Well the nice folks over at Qumana read my original post – WordPress Desktop Client Search and then informed me that they have a new version 3 beta that was just released. So in the spirit of good sportsmanship I decided to check it it out and give them a review of their own.
If you remember my original post noted this about Qumana version 2 –
- Cost – Free
- Uploads worked after a little research to find out which folder to list
- Spell check worked well
- Bulleted lists were terrible – When you click the button to add a list the entire post became a bullet and then you would press enter and it would not add another. I could not find a work around for that at all.
As you will notice the 4th bullet noted how bullets were not working properly. Well the comment that was received from Arieanna at Qumana was this –
Apologies for your bad Qumana experience. We try to be 100% seamless, especially in the area of images. Usually the folder is auto-detected. My thinking is perhaps you tried the 2.0 version, not the new beta? Lists are fab in the new beta too.
Anyway, maybe we’ll win you back some day
To give credit to Qumana I think it may have been a “user error” on the part of the upload path. I was confronted with the same sort of configuration setup on a few other Desktop Clients and was able to figure it out more easily because of Qumana 
.
But in regards to the bullets – they are not fixed 
. It did the exact same thing that the version 2 did which was put the entire post as the first bullet and then would not let you out.
Now there may be a simple explanation for this. After I had uninstalled version 2 and opened up version 3, I noticed that all my blog settings where still there (there wasn’t an option to remove them when uninstalling).
So it seems that either –
- It did not uninstall itself completely and the settings causing the bug are still there
- They thought they fixed the bug but it wasn’t fixed after all
So unfortunately my rating still remains a 
with a 
added.
Putting the bullet issue aside, there are a few features that I have grown to like that Qumana does not have. These are –
-
The ability to post Technorati Tags with your post
-
The ability to post as a draft
-
The ability to have a template to view your post before you post
Zoundry, BlogJet, and a few other Desktop Clients have these abilities.
So to wrap it up Qumana still has some work to do to catch up to Zoundry and BlogJet.
Comments
7 responses to “WordPress Desktop Client Search – Qumana Beta 3 Review”
I had similar experiences through Qumana v2 and beta3, and have been posting from Zoundry since Performancing for Firefox died on me with firefox 1.5, (their beta1.2 works fine though 🙂 ).
I’m in the middle of writing a short piece on my experiences too 🙂
btw Great review.
Fair review of Qumana, we are working hard on improving the app (especially the HTML handling) all the time. There were significant backend improvements between beta 3v2 and beta 3v3, so do give that a try.
I would like to clarify about Technorati tags … in both v2 and beta3 you can insert tags. In v2 it’s the tags field then insert tags. In beta3, click the Insert Tags button, type in your tags, click okay and you’re done.
The way we handle drafts (and we are working this too) is the Save button. It saves a local copy of the post without posting it. Not exactly what you are looking for, I know, but it does allow you to have several posts on the go, but not public.
We appreciate all your feedback, it all helps to make a better app.
Tris,
One the reasons for me to post my comments on using various products is the hopes that
1. People can get an objective 3rd party view of the product
2. Hopefully companies will see their product being used “in the wild” and try and make it better.
I am glad to see that your company is part of point # 2.
I am happy to provide feedback so you can make an outstanding product that people will enjoy using.
I will definitely look at your latest build.
-Dan
Hi Dan,
I would like perhaps more info on the bullet thing, if you would mind emailing me. I know in Mac that when you copy in chunks of text you can have weird bullets, but in PC I am not sure.
One possible explanation is that the WYSIWYG sometimes gets confused. During bullets and blockquotes it can sometimes “show you” an indent but when you check the source, everything is actually ok.
Maybe I can identify with you if this is the case, or if we have to kick our own butts to fix something 😉
Arieanna,
I fired an e-mail to you with the screenshots.
Thanks for the followup.
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