Marsedit vs. ecto

Marsedit 1.0, Brent Simmons' new blogging software hit the streets this week. I checked out the first public beta when it came out in September and quickly reverted to ecto. Now that the final is out, I'm back using it again. Right this minute, I'm preferring it to ecto.

Marsedit is so clean, so simple and effortless. That's a huge accomplishment - especially in a 1.0 release. This is my third post with Marsedit. Looks to be a formidable competitor for ecto 2.1. This is not a full review by any means, though. A feature by feature comparison may show that ecto is more feature-rich and has other advantages.

However, I have a lot of respect for Brent Simmons and would not be too surprised if he succeeds in blowing ecto out of the water. Here are some quick comparisons

ecto is metallic, marsedit is not

ecto has wysiwyg, marsedit does not

Even though I was very excited about the wysiwyg editing in ecto when it appeared not long ago, it hasn't been trouble-free. I frequently had unexpected results that would take some time to sort out. I would need to skip back and forth between wysiwyg and html editing to get what I wanted. It's been a little frustrating, frankly. But then, all my problems occurred with the beta version. I just got the 2.1 update and haven't had a problem with it so far.

After a fairly rocky experience using ecto 2 beta, I was more open to trying something else - like Marsedit. There are two things I like about it: (1) It feels rock solid and (2) it feels like a polished end-user-oriented product, not a programming tool.

Ecto is struggling a bit sorting out its wysiwyg and html environments. If that's resolved well with a really strong wysiwyg environment, all else being equal, I will probably abandon Marsedit for the greener pastures of wysiwyg on ecto.

But, this week, it's Marsedit. Since I'm a proud and happy owner of both products, I'll keep you posted as I put more miles on Marsedit and keep an eye on ecto's progress. My hope is that both products will find success and occupy slightly different places in the marketplace. That way, I can use both as complimentary tools depending on my needs in a particular situation.