post editing

I need to find some better way to write posts, as the formatting on the final post never looks the way I want, and they give you such a tiny window to work within. In fact, the editing window is often smaller than the photos I want to use, which makes it really tricky to get the photos moved around to where I want them, let alone get the paragraphs in the right place around the photos. Any bloggers out there who have any suggestions? I guess the fact that I use linux, rather than MS, makes things slightly different too.