The GW Micro blog has been discontinued. For instant updates on GW Micro products and events, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Review of Bytescout Post2Blog 3.00
by Aaron Smith on Friday, June 1 2007Post2Blog is a stand-alone software package that allows you to post to your blog without using the standard, web based blog interface. Along with being stand-alone, Post2Blog also includes a plugin for Internet Explorer, an extension/addin for Firefox, integration with popular RSS readers like RSS Bandit and Sharp Reader, and even a toolbar for Microsoft Word, providing a number of different ways to get your blog entries posted.
So why use Post2Blog rather than the built in, web based interface of your favorite blog software? There are a few reasons:
- Using a stand-alone editor means having all editing features available, regardless of which blog software you’re using.
- Some blog editor interfaces are accessible, some are not, and some are usable, but difficult to navigate. With Post2Blog, you can post to many different blog software packages (including b2evolution, which runs the GW Micro blog).
- The browser add-ons allow you to post an entry regardless of what web page you’re actually visiting, meaning you have complete access to the information you're blogging about (assuming that you’re blogging about something on that web page).
Post2Blog is very accessible with Window-Eyes, and it’s packed with features like spell checking, post management, image management, tagging support, lots of hot keys to get common tasks done, and much more. There’s even a portable version that you can pop on a USB stick, and carry around with you.
The interface of the stand-alone version of Post2Blog includes a tabbed window consisting of a WYSIWYG/rich-edit post editor, an HTML code editor where you can edit the underlying code of your post, an attached files tab for attaching files to your post, and a pings tab where you can monitor the status of various blogs. CTRL-TAB easily rotors through all of the tabs. Pressing TAB from the editor moves you between the title of your post, the blog you’re posting to (Post2Blog supports multiple blog accounts), various blog options, and date and time features.
Although there are a couple of toolbars that aren’t immediately accessible with the keyboard (although they are with the Window-Eyes mouse or WE cursor), all options are available through the menus. The only caveat that I’ve been able to find is that a few accelerator keys are used multiple times. For example, accessing the date and time options is done with ALT-T, but so is the Tools menu. This is easily worked around by using ALT-T for the date/time options, and then ALT by itself, then followed by T, for the Tools menu.
I’m pretty impressed by Post2Blog, and I think it provides a nice alternative to the various blog editing interfaces in one standard location. And to prove it works, I’ve added this entire entry using Window-Eyes and the stand-alone version of Post2Blog.
