list for a future enhancement.

While the emphasis of this release is on Tumblr, there are a few goodies that will benefit those of you who are using MarsEdit on other blog systems as well:

• Opening the media manager is now much faster with lots of photos
• Improved usability and design of the Technorati Tags editor
• Improved weblog Favicon detection

Tumblr Caveats

I think there is enough here to get people excited about using MarsEdit for Tumblr, and hopefully you won’t run in to many pitfalls. But there are a few things that I already know are working less than perfectly.

• Autodetection of weblog settings fails if you host on a custom domain name. To work around this, give MarsEdit your tumblr-based URL, e.g. “http://marsedit.tumblr.com/”. I am working with the Tumblr folks to see if we can facilitate a way for MarsEdit to autodetect settings from a custom domain name.
• Fixed in 2.3b15: Post options such as selecting between Markdown and HTML , and setting whether a post is public or private, are not yet supported. I hope to support these in an update sometime after 2.3 ships.
• Fixed in 2.3b15: Only the first tumblelog for an account can be edited with MarsEdit. The Tumblr API has come a long way in recent months, but it is missing the capacity to specify a particular blog to edit when submitting or editing a post.

Have Fun And Keep In Touch

I hope you’ll give this new release of MarsEdit a try, and take the time to send me your feedback if you’ve got it. I’m not aiming for perfection with 2.3, but usable and lovable would be a good start. I appreciate your help in getting us there!

A little more than two years ago, Brent Simmons came to me with an intriguing proposition. Would I be willing to talk with NewsGator about the possibility of taking over MarsEdit, the desktop blog editing software Brent had developed as an adjunct to his RSS feed reader, NetNewsWire.

My answer was about as close to “hell, yes!” as one can get in a business context without appearing completely cavalier and freewheeling. I got in touch with the folks at NewsGator, who were as forthcoming and friendly as anybody could hope for. Within a few short weeks we had ironed out a deal and agreed that MarsEdit would become a property of Red Sweater Software.

We announced the deal two years ago today. Just looking back to the screenshot of MarsEdit from that announcement reminds me of how much things have changed since then:

• Added Flickr integration.
• Overhauled the post editor and main window UI.
• Enhanced markup macros for extremely powerful editing.
• Improved the speed and accuracy of the HTML preview.
• Support for saving drafts on blog server.
• Support for systems based on new AtomPub technology.
• Support for adding categories directly from MarsEdit.

I’m currently working on a bunch of new stuff. MarsEdit 2.3 is coming soon, and includes the previously promised support for Tumblr, which I know many folks are looking forward to. In my not so humble opinion, the Tumblr support is turning out quite well.

I tend not to share specifics of my future plans, because things are always in flux and subject to change. But I can assure you I will not be resting on my laurels. Lots of awesome features are high on my list. 2009 will be an exciting year for MarsEdit, if an exhausting one for me. I hope you’ll continue to check in on our progress as we find our way into the future.

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than 3 months since the last update to MarsEdit, our popular desktop blog publishing application.

I’ve been hard at work on innumerable new features, and even, dare I speculate, some new apps. Some of these lofty plans have turned out to take a bit more thought and effort than I had originally planned, but good things are on the horizon.

In the mean time, I have collected the most critical bug fixes made over the past few months, into a new update which I’m releasing today.

Download MarsEdit 2.2.3 to be sure you are running with “the best I have to offer” as of now.

This update will be a particular relief to users who have noticed an occasional glitch in the preview window, causing it to “freeze up” and stop responding to changes as you type or paste in your blog posts.

Summary of changes:

• Improve networking compatibility by always encoding XML “>” literals
• Fix a bug in the preview window that could cause it to stop updating
• Fix a possible crash when closing the enclosure sheet before URL finishes loading
• Fix a bug that caused media manager upload choice to be out of sync with post
• Fix a bug that prevented some 10.4 users from toggling table column visibility
• Improved accessibility of the check for updates dialog

Enjoy, and look forward to more earth-shattering, or at least earth-cracking updates in the near future!

If you’re a software developer or web-savvy businessperson, you’ve probably heard of 37 Signals’s famous book, Getting Real, which aims to pass on some of the company’s wisdom about how to build and market relatively simple end-user applications. The book is aimed primarily at developers of web applications, expected considering the web is 37 Signals’s forte, but I think it contains pearls of wisdom that anybody working in the software industry could benefit from reading and considering.

I have read bits and pieces of the book, but I doubt I have read the whole thing. The short essays are perfect for a quick browse here and there. Often, I’ll navigate to the site in order to read just a few tidbits, before moving on with my day’s work.

But I haven’t read much of the book in a long time. When I was recently reminded of it by Manton Reece’s reference in his blog, I thought to myself, yes! I should read some more Getting Real! But again, the struggle of being faced with all those bite-sized morsels, and having to choose which to delve in to.

My solution? The Random Reality bookmarklet.

Just drag the link above directly to your bookmark toolbar. Now when you are in the mood to “get real,” you can jump to a random essay from the book at the click of a button. If you feel like reading more of the book, just click the bookmark again.

Of course, if you love browsing the book, it might make even more sense to buy a copy in PDF or paper format. But even if you own a copy and have read through it, you might enjoy the occasional dose of random reality in your life.