Blogging With Qumana, A Review
Website: http://www.qumana.com/
Price: Free
QumanaLE Strong Points
- Installation and account set up was a breeze.
- When you add your blog’s URL, it automatically detects your blogging software and inputs the necessary information for you.
- All of your accounts can be accessed from a drop down menu which means you can easily switch between blogs.
- Their “DropPad” allows you to copy text/images and “drop” them onto the drop pad and save them there until you’re ready to post it.
- You can have more than one editor window open at a time allowing you to edit more than one blog post.*
- Built in thesaurus. Pretty much all desktop blogging applications have a dictionary, but you don’t find too many that have a thesaurus.
QumanaLE Weak Points
The software didn’t list any of the categories for my WordPress blogs.The most recent release now supports WordPress categories.- I double checked to make sure my settings were correct and I tried to do some troubleshooting, but the online FAQ and documentation didn’t address this issue.
- After checking the forum, it is a known issue that is being worked on
- You cannot edit in code view, as someone who likes to see what goes on behind the scenes, I found this to be restrictive.
- No way to set up preferences for the editor
- Qumana automatically inserts a line “Powered by Qumana” with a link to their site on every new post.
- Yes, it can be deleted, but why should I have to? If I enjoy the software, I have no problem promoting it, but appending a signature to every single post is a bit much in my opinion.
- At very least, there should be a way to easily disable the signature or edit it to something more appropriate to the blogger’s needs.
- And this is the code used:
<font FACE="VERDANA" COLOR="#000080" size=-1><i>Powered By <a HREF="http://www.qumana.com" TARGET="_blank">Qumana</a></i></font> - If the signature must stay, at very least make it unintrusive with minimal compliant coding, i.e.
<p align="right"><i>Powered By <a href="http://www.qumana.com">Qumana</a></i></p> - When you finish posting to the blog, a new blank entry isn’t opened up for you.
- This may be trivial, but when you do rapid succession posting, it’s a feature that can save time.
- Also, there’s no quick way to start a new post from the Editor – all new posts need to be created from the DropPad which opens a new Editor window.
- Their WYSIWYG editor doesn’t have heading or advanced paragraph formatting and since there is no code view, manually adding headings or other text formatting isn’t an option
Cannot edit already published posts- The newest version as of 08/31/05 allows users to edit their entries (see this comment below)
My Final Thoughts on QumanaLE
This is good software for the price (free ), but the cons outweighed the pros for my particular blogging needs. I have multiple WordPress blogs each containing multiple categories and each needing to be updated often and one right after the other.
In my opinion, this would be great software for a blogger who doesn’t need much control over the actual code output, doesn’t have a WordPress blog and doesn’t have multiple blogs to manage at the same time.
Since this is their first release, hopefully their future releases will address most of these issues and add a little extra functionality.
* It can become cluttered if you have a lot of blog posts open at one time.
July 1st, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Thank you for the review. The latest version available for download has support for WordPress categories.
As for the other recommendations, we are working on all these points.
Please feel free to e-mail me. I’d love to listen to all your feedback.
T
July 1st, 2005 at 3:01 pm
Hi Tris,
Thanks for popping into the blog and leaving a comment, also, thank you for being so open to feedback :).
I’ll download the latest version and update!
July 14th, 2005 at 11:39 am
I’d like to second my colleague tris and say that your feedback is very nice and clear .. and useful to us. i believe that we are working to address most, if not all, of your key points above.
A specific point … re: your Also, there’s no quick way to start a new post from the Editor – all new posts need to be created from the DropPad which opens a new Editor window.
I’m not sure that this is correct. If you want to start writing a post from scratch, just double-click on the DropPad and voila .. the editor is open .. just start writing and when you’re done … post.
You can have multiple editor windows open at any given time .. 3 or 5 or 10 or 20 .. which might address, albeit maybe a bit awkwardly, your particular working style of rapid posts in succession.
July 14th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
Hi Jon,
Thank you for stopping in to the blog and for your feedback :).
That is exactly what I was getting at when I said there’s no quick way to start a new post from the Editor, i.e. the ‘all new posts need to be created from the DropPad’ part :).
If someone simply decided to blog an entry without opening up the DropPad (as I did once), they can’t quickly create a new Editor window without interaction with the DropPad or returning to the Editor shortcut in the Start menu (or wherever they placed a shortcut).
I actually listed the multiple Editor windows as a strong point, so I’m well aware you can have more than one open - it’s the fact that there’s no way to start a new one from the Editor window I see as a potential weak point (and of course, the potential window clutter - but that can fall into the user management realm).
I hope that’s a little more clearly put. Of course, I may be the only person who sees it that way though ;)
September 1st, 2005 at 1:30 am
Thank you for that clarification. It is useful. I am going to check to see if anyone has carried that suggestion back to our development team.
Our most recent release now has “Edit Old Posts”. And I for one agree that we need to give the user the ability to diable, or rid oneself forever, of the “Powered by Qumana” signature. We are struggling with the issue of how best to find out who / how many are actually using it more than a “try-once-or-twice” because it will take (like almost any app) a change in working-with-info habits to create regular users .. and yes, an ideal design should make it so easy and enjoyable that the change in habits should be welcomed.
Some of my colleagues believe that the “Powered by … ” is useful in finding who is using it … I’m not so sure. Many people may delete it, and I often wonder if the annoyance is sufficientto be a detriment to its regular use. What do you think ?
We are working on improving the way(s) a subsequent version deals with the html issues.
We continue to work on making it better and more usable. Any additional suggestions you may have will be welcome