The Wrong Advices

I don’t know how you guys write your blog but I’ve been doing it the hard way apparently - using the Wordpress writing interface. I know some people use Word and then copy into Wordpress but that doesn’t appeal to me.

So I decided to try out Microsoft’s beta version of Windows Live Writer. I’m using it at this very moment to write this post. Now I have the tendency to be pretty harsh on Microsoft but I want to be fair. When they do something right I’ve got to give them credit. And boy did they get this right.

These are the features that impressed me:

1. It integrates seamlessly with Wordpress. During the install you type in your the login/password for your site and when you complete a post it will automatically add it to your blog. You can specify whether to publish or add as a draft, and you can go back and edit at any time. Live Writer is also compatible with Blogger, LiveJournal, and TypePad for those of you who don’t use Wordpress.
2. WYSIWYG editing. Live Writer will detect the style of your website, matching fonts and spacing, so you can see exactly how the post is going to look on your blog while you’re writing. This is what hooked me. It makes it much easier to format your posts so they a greater visual appeal.
3. Easy link adding. It only takes a few clicks to add your link but the cool thing is the options you have when adding. Want your link to open in a new window or have a no follow tag? Click, click… done.
4. Pretty pictures. You have a lot of control over the way your images look and how they are displayed. You can resize, adjust brightness, add borders and effects, all without having to open Photoshop. And it’s very simple to setup text wrapping and margins like I did with the image to the right here. There does seem to be an issue with Firefox and multiple list items wrapping around an image, but that may just be a problem with Firefox itself.
5. Auto upload images. I’ve always found it tedious uploading my images via FTP, as I never got around to getting the Wordpress uploads working. If you do have it working your images will be automatically uploaded or for people like me just enter your FTP details for the same result. This is a big time saver.
6. Spell checking. Does Wordpress have a spell checker? If it does I never found it. It’s not a fancy feature but at least now it’s only my writing that can make me look stupid.

There is also an SDK available so people can write their own plugins, and if you head over to wlwplugins.com there are a heap of them available to download.

I’m a bit late to the party on this one - Live Writer was released in August last year but I’m glad I found it. For something still in beta it performs surprisingly well and is a breeze to use, which is a refreshing change coming from Microsoft.

There is also another piece of blog publishing software out there called BlogDesk. It doesn’t have the visual polish of Microsoft’s offering but I might give it a spin later to compare the two.

Download Windows Live Writer (Beta)