How to Use Blogger on the iPad

As I noted in my previous post using the free default Blogger iPad application produced by Google can be done but has severe limitations. Thankfully I'm now sitting at the very same table using a different 3rd party application (which I will describe in a moment) that makes Blogger on the iPad a joy to use. In fact, I may just end up using this app more than my laptop for future posts. This isn't the only Blogger iPad application, I'm sure. But, it comes to the top of the list when you search the App Store at Apple. Let me dive in deeper on this.

My choice for Blogging on the iPad

The app I selected is called BlogTouch Pro (version 2.6.5) by Alexandru Denca. I had downloaded the free version initially but found immediately that the feature/functionality was so much greater than the Google tool that I just ended up buying it for only $4.99.

The first thing I noticed was the full editor feature set that was sorely lacking in the Google tool. I mentioned in my previous article that the smaller font size in the Google editor was driving my eyes crazy and made it mostly unusable for an iPad Mini (a larger iPad would probably be ok). Well, right away I altered this post's font size and now have a very comfortable screen to view and type on. I really like that the editor also fills the entire window with a very clean look.

The editor gives you the features you need to highlight, change font colors, use bold and italics, strikeout, ^super-_subscripts and more. Of course, the standard paragraph formatting is available as well as image and video inserts which I'll cover next. Hyperlinking is also very easy if you want a valuable external link. However, if you're an expert on HTML you're really in luck because you can switch to HTML view and add any customizations to a post - awesome option!

Image Editing

Using the image uploader is a dream compared to the Google tool. You get full control of the image to resize, justify and set the picture properties. Here is the example of this post being written from a picture I just took from my iPhone. I used a small utility to scale the photo down a bit and crop it (just as I would on my laptop). Then, I just pressed the image icon to insert it from my photo gallery on the iPad.

As you can see the screen layout is much nicer with the larger font. There is also a video link embed icon for Youtube or Vimeo videos 

Saving and Posting

After using this tool for a while I started to wonder about internet connectively while working. This iPad is Wifi only so it doesn't have a 4G option - what does this mean to editing and saving posts? Good news is that BlogTouch Pro has a Save Local feature that allows you to work in remote settings and not having to worry about connectivity - a great feature! You are given the option to save Locally, in Draft mode or to Publish. Draft and publish post to Blogger. 

Accounts

I had no issues with multiple Google accounts - Blogtouch Pro can switch between them and the associated blogs so you can keep track of all your work. There are a few things that are not quite user friendly - such as having to manually hit the small refresh icon in the lower left to see the blog posts appear (you get a bit startled not seeing your posts when you switch). 

All in all I have found this to be an excellent iPad application for Blogger. I cannot say if there are limits or bugs to large images or complex posts since I haven't used it for very long. But, I've attempted a number of test posts without problems (other than my own learning curve). Frankly, you could really use this app to be a great notetaking complement since you can adjust fonts, pictures and posts the way you want and just use a private blog for the notebook. 

Highly recommended!

Posted By my pwiki2:21 PM

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Blogger on the iPad - Part 1

I love my iPad mini - in fact, I find myself using it more and more for most of my day to day work and even my home business work. Now that I have a Zagg keyboard for it as well I find it even easier. Some of the research I've been doing over the last few months is on what the best Blogger app is for the iPad. Blogging on the iPad is convenient and works great if you're traveling or on the move. Frankly, I hate carrying around a laptop on vacations and have fully adopted my both my iPhone and iPad for any remote work.

That said, there still are some problems with using Blogger mobile apps. The iPad mini is small and compresses your screen size significantly. Additionally, viewing web sites or using online tools becomes more problematic due to the sites switching to mobile modes which can be reduce usability especially for those sites that have been designed for full laptop or desktop work.

Google's Blogger Tool for iOS

I must say I was excited to see that right away Google had created an iOS tool (version 2.1.7.2) for both iPhone and iPad specifically for Blogger that was free in the App Store. I immediately downloaded it and began trying it out.

Well, I have to say it didn't go very well. There are a number of problems with the tool besides just not having the amount of flexibility you get with the web interface we all use today. In fact, I'm writing this post using the Google iOS app right now at the dining room table with the Mini and Zagg keyboard. 

First issue is the default font size for posting. Right now my eyes are going completely buggy due to the very small posting font. There are no settings that allow you to directly alter this. What really bothers me the most about that is you're stuck either using this post editor with tiny fonts (the larger iPad might work a bit better), or, you have to use an external editor such as Write 2, Write for iPad, Notability or even Evernote to get a comfortable size.

Next, is the capability of the editor itself. It is severely limited in functionality. As you can see here the only thing I can do within the post is to create bold text with italics and/or underlined. That is all you can do - you can't alter the foreground or background color, the font, or this size. My first reaction was to alter the HTML of the post itself. But, Google declined to even have that feature. 

Amazingly, you cannot even highlight some text to create a hyperlink.In fact, I had to use an external html editor in order to copy / paste this into this post. This seems to be the only way to get html into your posts. So, if you need special html within, you must find an iOS app in the App Store that allows html editing.

Thankfully, you can add photos to your posts but even that feature is very limited in scope:

As you can see from this picture taken right now just how limited the photo functionality is. First, I cannot adjust the size. This tool just blasts a full image across the post (In fact, I had to re-adjust this image to fit properly - if your template isn't standard the mobile photo upload probably will cause you issues). So, no matter the size of the photo it will be placed dead center in your post. Second, there are no additional justification, caption, alt text or border settings to allow any creative work.

You can save a post as a draft and then publish it later. Also, you can add keywords to the post itself. However, without any template adjustments, post adjustments, html editing or photo editing this app is sorely lacking and can only really be utilized by the most casual user for things such as travel blogs or family photos.

I have to stop this post now because I'm truly getting a headache. Once I had discovered the flaws in this iOS app I decided to find another blogging app that might give me a better user experience for Blogger on a mobile platform. In my next post I'll be reviewing a much, much better iOS app that really does what Google should have done for mobile posting.

Posted By my pwiki9:09 AM

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