Consider Windows Live Writer 2008 for Your Blog
November 9, 2007
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The beta tag was finally dropped on November 6, and WLW 2008 was unleashed. It’s what I’m using to edit this very post, and I’m going to post a few thoughts on why you might want to consider using it for editing your blog.
One of the things that I didn’t appreciate a whole lot when installing the new version, is that it forces a couple of additional installations on you (Windows Live Toolbar and the Windows Live Sign-In Assistant). Not cool, Microsoft. If I want those things, I’ll download them. I’m presuming that the Sign-In Assistant is for Windows Live Spaces, but I don’t use that, so….
If you’ve ever used Word or even Wordpad, editing your blog will be pretty much painless. You have the option to edit using raw HTML, but the default is a standard WYSIWG editor, as it should be for a product like this. You can even configure it to work with a number of different blogs (I currently have 4 WordPress and one Movable Type blog configured in WLW).
One of the best features about WLW is the wide variety of plug-ins available for it, particularly at the Windows Live Gallery and the Windows Live Writer Plugins blog. I’ve installed a number of different plug-ins, not all of which I use regularly, and they make some tasks a little easier to manage. Most commonly 
used are Insert Picture, Insert Flickr Image and Insert Text Template, which will allow you to configure any number of various text snippets (ie, static images based on topic) and drop that code anywhere in your post. Very handy.
If you use WordPress for your site (and if you don’t, you should), and you’re running the latest version, you can easily implement tags into your posts as well, provided you have WP 2.3.1 and your theme supports them, of course. This would be done by entering the tags in the Keywords field at the bottom of the post page.
You can even configure all of your trackbacks, post slugs, and timestamp your post to go live at a later time if you’re the type of person who writes a bunch of posts at once and then spreads them out throughout the day (like I am).
There’s been no shortage of editors that I’ve tried using for working on my many blogs, both standalone apps like WLW and online ones such as ScribeFire, but I’ve yet to come across one that does everything the way that I want it to like Windows Live Writer does.
I’d be very interested in hearing what you use to edit your blog, and why.
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November 9th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I have been using WLW since it first was available and I think I would be lost without it as I don’t think there is another blog editor that even comes close.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:17 am
I’ve been using it also although I’ve had a few problems with the uploading pictures or embeds. Because of that I usually write a post out in WLW, switch to raw HTML, cut-n-paste in into WordPress, then manually add in any graphics or embeds.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Steven - I couldn’t agree more. Despite trying a number of different editors, WLW is what I keep coming back to. I don’t know if that’s because it’s just so easy to use, or because it’s what I’ve gotten used to, but I wouldn’t really consider anything else for blog editing.
Thanks very much for the feedback.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Frank - Yeah, the uploads of images, etc of an image is an issue with me as well, but it’s not because of Live Writer. My host only allows secure FTP connections, and WLW doesn’t do SFTP, so I have to FTP any images to my host, and then link to the URL of the image to get it to show up.
A definite drawback, but a small price to pay for free web hosting
Thanks for the comment.
November 9th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Does it create the bloated, crappy html that Word used to spit out or does it actually do a decent job? I’ve been thinking about trying it out but having gotten around to it yet.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Jason: Considering that it’s Microsoft, that’s a very reasonable question. But it’s very clean, actually. It doesn’t add in a bunch of Microsoft specific crap at all. I was thinking about doing a follow-up post on stuff related to this. May get it posted tomorrow.
Thanks very much for your comment.
November 13th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Rod,
I could not agree with you more. WLW 2008 is an excellent tool; quite possibly the very best out there, and that’s sayign something given that it’s a MS product. I am particularly glad to see that the newest release no longer slows down my system quite as much as previous versions did. This is a product I would actually pay for - but don’t tell MS that.
November 13th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Thanks for the feedback. I don’t use anything else for editing any of my blogs other than WLW, but I have to admit to getting nervous that someday Microsoft is going to come along and really screw it up somehow.
November 21st, 2007 at 10:16 am
[...] = ‘http://www.bloggingnotes.net/using-plug-ins-in-windows-live-writer-2008/’;The other day when I posted a recommendation for using Windows Live Writer to edit your blog, I got a lot of good feedback, so today I wanted to showcase how some of the [...]