Windows Live Writer for blogs and more

Windows Live Writer is a new web authoring tool from Microsoft developed by JJ Allaire and his team from Onfolio. Chris Garrett from Performancing has written a very positive review of Live Writer. This is noteworthy because Performancing is a company devoted to building tools and services for professional bloggers.

You might remember that Microsoft acquired Onfolio in March of this year. I am a Microsoft employee so I get early versions of software to test before the external beta test. I have been using Live Writer for over a month, and am using it to write this post.

Cool Live Writer Features

1. WYSIWYG editing - Live Writer downloads your blog's HTML and CSS so that it can render your blog WYSIWYG style. This is particularly useful when inserting images, graphs, maps, or other objects.
2. Image Publishing -   Live Writer makes it easy to insert images from your hard disk or from the web, modify size, set text wrapping options, apply borders, and other graphic effects. Writer makes it easy to insert a thumbnail and link it to a larger image.
3. Maps - Live Writer allows you to insert a Windows Live Local map directly into a post. Writer can customized the map to show different views and automatically links to a larger view of the map on the Windows Live Local site.
4. Plug-ins - The Windows Live Writer SDK allows developers to extend the capabilities of Writer to publish additional content types and utilities. I am sure lots of developers will come up with great plug-ins and add-ons.
5. Compatibility - Of course Windows Live Writer works with MSN Spaces, but it also works seamlessly with TypePad which I use for this blog. In addition LW supports WordPress, Live Journal, Movable Type, Community Server, Blogger, Radio Userland, and a bunch of others.

If you have multiple blogs you can point Live Writer to automatically publish to different blogs from different vendors. For example, I have this blog on TypePad and a Microsoft StartupZone blog based on Community Server. So I can use Live Writer to publish to both blogs. No more using separate tools or cutting and pasting. 

Look for more cool Windows Live tools in the future. The Live teams are working on all kinds of interesting stuff that will launch over the coming months.

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Comments

[Lloyd D Budd]

Thank you the good review. Including CSS and image manipulation sound like excellent features -- raising the bar. I look forward to giving it a try.

Whenever I read or hear "Microsoft Live" it feels awkward. It feels like a real branding mistake to me. It is also ripe for competition to make fun of -- though they likely do so at their own folly.

[Don Dodge]

Lloyd, I agree that Microsoft product naming conventions are a little strange. We seem to jump on a word or theme, and then extend it to products that don't really fit.

Microsoft Office Live is an example. The name would infer that it is Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access) delivered in a "Live" context. In fact, there is no Office in Live. Why they chose that name is puzzling to me.

Windows Live products and services likewise have very little to do with the Windows operating system.

These names are confusing to me ...but nobody asked my opinion :-)

Don