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Have you ever been so frustrated by the programs you are using, that you just want to say to heck with it (or in my case a lot stronger words). That was where I was this morning. I was writing my blog post on Apple's Text-to-Speech program and it seems that no matter what I did that the formatting just wouldn't work correctly.
I actually started to write the post last night while I was watching the Celtics beat the Sacramento Kings. That was when the problems began, I started to write the post using MarsEdit and just got completely frustrated by how it was working or more to the point how MarsEdit just wasn't working for me. Then I finished writing the post in Google Docs with the idea that I would just copy and past it to my Blogger blog editor and post (the new gDocs hasn't gotten the ability back to post directly to my blog yet) it this morning. This is where I began to run into some serious formatting issues.
Image via CrunchBaseLast weekend I enabled the new Blogger blog editor again, which has given me fits on correctly showing the line spacing and formatting that it should. Well guess what, it has not improved any, it still messes up both the line spacing and formatting on my posts and does this no matter what setting I put it on.
I like to use Zemanta, but not too many of the blog editors have the ability to use it built in. That means that I usually just go back into a post and add Zemanta inside the blog editor and it works like a charm with the old Blogger blog editor, but when I did that this morning using the new one, it toasted the line spacing and made the post look like crap. It isn't Zemanta, it is the Blogger blog editor, I double-checked on a different post without using Zemanta and it screwed up the formatting on that one also. At this point I was more than just a little frustrated.
So I went and re-opened MarsEdit to see if I could quickly and easily fix the the formatting issues - no such luck. The post was just getting more and more unreadable and I was getting extremely frustrated. MarsEdit just didn't and doesn't do what I need it to when I want it too. It looks like I made a mistake buying that program oh well - almost $40.00 down the tube. I will try it a few more times, but it has become a very frustrating program for me to use and I had some serious second thoughts about MarsEdit before I bought it, but thought that I could get used to its idiosyncrasies - wrong decision on my part - I should know enough to trust my intuition with an application.
UPDATE: I have been working with Daniel from MarsEdit to solve some of the issues that I have discussed above. He has been more than helpful and provided outstanding customer service. Based upon the level of customer service I am receiving from MarsEdit, I am more than willing to be patient and give it time to become a stronger product that will more closely meet my needs. -- Harold
Then I loaded Scribefire back onto Chrome and attempted to edit it there. It was working better than anything else, but Chrome was acting really slow and wouldn't load or run correctly even after re-starting my computer. Every so often it seems that Chrome has these difficulties and when it happens it frustrates the hell out of me.
Finally, I went to Opera 11.0 and used Scribefire there, which with a little (actually a lot) of fiddling around with the formatting, I got the post to look like it was supposed to. By the end of that ordeal I was really ready to go out and duke it out with my snowblower - both my nemesis and close friend this winter. I consider myself fairly savvy on how to use these tools and having to spend almost an hour and a half trying to fix simple formatting issues was ridiculous!
My disappointment with the new Blogger blog editor, MarsEdit and how Chrome was acting, caused me to re-think how I use them or how I won't use them as my primary applications if these issues continue. I played a bit with Firefox 4.0 beta earlier this year and remembered that it still has the version of ScribeFire that I like and worked well for me. So I decided to reload Firefox 4.0 beta and load the original ScribeFire (which I wrote about in ScribeFire Blog Editor using FireFox 4.+ Beta), which I am using to write this blog post. Everything seems to be working fine and I can actually write the post without having to fight with the program. I will still have to post and then go into Blogger's blog editor to add Zemanta, so we will see how that works, this time.
Sometimes it seems as though you have to go backwards to go forward to get technology to work the way you do or how you want it to.
I actually started to write the post last night while I was watching the Celtics beat the Sacramento Kings. That was when the problems began, I started to write the post using MarsEdit and just got completely frustrated by how it was working or more to the point how MarsEdit just wasn't working for me. Then I finished writing the post in Google Docs with the idea that I would just copy and past it to my Blogger blog editor and post (the new gDocs hasn't gotten the ability back to post directly to my blog yet) it this morning. This is where I began to run into some serious formatting issues.
Image via CrunchBaseLast weekend I enabled the new Blogger blog editor again, which has given me fits on correctly showing the line spacing and formatting that it should. Well guess what, it has not improved any, it still messes up both the line spacing and formatting on my posts and does this no matter what setting I put it on.So I went and re-opened MarsEdit to see if I could quickly and easily fix the the formatting issues - no such luck. The post was just getting more and more unreadable and I was getting extremely frustrated. MarsEdit just didn't and doesn't do what I need it to when I want it too. It looks like I made a mistake buying that program oh well - almost $40.00 down the tube. I will try it a few more times, but it has become a very frustrating program for me to use and I had some serious second thoughts about MarsEdit before I bought it, but thought that I could get used to its idiosyncrasies - wrong decision on my part - I should know enough to trust my intuition with an application.
UPDATE: I have been working with Daniel from MarsEdit to solve some of the issues that I have discussed above. He has been more than helpful and provided outstanding customer service. Based upon the level of customer service I am receiving from MarsEdit, I am more than willing to be patient and give it time to become a stronger product that will more closely meet my needs. -- Harold
Then I loaded Scribefire back onto Chrome and attempted to edit it there. It was working better than anything else, but Chrome was acting really slow and wouldn't load or run correctly even after re-starting my computer. Every so often it seems that Chrome has these difficulties and when it happens it frustrates the hell out of me.
Finally, I went to Opera 11.0 and used Scribefire there, which with a little (actually a lot) of fiddling around with the formatting, I got the post to look like it was supposed to. By the end of that ordeal I was really ready to go out and duke it out with my snowblower - both my nemesis and close friend this winter. I consider myself fairly savvy on how to use these tools and having to spend almost an hour and a half trying to fix simple formatting issues was ridiculous!
My disappointment with the new Blogger blog editor, MarsEdit and how Chrome was acting, caused me to re-think how I use them or how I won't use them as my primary applications if these issues continue. I played a bit with Firefox 4.0 beta earlier this year and remembered that it still has the version of ScribeFire that I like and worked well for me. So I decided to reload Firefox 4.0 beta and load the original ScribeFire (which I wrote about in ScribeFire Blog Editor using FireFox 4.+ Beta), which I am using to write this blog post. Everything seems to be working fine and I can actually write the post without having to fight with the program. I will still have to post and then go into Blogger's blog editor to add Zemanta, so we will see how that works, this time.
Sometimes it seems as though you have to go backwards to go forward to get technology to work the way you do or how you want it to.
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Mac OS I assume. Microsoft Word is really user friendly, I don't get it why people try to use Mac eventhough it's really hard to use.
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