I was recently editing a page in Dreamweaver 8 and discover a cool little function in it. The function allowed you to resize an image in the page and then resample so that the original image became the same size as the resized image. I thought to myself that this would be really cool when doing a blog post. Windows Live Writer does this but I am still on the hunt for a Mac equivalent.
Enter Adobe Contribute.
Adobe is in between versions right now and is supposed to be releasing the CS3 version in about a month. With a little digging I was able to download Contribute version 4 to try out. Another item to mention is that Contribute is expensive @ $150, especially when other desktop blog editors are free. I am trying it out because I am planning on upgrading to the CS3 web suite and Contribute is a part of it so in essence I would not paying for it (on it’s own anyway).
The big issue for me of course is images in posts. The image resize worked within the program which was cool. There are also basic editing options like WLW such as brightness, cropping, and rotation. I did not see an option to upload the original size of the photo. You also get to specify how you want it to align and have vertical and horizontal spacing options.
The one item other then the price that gets me about Contribute is that you cannot edit the HTML of you post, let alone view it. I may just be a control freak but I would rather have this option.
One thing that I like about Contribute that WLW does is that it downloads the styles from you site so when you are composing a post you get to se exactly how it looks before you post it .
Conclusion
Contribute is an OK blog editor. If you do not have to pay for it an use a Mac you may consider it as opposed to Quamana. For me I am hard pressed between the to. On one hand I like being able to go into the source HTML and move things a round if necessary. On the other hand I really do not want to crack open Photoshop every time I want an image to look different for a blog post.
Oh Windows Live Writer! Won’t you come over to the Mac side!
P.S. I just figured out the deal breaker for Contribute. Because of the lack of HTML editing I cannot enter the <!–more–> tag in the post in order to split it up between the home page and individual post page. Maybe CS3 will be better in this area.
P.S.S. Just found out that you can edit the source – it open is Dreamweaver 8 by default. That is a little weird but kind of cool at the same time. This definitely bring Contribute back into the game.
P.S.S.S. I had to login to WordPress to edit this post as Contribute has a problem with the <!–more–> tag – it only remembers what is above the tag and not below. Another issue is that it only allows you to select one category at a time and this post belongs in multiple categories.
With that I would say that my final conclusion is that Adobe has some work to do before Contribute can seriously be considered for real blog editing.