Wow. What a spectacularly unproductive evening. I got sidetracked helping a new acquaintance set up a VNC/SSH setup, and even that didn't work.

So it's now 1AM, because god dammit I was determined to get something productive accomplished. So, here: the promised GreaseMonkey script. If you use Movable Type (and configure the include path to point at the URL for your installation(s)), this will autosave your work every five seconds, guarding against the browser crashes that we could avoid by responsibly writing entries in text editors, but don't. To restore your work, just bring up a MT entry editing screen and press the button that will magically appear near the top of the screen.

It ought to keep separate drafts for each individual MT weblog you work on, but that functionality hasn't really been tested. I'd doublecheck before relying on it.

This is for MT only, I'm afraid — it's what this site and DCist both use. It should be pretty trivial to adapt to other blogging platforms, though, if anyone's so inclined. Also, it's written for MT version 3.2 — I have no idea if it'll work with other versions, but it might be worth a shot.

UPDATE: Whoops! Found a major bug wherein a new, blank entry would overwrite your saved draft within a few seconds of bringing it up. That'd make this pretty useless, huh? Well, it's fixed now. Your in-memory draft will only be erased if you type something into one of the blank fields on a new entry form.