MovableBlog: MT Pay
July 9, 2002
I'm responding to some comments in this post. They are well-thought-out comments and you should read them before reading this post..
The plugins are, if I'm not mistaken, just for creating new MT tags. For me to pay for a version of MT, I would not be too worried about any new tags it might deliver so much as the back-end stuff, like Mariann suggested, threadable comments (and TrackBack). Also, there are UI features I would pay for: a "WYSIWYG" preview (i.e. what the front page would look like to the reader, because some of us redefine tags such as <blockquote> etc.) and a spell-check similar to Yahoo! Mail's (where it takes you to just one screen, with all possible spelling errors flagged in textboxes to be easily changed or kept as is). I also think the Author editing screen needs an overhaul, with more finely tuned permissions (and a editor option, where an 'editor' can accept or reject posts before publication).
Of course, if Ben and Mena accept these and other good suggestions made by others, they risk getting into full-blown CMS territory rather than the current blogging-tool-slash-CMS-lite market they are doing well in. If the one-time cost for MT is close to the Blogger Pro *yearly* rate, they will at least have a paying customer in me (especially so if a major upgrade is included in the cost).
Full disclosure: I just donated, so, necessarily, I've already paid part of the cost of a future upgrade to the pay version, and have no ethical dilemma with that fact. In fact, I feel pretty good about myself for having done so.
Comments
Over the past month, I've been using ieSpell, a free plug-in for Internet Explorer. It spellchecks any web-based form, and I use it primarily for journal entries. I've been really pleased with ieSpell, too -- it's relatively fast and, thus far, very accurate.
It's funny that you mention the blockquote tag, too... just this morning, as I was rambling on about various news articles, I stopped and said to myself, "Self, you need a blockquote button." Ah, if only I knew more about coding to design the hack! :)
Posted by: Mariann | July 9, 2002 07:39 AM
Here's another vote for ieSpell. It's great.
How long until we see something similar for Mozilla and OmniWeb? That'd be excellent.
Posted by: Jeremy Zawodny | July 10, 2002 12:14 AM
Many bulletin boards, and other tools are providing extermely easy to use Javascript enabled input boxes.
I opened up the radio JS, and I think I can do it for MT... Is anyone interested in this? tell me, and I'll do it...
Posted by: Arnab | July 14, 2002 02:38 AM
I'm not familiar with the idea of redefining a the <blockquote> tag. I use the tag itself all the time to create a short section of text set off from the rest of the entry, but how else would it be used?
Posted by: Meredith | July 25, 2002 05:52 AM