Rave Review: Are You A Blogger-arian? Google Just Made Your Life Easier.

This post is unlike any other one I have made to Enclave in the past. It was written with a very cool Word add-on that Blogger came out with just this week. The add-on allows me to publish to Enclave directly from Word.

Rather than having to go to my Blogger posting page to write, edit, and publish my articles, I can now do the same faster and more efficiently in Word. Here are several ways the add-on makes on-line publishing easier:

• I have the benefit of using Word’s spell-checker, which is streamlined with the text as I write and less awkward than Blogger’s clumsy spell-checker. Word also checks grammar as I write and it makes suggestions; Blogger does not do that at all. Inserting symbols and special characters in Word is simple; with Blogger, I have to cut and paste them.
• Overall, Word handles the writing and editing part of publishing more efficiently. Blogger provides the final step in the process and the ability to post pictures.
• I can now back-up and archive Enclave articles on my own computer without having to cut and paste to Word. Also, I don't have to worry now, when I push the "Publish Post" button and the broadband signal goes out without me having saved my most recent edits, that my edits will be irretrievably lost. Having everything in Word is a fail-safe when broadband fails me as it can do with Comcast once and a while.
• The add-on integrates push-button publishing into Word by placing four straightforward buttons—“Blogger Settings,” “Open Post,” “Save as Draft,” and “Publish”—directly into the Word toolbar.

There are minimum requirements you will need for Word and Windows to run this add-on. There are also limitations to using Word for publishing. You can check both of those out here.

But I recommend this add-on to all who use Google’s Blogger. The format you see here is exactly as I typed it into Word. That's some seamless publishing. And since it’s free you’ve got nothing to lose.

08/19/2005, 5:44 p.m. Update: Kevin Newman has pointed to one drawback of the add-on. Enabling "smart quotes" in Word (which curves them in toward each other) seems to add hieroglyphic characters to the text as it appears in Apple's Safari browser. If you have a number of Apple-users in your readership, you may either try disabling "smart quotes" or replace the quotes after you save the draft to Blogger.