Usually I write blogs using Google Docs rather than the Blogger HTML editor. Fairly simple reasons for this: the Google Docs HTML editor is superior to the Blogger one affording me more options for formatting text, placing images and such. It also allows me to publish directly to my blog which gives it an advantage over any desktop application, and as Google Docs saves my work to the cloud I can edit posts on any computer with an internet connection – another clear advantage over a desktop application as it allows me to fire down some thoughts during breaks at work or over at my girlfriends.
I’m not using Google Docs today though, I’m using the new(ish) blogging tool from Microsoft: Windows Live Writer.
Generally speaking I tend to dislike Microsoft software outside of the OS itself (and I can find plenty of gripes with that let me tell you) and to be honest I downloaded this not entirely realising what it was. I had actually thought it was some sort of cheap ass version of Word like the version that comes with MS Works, I wanted to check that documents produced using OpenOffice and saved in .doc appeared formatted correctly in MS software – this doesn’t do that (though the free Word Viewer from MS does), and even when I realised it didn’t do that I maintained the hope that it would – but it doesn’t.
I went ahead with the installation and setup, the program asks you to provide the details of your blog (url, username and password) and offers you a Live blog if you don’t have a pre-existing blog. Live Writer supports a number of blog services including Blogger and Wordpress, so pretty much anyone can use this, not just Live bloggers.
My interest was instantly piqued when the text editor loaded with my blogs skin in the background I’ll stick a screenshot in here actually (click image for full size)
It’s a small touch, but a nice one. What’s a much more useful feature is the preview tab (you can see three tabs immediately under the main text box, preview is second) and lets you see how your post will look after it has been posted:
When I scroll down the page it even shows the title of this post in the blog archive on the right. This is significantly superior to the Blogger preview that shows your post against a white background – sufficient to be sure, but doesn’t give you the full picture as this does. It’s also greatly preferable to Google Docs which has no blog preview feature and won’t even let me set the page width to that of my blog thus giving me a picture equal to the Blogger preview at the least.
The standard features you expect are all here, your standard text editing options, image inserting/resizing, video, tables etc etc plus others you may not have expected like image galleries. The program also supports plugins for easy integration of image hosting accounts and other fancy features all users might not need like twitter support, emoticons, and a bunch of other stuff you can browse at your leisure here.
Another nice feature you don’t get with Google Docs is full post tagging. When I publish via Google Docs I have to enter the Blogger dashboard at some point to tag my post properly, in Live Writer I can tag the post as I edit and all my existing tags are imported ready for selection and submitted with the rest of the post. I like this feature a lot.
One thing that is slightly irritating me about the program is that each press of return appears to generate a double new line, thus giving the appearance of a new paragraph. Although that’s generally what I want out of pressing return it isn’t always. Not sure if this is a Live Writer feature or a setting imported from my blog.
Fairly typically of MS software Live Writer is perhaps a bit heavier than it should be in terms of memory use. I have 9 instances of OpenOffice running for a total of 75MB of RAM, while this one instance of Live Writer takes up 50MB, and Open Office Writer is a fully featured word processor. This doesn’t really bother me and my 3GB system, but it might people using netbooks or other low spec systems.
In conclusion Live Writer is a decent piece of software for the casual blogger, it offers a nice user interface and a rich set of features that’ll make your blogging experience that much smoother. It’s certainly a superior text editor in comparison to the default blogger one. The only thing that’ll hold me back from using this all the time is the fact that I need it installed on the local machine to use it, whereas with Google Docs all I need is a computer with a web browser and internet connection. I’ll probably utilise this for shorter posts I know I’ll finish in one sitting like this one and continue to use Google Docs for longer pieces that I may wish to contribute to on the move.
freedoms_stain, shocked to be enjoying Microsoft software, out.
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