If you are running OSX 10.4.11, don’t upgrade to MarsEdit 2.3.3 until this bug is fixed!!

I use a program called MarsEdit to write my posts off-line, as I find the WordPress Administrative Panel a bit too “unfriendly” for my taste. MarsEdit makes it very easy to compose, add pictures, post and then, if necessary, edit the post at a later date. I’ve used it since shortly after starting the blog last year. Last Friday, Apple released a new version of OSX, called Snow Leopard. Red Sweater Software, in an effort to make MarsEdit compatible with Snow Leopard, released a new version and asked us to upgrade. I did and paid the price – when I closed the program, it would not do so unless I did the Mac equivalent of the three-finger salute in Windows: Command-Option-Escape. Even then, it took several minutes for the Force Quit dialog box to appear. I sent an e-mail to Red Sweater Software, the developer for MarsEdit, and Daniel asked me to capture what was going on with a tool included with Mac called Activity Monitor. Since I had never used the tool before, I made a mistake on my first attempt to capture the asked-for data and didn’t succeed. So I repeated the steps that led to the problem, twice, and of course MarsEdit behaved itself very nicely and closed, just as I asked it to. So, I decided to write this little account of my difficulties in the hopes that MarsEdit would misbehave and I would be able to capture the problem with Activity Monitor. We’ll see …. I’ll be updating this post with the results in a few minutes. Of course, that depends on whether MarsEdit behaves or not …..

Five minutes later: nice little program, nice little program, nice little program …. grrrrrrrrr!!! Why, when you complain to the develper, do you start to behave? Is this a smart program or what? Does it know that I’m about to beat it upside the head? Is that why it suddenly decides to behave? Grrrrrrrr!!!!

O.K., one more try and then I give up. I re-booted the computer this time, because MarsEdit did its little thing twice after I first booted the computer. Tonight, not last night. So I’ll see if this has any effect on the program’s quirkiness.

Oh, yeah!!!! This time, the computer locked up so hard that I had to press the power switch on the back of the CPU to shut the computer down. Command-Option-Escape did not work at all, despite repeated attempts. Nada, Nyet, not-a-gonna-happen.

I downloaded the previous version of MarsEdit from a link that Daniel supplied and – hoo, boy! – had to start all over again. URL, name of blog, userID, password, preferences for fonts in the preview and editing panes, registration, everything. All of my posts, except the most recent 10, disappeared. So if I want to edit any post other than those, too bad – guess I’ll have to use WordPress. I’m beginning to think that the developer owes me a free upgrade or a refund or something. What a pain in the you-know-what.

Update: after an exchange of e-mail with the developer, I learned that there is a way for MarsEdit to retrieve all of the posts that are on the server. Go to Weblog>edit settings>general and change the default, 10, to the number of posts you have. MarsEdit will then query the server and retrieve all of the titles of the posts that you have made. It takes a fair amount of time – the more posts you have, the longer it takes. Now, go back to Weblog>edit settings>general and return to the default, 10, and you are in business. This experience has been very inconvenient, but the developer has also been very helpful in trying to make things better. Not all developers are so considerate!