Jumping over to IllumineX link, I don't see anything there related to Ecto or support at all. This is a real downer for a Mac blogging client in the vibrant Web2.0 era.

PS. I don't think upgrades over at WP has anything to do with the error. If at all, the app should have its ears pinned to the upgrade walls of ALL blog platforms. Or shut up bragging about compatibility.

In the three to four months that you ("illumineX") had control over FSS, why did support emails go unanswered? Why were no updates to any of the software released? Why weren't customers informed when the company was sold for the second time in four months (to Don?) even if it took another 3-4 months to "finalize" things?

Why does the illumineX software reek of 2004? One of your games is marked with a "new" tag and seems to be older than the browser in which I'm typing this comment (Firefox). The icons reek of Mac OS X 10.0.

The bottom of your website says "We'll be bringing Webstractor and Yoink back to market soon." Those were acquired on March 27, according to the Webstractor page, yet they've not been brought "back to market" yet. I guess our definition of "soon" isn't the same as mine.

But hey, I'm optimistic. If nothing else, I can hop you've learned from the past.

The first one is due on or about June 9th or June 29th, 2008.

Regarding Freshly Squeezed Software, the rise and fall of any small business is typically more complicated than it looks from the outside. For the record, illumineX had operational control over Freshly Squeezed Software for something like three to four months, at most, although the contact for sale was not executed until the first week of December 2005. illumineX had acquired FSS from Erik in May of that same year. A lot of unplanned events happened during that time.

When illumineX sold FSS, to a former partner in illumineX, Don Yacktman, we did so with good reason to believe that the FSS brand and products would survive. Don is a very talented Cocoa programmer. Spinning off FSS was a good opportunity to let him pursue his own direction and interests. Obviously, it didn't work out. However, Don was a generous and substantial contributor to the Cocoa/Objective C community for many years. I harbor nor ill will toward Don. I wish him good luck.

Yes, Erik and I would very likely have handled things differently. However, at the time FSS went dark, neither Erik nor I were in control of FSS, and had each surrendered, willingly and contractually, our ability to influence the outcome.

I have no interest in arguing over petty details like lapsed domain registrations of a company that Erik sold three years ago, and which I sold only a few months after I bought it. The business failed after it was sold by illumineX, for reasons that I am not privy to.

The rest is just gossip.

I'm new to all this, but it seems that as you move to more stylesheet based tagging that a WYSIWYG viewer becomes more useless.

Not HTML tags, but tags like "macosx" or "apple" or "family" or "vacation" or "photography." One-word "categories" of sorts. Not <img> and <strong>.

I like ecto 3, although because it works with so many platforms, it handles certain WordPress features a little oddly. (I"m thinking primarily of the MORE tag.) Would love to see a global find-and-replace feature, as I keep ALL blog posts for each of my blogs in an ecto "database" and occasionally need to make global changes (usually pathnames).

I've tried Mars Edit, but not recently. Didn't like it then; wasn't intuitive. Maybe it's time to try it again, just so I have something to fall back on.

It's hard to imagine an offline editor that sucks up all your tag definitions and provides true WYSIWYG, but maybe I don't think big enough.

one thing i loved about ecto that i miss in mars edit is the "type and it shows up" tagging -- i wish i could do this in mars edit for WP tags, categories, and technocati tags all at the same time.

boy do i wish that.

in fact, i wish it so much i'm going to feature requet it.

anyway, ecto 3 scared me -- it just didn't seem to be going in a direction i could live with.

i do hope it turns out nice though -- i am a big fan of 2

ecto3 is going to turn into something nice. The sale brings more developers to the product. I just didn't have the time or resources to spend on it and had very long chats with Gary about what they would do if they'd bought ecto.

Adriaan, as you know, I've been a long-time user of ecto. You're a smart guy and I hope you're making the right decision(s).

I dealt very, very little with Gary and really have no opinion on him one way or the other. I do not trust Don Yacktman at all, but at the same time, I think he's no longer involved with illumineX. If that's true, then that's a relief.

Good luck to you, to ecto, and to illumineX.

But I would also encourage people who love ecto to stick it out and see how things go with the new owner. There are definitely differences between the two apps (some people are less sensitive to them than others!) and I can see how some users would choose ecto over MarsEdit for specific reasons. I anticipate ecto continuing to evolve with its own priorities, while MarsEdit does the same with its own.

But if MarsEdit does provide what you are looking for, I will certainly welcome you as a customer and look forward to hearing your feedback about how I can make the app even better.