Windows Live Writer

I’ve been a bit busy and have been behind on my tech news. First stop for updates, TechCrunch. I see that Microsoft has released a new blogging tool called Windows Live Writer, which is a desktop application allows you to compose and post to your blog whether it’s Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, Radio Userland, or one of many others. Live Writer offers a WYSIWYG editor, easy photo insertion, & the ability to add Windows Live Local maps into a blog post. What’s different about Live Writer is the Windows Live Writer SDK which allows developers to extend the capabilities of the program to publish additional content types. According to the site, some examples of what could be developed to integrate with Live Writer include: images from online photo publishing sites, embedded video or audio players, product thumbnails and/or links from e-commerce sites, or tags from tagging services.

Upon installation, be careful to notice that the option to install the Windows Live Toolbar is checked by default - if you don’t want the toolbar, uncheck this. As I began to write this post, I was at first almost confused as to where to type the text of the post. Although there was a circled text block that said “Enter Post Title Here”, there was no area that said “Begin Typing Your Post Here,” as you would expect. Apparently, you just type anywhere in the white space. I liked typing in the “Normal” view mode the best, as it felt more like writing a text document. I especially liked the “Web Preview” mode that showed what your website would look like when the item was posted. This preview is even better than the preview that TypePad offers - it looks just like you’re viewing your actual website with the new post already live. Adding the photo to this post took an extra step or two when compared to TypePad; by default, the “insert picture” link only looks for .jpgs and .gifs - I had to change to “all files” to see the .png I needed. Then, the picture was huge and needed resizing (manually). There was an option under the “border” settings to inherit the settings from my weblog and that made it look more like what I’m used to. TypePad still wins here, since the default settings in TypePad are just right, no editing needed. Adding photos was thing thing that finally turned me off to the blog editor in the Flock browser - it just wasn’t as good as TypePad…and if I can’t blog with Flock, then what’s the point? I decided. When it was time to publish, I could easily publish either as a draft or as a live post. Altogether, pretty easy to use. More useful than just using TypePad? Not yet, but maybe that will change as more things are developed for Live Writer. I look forward to seeing what those might be.