Offline Blog Post Editing on Mac OSX – Part 6: Qumana

In this post, we’ll be reviewing Qumana 3.2.4. This blogging software is an exception compared to others we reviewed so far in this series for two reasons. On the one hand it is free. And on the other hand it runs not only on Mac OS X, but also on Windows and Linux, since it relies on the Java programming language. If using Java provides cross-platform portability, the flip side is a too long loading time compared to software developed using Objective-C.

On install, Qumana starts by asking the URL of the blog. It discovers automatically the platform (e.g. WordPress, Blogger). So, one only needs to provide the administrator login and password. Then, recent posts are downloaded and listed swiftly. The use of non-native technology is again striking. Fonts are ugly, and rendering images is slow. Besides, embedded videos are not displayed. Picture 1 shows the Qumana blog manager window displaying a list of posts. The left pane lists blogs. Indeed, Qumana does support multiple blogs. One can add a new blog by simply hitting the “Add Blog” item in the tool bar.

Picture 1: Blog manager window

A click on the “New Post” tool opens the window of Picture 2. The left part of the window is dedicated to editing. The Wysiwyg editor is the default. But, one can quickly switch back and forth to HTML as simply as clicking a tab. Editing HTML is not mandatory however even if one needs to insert some code. A unique tool allows inserting HTML while in the rich text view. We love this feature as much as we dislike integration with the system. While a copy past from a web page works just fine, only raw text is pasted when copying from a rich text editor such as TextEdit. No images, no hyperlinks, not even text formatting. Dropping images dragged from the finder does not work either. There is only one way to insert images: the Qumana dedicated tool.

Picture 2: Post Editor

The right side of the editor window is dedicated to post properties. This part can be hidden to enlarge the edit area if needed. We found here a bug in Qumana 3.2.4. When showing back properties, the post edit area is not shrunk, so we had to widen the window.

The post editor allows to set the post date, categories, comments and trackbacks. Categories are automatically retrieved from the blog. But, new ones cannot be added. Tags support is rather poor. Inserting tags is done through a small text field, without any help. There is no way to retrieve tags used in former posts. Worse. Tags are displayed inside the post body at the cursor’s location. Inserting tags at different times while editing the post results into having them spread throughout the post.

Once your content is ready, there is no way to preview it. A click on the “Publish Post” will transfer it to the blog. The post will be immediately published. No preference allows to upload drafts only. Speaking of preferences, we checked the “Close editor after publishing” in the Qumana. Thus the blog manager window was automatically closed on publishing. Surprisingly, all Qumana menus  disappeared too. The only option we had was to quit the software!