1-7-12 Hodgepodge

Saturday, January 07, 2012

A Note and a Bleg

In support of a long-range goal, I have been logging time spent blogging and how that time is used. This has been an illuminating exercise, and I have already identified some low-hanging fruit that, when picked, will speed things along for me very nicely in the wee hours. (And yes, when I composed most of this post yesterday, those problems put me over my time budget, and resulted in a shortened post.)

Firefox -- unless a supposedly speedier new version fixes things -- has to go as my blogging browser. Multiple tabs slow things to an excruciating crawl that becomes downright appalling when one becomes explicitly aware of the actual amount of time lost. That's easy enough, except that I am unsure how well Google Chrome will "play" with Blogger's new editor. (Certain common things did not work well in the old editor under Chrome.) But even if the new editor is smooth sailing under Chrome, it has annoying limitations I might want to do without, by switching to better HTML editing software, and just dumping posts into Blogger when I've completed them. After all, I already might have to toggle back and forth between browsers. If I'm going to do that, why not toggle between a fast browser and a decent editor?

I haven't looked into this at all yet, and I've gotten great technical advice by asking here before, so ...

If you have a recommendation for a good WYSIWYG HTML editor that meets the following criteria, please leave a comment or email me. (1) Must run natively on Linux. (2) Easily switches between plain text and HTML output views. (3) Is well-supported, or at least under active development. (4) Is free (as in beer), or at least inexpensive.

Thanks in advance!

Weekend Reading

"2012 is the year this outrageous government power grab [i.e., ObamaCare --ed] will be reversed, or the year it will be set in concrete." -- Richard Ralston, in "Save American Medicine in 2012" at The Orange County Register

"At the end of the day, one either continues to drink, use drugs, or engage in otherwise self-destructive behavior – or one doesn't." -- Michael Hurd, in "Stop Waiting and Help Yourself" at DrHurd.com

"The problem is not too much love or too many presents. The real problem lies in not allowing the child to experience the consequences of his actions and choices." -- Michael Hurd, in "Can There Be too Many Presents?" at DrHurd.com

"In a competitive market, however, persistent values don't often last." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Big Ships, Cheaper Prices" at SmartMoney

"The rational and worthy institutions of government require a rational underlying political philosophy, with an abiding respect for individual rights and the rule of law. That's wholly absent ... from most of the Middle East..." -- Richard Salsman, in "Credit Obama for Leaving Iraq, but the U.S. Remains Over-Committed" at Forbes

"Just as your real estate agent should represent your individual home buying interests and your lawyer should represent your individual legal interests, your physician should represent your individual medical interests -- not sacrifice you to some collectivist ideal of 'social justice.'" -- Paul Hsieh, in "Who Will Your Doctor Work for Under ObamaCare?" at Townhall.com

"Romney's claim that the Massachusetts plan didn't include price controls may have been technically true at the time the law was passed. But he helped create an unsustainable system that has quickly and predictably led to price controls -- with still more to come." -- Paul Hsieh, in "The Truth about RomneyCare", at PJ Media

-- CAV

4 comments:

Bill Brown said...

I've used ScribeFire to good effect: it's a Chrome extension that has a decent editor and says it posts to Blogger. I like it because I never have to leave the browser.

http://www.scribefire.com/

Gus Van Horn said...

Thanks, Bill!

Dismuke said...

For html editor, I use SeaMonkey. It is actually a full suite that includes browser, email client, newsreader and html editor. It is basically the open source afterlife of the old Netscape Communicator Suite that continued on after Netscape died and is maintained by Mozilla which also maintains Firefox. After it was called Netscape Communicator and before it was called SeaMonkey it was simply called Mozilla. it works in Windows, Mac and Linux and is free.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Communicator/SeaMonkey is the easiest to use basic, no frills html editor I have ever been able to find. It very easily switches between a WYSIWYG tab, an html tags tab and html source tab.

Basic tasks like adding backgrounds, images, tables, links, font sizes and colors are a breeze. It does have its limitations - it is not something a professional website designer would use. But for basic html, it is the easiest and most straight forward I have come across.

It also comes bundled with a browser that I actually like and it is the one that I use most often. But one occasionally finds sites that claim to be incompatible with it (though most do end up working just fine). But while the browser and html editor are part of the same suite, they do run as separate windows. The browser pulls up by default and you click an icon at the bottom to bring up the editor - after which the browser can remain or be closed altogether. Years ago, I used to use and like the email and news reader client that came with it - but I have used neither in recent years.

Gus Van Horn said...

I've heard of SeaMonkey. Thanks for reminding me, Dismuke.