Windows Live Writer

Microsoft just released a blog authoring tool not too long ago. This tool is Windows Live Writer, which is part of Microsoft’s Windows Live family.

WLW is compatible with Windows Live Spaces, which is a blogging service by Microsoft. But don’t worry, WLW is also compatible with other blogging site such as Blogger. It is also compatible with blogging platform such as WordPress and MovableType.

Setting up your blog

Windows Live Writer Default Window

The interface of WLW is very clean and simple. It looks like a normal text editor, but with some extra functions.

One of the feature of WLW is that you can edit your post in 4 types of views. The views are normal, web layout, web preview and HTML code. The normal view is just like a normal text editor. For web layout, WLW will use the design of your blog for editing. But it only include the header/title and the body of the post. It will not display other parts of the blog such as your header, links, etc. The web preview is basically something like print preview where you can preview the post so that you’ll know how it will look like once you publish it. The HTML view is to allow you to editing the post in HTML.

Another nice feature of WLW is the image insertion and manipulation! It is so damn good that I’m sure that none of the web editor can do this. It allows you to edit the image within the editor. Some of the options that you can change are borders and effects. You can add effects such as watermark, B&W, etc.

Besides image, WLW also allow you to insert map. The map will the Windows Live Map service. This is very convinient for bloggers that want to publish a map in their blog.

WLW also feature the spell checker. Now you can spell check your post before you publish it.

The summary:

Pro

• WYSIWYS.
• Clean, simple interface.
• Support major blogging platform.
• Powerful image editing.
• Spell checker.
• Plug-ins
• Category detector, post properties, etc.

Con

• Some of the features like opening new link in new window is not working properly. (For Spaces)
• Image publishing is not supported for WordPress/Blogger. (need to manually specify a FTP server to upload the image)
• Not compatible with Blogger Beta .
• Cannot edit multiple posts in same window.
• HTML view is not formated.

WLW is still in Beta, which mean it still have space for improvement. Even though it is beta, I haven’t face any clashes so far. I hope that the WLW will come out with a better version soon. If you want a simple offline tool that allow you to write post for your blog, WLW might suit your needs.

*Edit*

Btw, remember to check out AsenDURE’s review too 😉

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