Got my sneak peek at Performancing 1.1 yesterday. Tried it this morning (and right now), and it’s a nice improvement…still needs some work and has some funky bugs, but getting there quickly. There’s integration between Technorati and del.icio.us in this version that’s kind of interesting.

I’ve done my fair share of whining about Windows blog clients that could match ecto for Mac OS X. I’m not complaining so much anymore. Between BlogJet, Performancing 1.1 and a neat AJAX WYSIWG in-browser editing plug-in I installed I can blog from pretty much anywhere with ease.

There’s still some advantages that the OS X version of ecto has over other tools (and sorry, I’m not counting the Windows version of ecto which thus far pales by comparison):

• Live preview of entry using blog’s style sheet. Quite helpful when I have code in the entry and I have to watch and see how the lines are breaking.
• Easy Amazon links. Hey, if I’m going to recommend a book I might as well get my cut.
• Full listing of Technorati tags already used in previous entries, along with the ability to customize how the tags are displayed. Performancing now has tags, but no way of controlling the CSS behind it that I can tell. Ecto can get a little flaky though so you have to watch for the puppy effect. If you’re an ecto user, you know what I mean. If not, read this.
• If I’m going to reference an old entry, I can select it from the list and "Copy URL" rather than digging for it on my own site as I have to do with other tools.
• This is such a little thing but when blogging it makes a big difference…when I copy a URL and then click a "link" button, ecto pastes in the URL on my clipboard. Saves me the extra step of right-clicking "Paste" from a menu.
• No blogging client matches the media-importing features of ecto. Not even close.
• ecto is far more consistent on outgoing trackback pings than other clients.