Microsoft Windows Live Writer

Posted on | August 13, 2006 | 1 Comment

Microsoft Windows Live Writer is a free offline/desktop-blogging tool released as beta last friday. like similar tools (TechCrunch mentions Qumana, which is available for both Windows and Mac OS), Live Writer allows users to write and edit blog-posts using a local application rather than the common browser-based richtext-editors. every blogger who has lost a post due to a browser-crash will find the idea of local editors intriguing – same goes for users who want to draft posts offline.

in terms of editing-features, Live Writer offers pretty much everything you’ld expect from a blog-editor: wysiwyg-formating based on your blog’s stylesheets, image-publishing, access to already existing posts and drafts. advanced features include a spell-checker (unfortunately only on-demand, not as-you-type like f.e. in Microsoft Word) and integration with Windows Live Local maps.

the Live Writer-installer is embedded with Windows Live Toolbar, which installs Windows Desktop Search and lots of additionial buttons into Internet Explorer – fortunately the installer allows to opt-out from most extensions. Live Writer works with Microsoft’s homegrown blogging-service Live Spaces, but also supports Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad and WordPress. testing Live Writer on my self-hosted WordPress-install worked pretty well, including image-uploads and web-preview – all that after entering only my blog-URL and user-credentials. looks like the development-team has really put much effort in supporting other platforms and standards like the Metaweblog API.

 

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