So recently Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer went out of beta and I’ve been meaning to try it out for a while, but never really got around to it. This morning I decided to try writing this post using it. My blog is hosted on Google's BlogSpot so my review is purely based on that. (Which by the way, this thing supports all major free blogging services not just Live Blogs. Pity it doesn’t support Tumblr.)
At first glance it looks like a souped up version of WordPad yet not souped enough to be confusing. You have the usual “word” like interface with the bold,italics, bullets, alignments etc and also an Insert Table which is pretty cool since the WYSIWYG Editor in BlogSpot doesn’t.
One great feature is the way you write. Let me explain. In BlogSpot's editor, all you see is this blank editor which doesn’t apply your blog’s theme/css to it. The result ? Well, you’re writing your article blind-folded since you don’t know exactly how it’s going look until you publish it, or preview it. Windows Live Writer is different. It applies your theme and shows you a preview of your blog template and you write directly on it. It’s much less time-consuming.
One cool feature is the plug-ins section. Basically it lets you download extra plug-ins from http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?bt=9&pl=8 which help a lot since for example, there’s no bundled support for Google maps. Luckily there’s a plug-in for that.
All in all I’m really impressed with the way Microsoft is heading now. Those who know me, know that I’m not a very big fan of Microsoft by any stretch of the imagination but with the release of Windows 7 and now Windows Live Writer, they seem to be heading into the direction that Apple has been preaching for years. Simple and Works, instead of cramming as much features as possible and none of them really work well. Let’s just hope they keep it up.
I seriously suggest you try it out for yourself.
Quick Tip: If you encounter the problem “The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.” while posting articles with pictures to Blogger, go into your Google Picasa account and create an album named “Windows Live Writer”
Links
Windows Live Writer Download - http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com
Plug-ins Download Site - http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?bt=9&pl=8
