I am testing out Microsoft’s new Windows Live Writer right now while I am writing this post. The initial setup took just a minute to do and it looks like this might be a keeper! The Web Preview mode is priceless because it will show you a preview of what your post will look like on your homepage — including all of your sidebars.
I have noticed a few things that I don’t like though but could probably be fixed by a plug-in (yes, it has the ability to use plug-ins). The first thing that I hate is the lacking of an image uploader. When inserting an image you can choose a local file or enter in the URL of the image you want to insert. The one other thing that irritates me is that it does not support categories and sub-categories very well. It will display all of the categories that are available but will not organize them in the normal fashion:
Category
- Sub-Category 1
- Sub-Category 2
Oh yeah, and to ease your worries a little the HTML code that it generates is nowhere near the mess that Microsoft Word is notorious for. It is clean, simple, and easy to manually edit.
Windows Live Writer wasn’t expected to be available until tomorrow but we all love getting software early. If you are looking for some nice blogging software then this is something you might like. I can’t wait until people start to develop plug-ins because it will only make Windows Live Writer better.
Download Windows Live Writer from Microsoft
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Tags: Pre-Release, Software
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Just out of curiosity what blog software did you use before?
We use [performancing.com] a little bit but mostly we just used the built-in features in Wordpress. I like how Windows Live Writer has the nice preview feature so we will probably start using this one as our primary blogging software.
It will also be cool to see what kind of plug-ins people can come up with.
-Ryan
The Windows Live Writer folks did a nice job. Also check out RocketPost, [anconia.com] It’s far more advanced than Writer, and there’s a free version. (I designed it.)
Actually I have tried it out before in my quest to find some good blogging software but the free version is only good for one blog on Blogger. The “unlimited number of blogs” version costs $99 which is a little steep when there are several free blogging alternatives available.
I am sure RocketPost has a lot of unique features that make it well worth the money but I can survive with the free software that is available.
-Ryan
A question???…
When you insert a link does it “Open a New Window” when a user clicks on it or does it just take the user to that page so they have to “Back-Space” to get back to your Blog/Site???… Is there an Option for either of those???…
When you insert a link in Windows Live Writer there is a check box at the bottom of the “Insert A Link” window that says “Open link in new window”. If you check that box it will force the link to open in a new window otherwise it will open in the current window (unless the user has their browser set to open links differently).
-Ryan
Thanks Ryan, that is a nice feature…
Don’t forget to check out the review that’s on digg right now.. pretty good actually.
[paulstamatiou.com]
The code Writer uses is not valid xhtml, just html. But the hole Blogosphere use xhtml. Sorry, that`s so dirty.
After more than a month, no new version, to fix the well-know-bugs…
Veeery slow. I am curious Ryan: you use now WLW (as you presumed above) or still the admin from WP?
I actually use WLW still but I have always used it just for generating the HTML. After I finish writing an article I will go to the WordPress Admin page and do my post from there.