I added my quibbles with this initial release of Ecto.
Ecto is what Kung-Log used to be. And it is no longer in beta testing! Ecto has gone through a great private and public beta, progressing every step in the way. Not only that, but there are some great changes that just appeared here in the final release.
I really liked Kung-Log, and Ecto is a huge upgrade. I love the new UI of ecto!
Take a look at other screen shots at the Kula site.
I still prefer ecto over NetNewsWire (NNW) and it is because of the UI. Ecto has one tabbed interface for all the main fields: body, extended body, summery, and keywords. With NNW you have to click a "More Options" button to get to more then the main body. In the beginning NNW did not have a customizable HTML menu, it does now. But in ecto you can assign keyboard shortcuts (such a nice feature).
The biggest interface change in ecto is the Entries and Drafts window. In Kung-Log this was handled in a shelf, now it is a full window, allowing you to sort, search and even delete entries (as well as delete them off of the server).
HTML syntax coloring has been redone completely. In Kung-Log there was only the choice to have all the HTML code in one color, now you can define colors for the tags, attributes, and brackets. This is great if you are used to using Dreamweaver and BBEdit as much as I am.
There is now a robust Account Setup window, with an account setup "wizard" that is loads better then how it was handled in Kung-Log. The preview window is also grown up. It has its own toolbar and uses WebKit (Safari) to render the page. You can even set it to load the CSS from the blog, and make the font bigger or smaller - great for late night blogging!
Check out the ecto site to see all the new features, and download a time limited demo. It is rare that an application goes through this much change between releases, and it is just wonderful when it happens.
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