A New Blogging Tool

I’m writing his entry with a new tool: Qumana Blog Editor. I downloaded it last night and installed it this afternoon. When I configured it for this blog, it immediately went out and grabbed all of my recent posts & downloaded them to my machine. Nice.

Adding an image is as easy as it is in Windows Live Writer: just click on the Insert Image button, browse to your image file, and select it. You then choose to either insert it in your current post and upload the image file immediately, or just insert it in your current post–in which case it’ll tell you you haven’t uploaded it, and will offer to do it for you. Very handy.

The editor isn’t quite so WYSIWYG as Live Writer, in that there is no web preview function. But it still displays images, fonts, colors, etc., as they will appear in the published version. You just can’t view any style you may have associated with your blog.

I can live with that. The Insert Image function alone makes this an editor worth investigating, as does the price: Zip. Nada. Nuttin’.

Another nifty function in Qumana is the Drop Pad. This is a nifty little feature that can stay on top of your screen while Qumana is running. Find a picture or an article on the Internet that you’d like to include in a post on your blog? Just highlight it, then drag and drop it onto the Drop Pad. It’s that simple. You’ve just copied it!

Need to edit your post’s HTML directly? Just click on the Source View tab and you’re there.

Spell checking is also built-in. So is Live Writer’s. But with Live Writer you have to click on a button to run the spell checker. Qumana can be configured to check your spelling as you type, highlighting your errors immediately. For someone like me whose laptop has stiff keys, that’s a big help.

Dislikes:

Okay, so nothing’s perfect. There’s no choice for me to use my favorite font, Comic Sans. But I can work around that by simply editing the HTML by hand.

Qumana runs under Windows and Mac OS only. There’s no Linux version. I’d love a Linux version. That’s my only complaint.

I’m going to continue using Qumana for this blog, and Live Writer for all my others. We’ll see which one I end up staying with.

I like this program.

Powered by Qumana

Linux Counterparts to Windows Programs

Of course, there’s really no sense in switching operating systems if you can’t run the programs you want or (in many cases) need.

And it’s true: there are a lot more commercial applications for Windows than there are for Linux.

Here are some examples of Linux equivalents of common Windows programs:

Windows Program: Linux Equivalent:

Microsoft Office OpenOffice.org

Microsoft Internet Explorer, Epiphany, Firefox,
Firefox, Netscape, Opera, Galeon, Konqueror,
etc. Lynx, Mozilla,
Nautilus,
Netscape, Opera,

SeaMonkey

ICQ, MSN Messenger, AIM Trillian, Gaim,
(AOL Instant Messenger), Gaim Mercury,
aMSN, KICQ, Gabber,
Centericq

Microsoft Netmeeting Gnomemeeting

WS FTP, Bullet Proof FTP, GFTP, KFTP

CuteFTP (KFTPGrabber),
Kasablanca, FireFTP,
Konqueror, KBear

Outlook Express, Outlook, Kontact, Evolution,
Thunderbird, Pegasus, Lotus Thunderbird,
Notes Sylpheed-Claws

For more examples, check out http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/
Linux_software_equivalent_to_Windows_software

And that’s all for tonight!