Blogger for Word

I’ve been using the Word add-on recently to write entries for the Blog. This makes it amazingly easy to compose a piece and then upload it without having to log onto the website, and to edit existing pieces merely by selecting them from a dropdown list. A great piece of programming, notable in that it does only what it seeks to do and does not clutter itself with unnecessary functionality.  Best of all – no stupid icons that you have to puzzle over. Simple plain text buttons that tell you what they do. I’ve gone right off icons. Especially when using Windows Explorer when, while scrolling down a long folder, there is a delay because the system is reading each and every file to see whether there is an icon in its header that it can display. I don’t want this feature but it is built into Windows and cannot be turned off. Yuck. The people to blame are the designers of the original WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing) interface, and those who popularised it (Jobs, Gates and co, you know who you are). They never gave us, the people who pay for it, a choice. So thank you Blogger team for resisting the impulse and keeping it simple and effective.