Microsoft came up with this really cool blog tool that allows you to blog offline and send it to the server whenever you feel like it (or whenever you get to connect to the internet). The Live Writer is actually pretty decent and setting it up takes only a few seconds. It offers a plugin for the Live Toolbar, which allows you to blog (about) a webpage you’re visiting. The Writer tool can be used for Live Spaces, and offers to create an account, but if you already have a blog, you can enter your settings really easy and use your existing platform. I’m on WordPress, and it immediately recognized it, including all the categories. Good start.
Let’s have a quick run through the setup screens:
So, after the setup you’re all ready to to start blogging. One thing I noticed is that the installer file didn’t put a shortcut on my desktop or in the quickstart, so you’ll have to create a shortcut manually from within your ‘all programs’ folder. The interface looks like this:
Although you’re presented with a WYSIWYG editor, Live Writer also includes other views including HTML source-code editing and web preview mode. There’s also something really cool you can do with the images:
Writer makes inserting, customizing, and uploading photos to your blog a snap. You can insert a photo into your post by browsing image thumbnails through the “Insert Picture” dialog or by copying and pasting from a web page.
Once you’ve inserted the picture, Writer provides contextual editing tools to modify size, text wrapping, borders, and apply graphic effects. Writer also allows you specify a smaller thumbnail to that will link to a larger image for detailed viewing.
Photos can be either uploaded directly to your weblog provider (if they support the newMediaObject API) or to an FTP server.
I really like the effects and I’ll be testing it in the next posts on this blog. Another superfly feature is that you can enter a Map from Windows Live Local, all you need to do is enter an address, and it’ll put a nice integrated map in your post. Saves you a lot of time and makes it really accessible. I’ll be testing that as well really soon.
Overall feeling: as far as I’ve tested it (I’ve done about everything except publishing) the look and feel is really good. I think I’ll ask the admin in the agency I work at to install it on my laptop so I can play with this tool on the train while commuting. It kind of looks like ‘Word 2007′ and makes you feel at home. I like that.
Nathan did an extended ‘first-impressions’ review as well, so you might want to read that too. We’ll write more about it tonight or tomorrow morning. Stay tuned!
Normally everything was under embargo, and I would have had enough time to test it all, but apparently some moron at ‘Inside Live’ decided to go live already, causing all the other bloggers that were included in the list to drop everything they had in their hands to go live as well. Thanks a lot, f*cker.
UPDATE: Jason has a review up as well. Check it out.
