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I had read a couple of articles about Windows Live Writer during the week, so this morning I thought I would try it out. This post was written with Live Writer; and unlike other similar tools I’ve tried, I didn’t have to go back into the WordPress editor and tweak the results because they didn’t look right after the article posted. As far as I’m concerned, that alone is H-U-G-E!
I’ve just started exploring Live Writer’s functions, so may write a little more about it in future articles. One thing I noticed that I already like a lot is that you can click a check box when inserting a hyperlink and the program automatically adds ‘target=”_blank”‘ to the link so that it opens a new tab or window when clicked. I’ve been trying to follow a rule of my own when I add links, especially to blogs: I link to blog home pages so they open in a new window, and blog articles so they open in the current window. I noticed that that’s how I often read and follow articles, so I thought it would be a good practice. I usually end out going back through the draft of a post and adding ‘target=”_blank”‘ to a bunch of the links so this is a real time-saver for me.
You can download the Windows Live Writer Beta here, and there’s a blog here. Since it’s a local install, you would of course need to install it on any computer you plan to blog from (I wonder if there is, or if they’re planning, a web version). A local install works for me, though, since I do most of my writing on a couple of computers at home, especially articles with lots of links, pictures, special formatting, or whatever. I also can already see that I’m a whole lot less likely to get lost and confused when bouncing among multiple browser windows and working on a post, when the post is in it’s own application window rather than the browser … you know what I mean?
Of course I already have a couple enhancement ideas. I’d like to be able to preview the draft in the browsers installed in my computer, since I always check my articles in both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. And I’d like to see a text-to-speech option, since I almost always proof my articles using the Firefox Speak It extension.
Here are the two articles I read that prompted me to try Live Writer:
Windows Live Writer for Blogging – Great or Garbage? by Michael Martine, where Michael describes his experiences with the tool and lists his likes and dislikes. He’s also surprised to be satisfied with a Microsoft tool; I have to say that, despite being steeped in most-things-Microsoft, I’m having the same reaction.
Windows Live Writer by Mark Avey. Mark covers quite a few of the functions he’s used, and likes the tool as much as I think I’m going to. Mark also contrasts Live Writer with Scribefire, a tool I’ve used occasionally that I like but find I need to clean up after before my article is ready to post.
Thanks to Michael and Mark for previewing this software and writing about it; I probably wouldn’t have even tried it otherwise.
. I’m sorry to hear about plumbing problems at your house. I’m pretty sure that it is a quite distraction when you hope to be able to spend times on other interesting...