What to choose: Browser plugin, web interface, desktop application?
Nowadays I have a hard time deciding on what type of application to use. Only a few years back I would use desktop applications for most things, but with the growing amount of decent web 2.0 “applications” I notice that I have slowly moved towards doing more and more online.
Let me use this blog as an example. It is based on WordPress, which now offers a good and efficient web interface. However, it just doesn’t feel as snappy as a desktop application. A few years back I used MarsEdit for all my blog writing, but for some reason (I can’t remember exactly when) I decided to use the WordPress web interface for blog writing instead.
Last year I discovered ScribeFire, a browser plugin available for FireFox, Chrome and Safari. I have been quite happy with ScribeFire, as it is readily available in the browser. The fact that it also allows for editing the static pages, as well as handling image uploads makes it into a really powerful solution.
However, today I opened my old version of MarsEdit by accident, and I actually realized that I have missed having a decent blog editor for the last couple of years. Even though the WordPress web interface, and the ScribeFire plugins both behave well and do (almost) all I want, they still can’t compete with a native desktop application when it comes to snappiness and functionality. So now I am back to MarsEdit, and happy to see that it finally has support for rich text editing in the latest version. I will probably use the other alternatives to, but I realize that desktop applications still have their mission.