Blog editing should be easier

Night before last, I had nearly finished writing an item for this blog into the Web entry form offered by Drupal, the open-source site management framework that powers SI.

In wrapping up the post, I went fishing for a link, forgot to do so in a new browser tab, found the article, grabbed the link ... but when I went back to look for my post in the entry form, it was gone -- lost in browser history.

Argh. Argh!

Please understand, I really like Drupal. But losing 45 minutes of work reminded me that WordPress, which I used to use, has Drupal version 6, which I use now, beat in two key areas:

• Autosave of drafts, which would have prevented my problem. A Drupal autosave module exists, but its developers have not yet upgraded it for Version 6. Recent versions of WordPress have an autosave option built in.
• Rich text authoring and editing tools built into the posting interface, which would make writing and managing content easier. WordPress lets administrators choose between a somewhat easy HTML mode with buttons to apply common inline tags, links etc.; or a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) mode that works more like a word processor. You can find Drupal modules that enable either (BUEditor is nice for adding shortcuts to HTML editing, and more than a few WYSIWYG editors can be rolled into Drupal), but not without quirks.

Frustrated, I started looking for a single tool I could put in front of Drupal that would bring it to par or better in both areas.

I searched more than I should have to. I experimented longer than I should have to. It should just be easier to write, edit, organize, tag, categorize, preview, post and update blog items, in Drupal especially but regardless of platform.

Tried: Qumana, Google Docs and ScribeFire, all cross-platform (I prefer Mac); w.bloggar, Zoundry and Windows Live Writer, all Windows-only.

Loved: None. Qumana and Google Docs generate odd markup that cannot easily be filtered into lean, compliant XHTML. I struggled mightily to get w.bloggar and Zoundry to sync at all with my blog, and just as mightily to get the WLW installer to, ahem, install.

Found passable: ScribeFire. I don't like the way it handles markup in WYSIWYG mode (lots of break tags in lieu of any attempt to recognize paragraphs). But I can work with it in HTML editing mode much the way I do BUEditor in the Drupal native form. It does not offer autosave but does allow easy saving of drafts apart from submitting to the Drupal database.

ScribeFire presumes that any text you have copied to clipboard is the link address you want to add when you use the "Add a Link" tool. That saves a few ticks, except if you happen to run ScribeFire in a narrow enough window that the Add a Link tool button slips off the right side of the toolbar. Then it hides in a menu list, harder to find.

I am writing this post in ScribeFire. It feels OK. I cannot decide, however, whether the modest improvements vs. Drupal (with BUEditor added) will make this tool memorable enough to use regularly.

What am I missing, blog authoring friends?