Zoundry Blog Editor

While contemplating on my ideas of blogging editor I stumbled upon various reviews of existing blogging clients. One of them caught my eye, so I ventured ahead and downloaded Zoundry – free blogging client. I am attempting to write this post in Zoundry, version 1.0.40.

Generally, I am not looking for features I came up with a week ago. What I want is pretty interface that would inspire blogging (instead of fighting with it) and ease of use of features that are already there. So, features offered, usability of existing features, interface and overall performance would be my criteria for blogging software reviews.

Installation went pretty smooth and I was presented with pretty typical interface screen. Input my blog’s data, confirm, click-click, everything seems to be working. Now, let’s jump a little deeper.

First important feature that jumped right into my face was spell-check. After I selected language of the blog, the software immediately started downloading spell-checking dictionary. I’m an easy guy, but it would be nice to ask for my permission first. And I don’t even want to go into spellchecker itself. The blog editing client should have at least plural form of word “blog” in its dictionary. Not a case here.

Second feature that I noticed is the ability to download previous posts. I didn’t test this client with anything but WordPress, but this is good enough for me – posts were downloaded. It’s a pity they look malformed in “Designer” view of Zoundry (especially my paid posts) and I was sort of afraid to touch them.

Next – there is no auto-save option. At least I haven’t found it. Given my habit of stopping in the middle of the post, answer phone, make coffee, go for lunch – this is bad. Auto-saving is a must – not just for me, for everybody. Even WordPress does it! No brownie points for Zoundry here. Also, Save button (with ugly icon circa 1995) is located in top-left corner of the interface. Habitually, I pull the mouse down to the place where WordPress’s Save and Continue Editing button is located. A little bit of though on the interface wouldn’t hurt here as well. Thanks to developers, the Ctrl-S shortcut wasn’t lost.

Multiple blogs feature looks and works just like an engineer would do it. There is a standard-looking tree to the left of the editing window, it has blog name, it expands to account which expands to posts. Neat, simple, nice. Not thrilling… but nice.

On my X61p 12-inch screen editor buttons look like low-quality GIFs. I’m sure everybody blogs from their 24″ iMac screens, but that beast can hardly beat 5-hour battery life on my laptop. So nicer icons would definitely help. Fonts in “Designer” screen also a little creepy: there is no way to adjust the size of them in the editor and there is a very limited number of fonts that I can use in the software itself. Why is that – I have no idea. Formatting tag buttons located in two shifted lines that takes up vertical space above editing window. The interface is locked so there is no ability to juggle toolbars similar to Office applications.

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