Yes I’m a bit behind the times as 2.7 has been out for well over a month now. As I have mentioned in the past, I usually wait for the first bug release before I change over.

This release has been fairly bug free. It took the Development Team quite a while for their first update.

So now that I’m finally upgrading,  here’s what I think about WordPress 2.7.

I like the fact that you can search and install plugins directly from the interface.

I love the new Dashboard.. yes it took a little getting used to but doesn’t everything! After using it for several days now, I find it very user friendly.

The ability to upgrade to the latest release of WordPress is nice but… you still have to backup the database and the files. Yes there is a plugin for the DB backup but not sure on the files. A suggestion would be to integrate WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin which will handle the full upgrade and a complete set of backups.

There are some new features, ones that I have yet to tried like Gears! The way I understand Gears is it helps speed things up from a development standpoint of view by caching copies on your local drive.

Summary… its a great release. I haven’t found anything that broke within the 20 or so WordPress sites & blogs that I maintain, it’s more user friendly and packed full of great new features.

Thank You Matt and the WordPress Development Team.

Google announced the Beta Release of the their latest tool.. a new web browser called Chrome. So Google the search giant enters the browser business. Being the Google power user that I am, I of course downloaded a copy and have been playing with it for several days. I haven’t messed with many settings.. pretty much been using it out of the box for a while. I also haven’t looked whether or not it is going to allow additional toolbar widgets and such.

Four Things I don’t like about Google Chrome..

1) No Page Title Bar at the top of the browser window.. the title is truncated in the tab. As a search marketer I look being able to see the full title tag without having to go look for.. like in the source code.

2) Can’t copy off a Chrome window and paste it into Dreamweaver WYSIWYG view.. you can only paste it into the source code. I use code view quite heavily so its really not that big a deal.. more of an hindrance for those designers who rely on WYSIWYG to do their work.

3) No Google Toolbar with Pagerank and no quick option for checking backwards links.

4) No Refresh/Reload Option on the right click menu.. you have to go all the way up to toolbar.

Cool Features I Do Like About Google Chrome…

Downloads… downloads file or attachment and drops it into a tool bar accessible at the bottom of the browser window.. from the downloaded file bar.. just one click and you are opening the attachment. No more having to save downloads to you computer before opening them.

Screenshots of Browse History
This is another cool feature I like.. when I open new browser window or browser tab.. I see screenshots of the 9 most viewed website in my history. I can click one and go rightback to the site I was on.

All-in-One Search Box & Address Bar

This is only one box to enter text and it does double duty.. type in URL or a search query all in the same box. This one messed with for about a day… I’m so used to have a separate Google search box on my Google Toolbar in Firefox. I found myself always looking for my Google Toolbar but I think I’m finally used to it.

Browse Incognito

This is the option most people want at work to hide their online shopping while working because some offices do monitor internet browsing so this is the ticket… Incognito does not keep any history or record what-so-ever. Upon close it does away with all temp internet files, history, cookies.. everything. Now you surf stealth.

Element Inspector

Now this one I really find useful. highlight and element on a page and right click… one of the option is element inspectory.

Once you click the Inspect Element you get a pop-up window zeros in on the code associated with the element you are trying to inspect. This saves time instead of having to sift through the source code trying to find the element. The inspector also displays the styled properties of the element.

All-in-all, Google is a fine browser.. I can’t really say it’s better or worse than Firefox but it’s definitely better than IE (then again, what isn’t?). One thing I can say is that it is a very fast browser.

So what do you think of the new Google Chrome Browser.. take a sec to leave your commments.

]]> http://searchfriendlywebdesign.com/google-chrome-review/feed/ 0 http://searchfriendlywebdesign.com/desktop-blogging-software-review-scribefire/ http://searchfriendlywebdesign.com/desktop-blogging-software-review-scribefire/#comments Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:35:08 +0000 Sammy Russo http://searchfriendlywebdesign.com/desktop-blogging-software-review-scribefire/

Earlier in the Spring I posted a review of BlogJet, I can’t believe it’s taken me 5 months to finally get around to writing my review of ScribeFire.

When I decided to start writing my desktop blogging software review series, ScribeFire was the second desktop tool I tried. And I have to admit, in the beginning I was very skeptical. I used it a couple of times and it just didn’t feel comfortable. But that’s all changed now. I recently gave ScribeFire another look and have been using it more regularly and I’m really growing to like it.

Features Which Set It Apart

• Split screen view. It splits the browser in half so I have a web page in the top half of the browser window and the ScribeFire Editor on the lower half.
• ScribeFire is Add-on Extension to FireFox.
• Add categories to the blog from the editor… can’t do this with BlogDesk.
• Choose to publish as a Post, Page or Draft.
• Toggle between Visual and Code editors without going to the main menu.. it’s on the WYSIWYG interface.
• A current archive of Posts and Pages which you can edit without having to go into the WordPress Interface.
• Work on multiple posts at a time with the use of tabs for each individual post.

All-in-all I really like using ScribeFire… it’s easy to use, it’s feature rich and it’s free. For the last 5 months I’ve actually been using BlogDesk as my primary desktop blogging tool but over the last 3 weeks I’ve been using ScribeFire more and enjoying it.

Do have feedback about the ScribeFire Desktop Blogging Tool? if so, post comments and share your experience with others.

I came across a great new plugin this morning.. I’ve been looking for this exact plugin for a while now. The plugin is called is_human() by Nick Berlette. With one tiny snippet of code placed into the comments.php file and you have catpcha security integrated into you site. Upon activation it automatically embeds it self in your WordPress Registration page.

I have a blog called Tehachapi Daily which is completely open to the community to post to the site. They are granted contributor level access immediately upon registration and get worried sometimes about all the spam registers I get. Now with is_human(), I’ve got Catpha security.

Thanks Nick for developing this new plugin.

Download is_human()

This is a review of the BlogJet Software. In reviewing this software I used it to publish several posts to various blogs.

BlogJet costs about $45 and you can get 30 trial. In the beginning I was having issues connecting to any of my blogs.. it turned out something either happened during install or I had a bad file but I had to uninstall and try again.. worked fine after second installation.

In the process I attempted to use the support forum and there was support. My post was replied to… within a few hrs I think.

I pretty much felt attached to this software from the moment I opened it. The interface is very clean, inviting and easy to use.

Some key features that I liked were the ability to set the timestamp, add tags, insert YouTube video and toggle between code and visual view.

One thing I was confused about was being able to split my post.. in WordPress I call it “The More” link… Where you have the intro and the post cuts off with a link to read the rest of  the post (sorry I never new this had a particular name). In BlogJet it’s called Extended Entry and I did find it under the format tab.

All in all… nicely done… I give it 4.5 Stars. I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy a license for this but I still have a some other softwares to review.

Today I’m testing BlogDesk. So far I like it… it gives me pretty much all the control I need as if I were in the Admin Panel.

I manually added a category via the interface so we’ll be testing whether or not we can create categories.

Here I’ve inserted a picture and you can adjust things in a code editor.

Now the moment of truth.. lets publish and see what happens