Nithin Kamath’s Weblog

Today I will review, Drivel, a blog client for creating and editing blog entries, that supports Atom, Blogger, LiveJournal, MoveableType and Wordpress. It features one important aspect of such editors, one that of create the blog entries in an offline mode and later uploading it.

Installation:
I got a FC5 rpm from here, there is also a Ubuntu deb and sources which can be used to create an installation. The installation was trouble free and there were no dependencies. During installation it created a link in Application -> Internet menu.

Setup:

The initial screen, actually a login screen asks for your username and password for accessing your blog, a combo box allows you to choose the Journal Type (blogger, moveabletype, livejournal etc). If you are a wordpress user like me then choose MoveableType. Then type the complete address of you blog (wordpress users must add xmlrpc.php at the end, for example for me, it is http://nithinkamath.info/xmlrpc.php). That is all that is required, and I was able to login.

Using:

The actual feature set for the software is good, this post is typed completely in offline mode of the editor. There is a save draft button which allows one to save the blog posts for later posting. In the online mode, there are much more options such as editing the existing entries. It also provides for HTML syntax highlighting.

Pro’s:

• Light weight and fast.
• Integrates nicely with gnome, and includes a good help.
• Provides access to recent post to edit and update them.
• Allows to create post in offline mode.
• Good integration with LiveJournal.
• Spell check and HTML syntax highlighting support.
• Supports many languages.

Con’s:

• Integration with Wordpress is not yet good.
• Has support to add only one category for a post.
• Does not allow to upload images from within the editor, just supports linking.
• Does not save the draft internally, need a filename to be specified.

Conclusion:
To conclude Drivel is a good piece of software, the integration with various Journals is a good feature. So I would recommend it to anyone who is in a lookout for a way to post blog entries without the need to log in to the blog, which may be true for those who are on dial-up connections. But I won’t be using it for the time being, but may be a little later when it has lots more features. Currently I like Tomboy, the note taking application to write the post and then upload them manually.