Eric Cherng

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Microsoft Releases Windows Live Writer

Microsoft released the Windows Live Writer last Friday. After my disappointment with Word 2007's blog addin, I decided to give Live Writer a try. Will the impressive feature list win me over? Keep reading to find out!

I won't go over the features as the homepage does a good job describing each of them. Instead I'll just share my experience in setting up the client and then writing and publishing this post from the client to Vertigo Blogs (Community Server 1.1), assuming it works ;).

Installation and Setup

After installing the application, I was prompted with the usual account setup screen:

Since I'm not posting to Live Spaces, click Next.

I'm posting to Vertigo Blogs, so Another weblog service.

Now you have to enter in your blog information. This screen tries to scan your blog for the correct xmlrpc location, but if it can't find it, the next screen shows up.

The usual select a blog screen. Surprisingly Microsoft has provided an extensive list of blog engines here: Windows Live Spaces, Wordpress.com, TypePad, Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, WordPress (custom), Radio Userland, Community Server, dasBlog, Custom (Metaweblog API), Custom (Movable Type API). Not only is this list impressive, but this dialog goes a step further to make entering the data easier. Instead of selecting a drop down and then forcing you to hunt down the xmlrpc location, this dialog goes the extra mile and provides the standard xmlrpc location for the blog engine you selected. So all you have to do is replace the server name! Very cool!

If your account is associated with multiple blogs, select one here:

A few more dialogs later, you're finally done and staring at a blank window ready to post!

Writing your Blog

So now it's time to write your blog.

Preferences

As with all applications, the first thing I do is see what options I can configure. Here's Live Writer's Preferences:

The HTML templates are a nice feature, but too bad we can't create custom templates. Plugins look interesting. I wonder what kind of plugins there will be. And of course we have our Ping Servers. Have to let everyone know when you create a new post!

Pictures

Of course, arguably the most important task of any blog post is adding images. I posted my frustration with Word 2007's support for this, how does Live Writer handle this?

According to the product page, Live Writer supports the newMediaObject method in the MetaWeblog API or FTP. It's great to finally see some standard support.

Once you add an image into your post, the right side bar changes to Image Properties with 3 tabs of extensive options:

Great stuff... unfortunately once again Community Server ruins everything and causes this error message:

Here's the dialog to setup a FTP server:

I'll test this out later with other blog servers.

Editing Draft Posts

If you're like me, publishing to draft and then editing, tweaking your post is an important part of the blog workflow. Live Writer supports this very well with my testing. Opening up an existing post is a simple task of clicking Open, selecting your blog account, and then selecting the post you want to edit:

Unfortunately, can you guess it by now?... Community Server fails once again when trying to republish as a draft back up to the server:

Publishing

One of my complaints with Word 2007 blogging is not having the ability to edit the meta data of the post. I'm glad to mention here that Live Writer doesn't suffer from this same flaw. At the bottom of the page is a Properties bar. When double clicked on, it opens up to allow editing of the post meta data.

One awkwardness I noticed is when you "Save Draft" locally, Live Writer saves it for you. You cannot select a file to save as. For those who blog on different computers, you will have to Publish as Draft up on your blog instead of using the local draft. I would like to see the ability to let the user save to a particular file to make it more portable. People who might want to run Live Writer on a memory stick (if that's supported) and blog on different computers will find this feature annoying.

Other than that, I found everything else worked as expected. Spell check works as advertised, but there is no live spell checking (red squiglies underneath spelling errors as in Word).

Once you're done with your post, hit the big Publish button and you're done!

Reactions & Comparisons

Comparisons to Word 2007's blogging addin is inevitable. After going through my first post with Live Writer, I believe Live Writer clearly wins hands down over Word 2007. How is Live Writer better? Many reasons:

Does not have the bloat of being part of Word 2007.
Simple, non-cluttered, easy to use UI.
Everything works as advertised (not counting server limitations).
HTML view of your post.
Huge support for many blog engines and the great UX of adding a supported blog.

Since Word is Microsoft's flagship application, I'm sure the Word team is not taking this defeat lying down. Who knows, Live Writer could just be a stripped down version of the final Word blog addin.

Even though Live Writer is in beta, I had no problems nor crashes and everything works great. I definitely recommend anyone who blogs to give it a try, especially since it is free! This is a very easy to use application that is arguably the best out there. Good job Microsoft and I can't wait for the final release!

Edit 8/15/2006

Similar to my post on Word 2007 blogging, I also tested out Live Writer with my WordPress-based personal blog. Read all about it here!

posted on Monday, August 14, 2006 11:55 AM by ericc

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Comments

# Windows Live Writer Walkthrough

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 2:44 PM by OpsanBlog

# Posting from Windows Live Writer

Late last week, a beta version of Windows Live Writer was released to the general public. Since it appears

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:58 PM by Jeff W. Barnes

# Simple STS Sample Published

It's been a long time coming, but Garrett Serack, Community PM for CardSpace has just published a Simple...

Monday, August 21, 2006 1:54 PM by Welcome to The Metaverse

# Test post from Windows Live Writer.

Found This via Scott Guthrie. I like it... much better than w.bloggar. Windows Live Writer is a true...

Tuesday, August 22, 2006 2:22 PM by Dim Blog As New ThoughtStream(me)

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