I rarely find myself recommending a Microsoft product to people, but Windows Live Writer certainly bucks the trend here. As a desktop application for blogging, it’s powerful, simple to use and set up.
If you’re a blogger and you’re not convinced, here are 7 reasons why you should try out Windows Live Writer 2009.
1. Much faster than writing your post online
Being a blogger for several years now, I’ve had the pleasure of trying out both the Blogger and Wordpress platforms with my websites – and while they were relatively easy to update, just like most web services at this point – I’ve always felt that they just lacked the speed and smoothness of a desktop application. Windows Live Writer fills this gap by taking everything blog related offline. Tasks like inserting pictures into posts, and previewing posts, which used to take time to load up online, now happen instantaneously. Not only do you speed up your work, but you can take more time to play around and edit your post without having to wait every time you make some changes.
2. Ability to import your blog theme so you preview your post as you write
Windows Live Writer has an excellent feature called ‘Edit Using Theme’ which allows you to download and incorporate your existing blog theme so that when you write your post, you’ll see it as it would appear in your real blog. Think of it as a real-time preview as you write so you don’t have to keep hitting the preview button to see how your post would actually turn out.
3. Extendible and Customizable
As most Firefox or Wordpress users would testify, having a community which builds up plug-ins and extensions which make a product better is very important. Windows Live Writer allows for such customization and has a gallery for such plug-ins for you to browse. Granted, the amount of plug-ins aren’t fantastic at this point, but with the release of the 2009 edition of the Windows Live Writer, you can see Microsoft making an effort to take this community up a notch by releasing official plugins for Twitter, Digg, and Flickr as well as tutorial videos on their blog.
4. Switch between blogs at a click of a button
Write for more than one blog? With Windows Live Writer you can easily switch between blogs in an instant. All login details are stored in the application so everything is incredibly snappy. The picture below says it all.
5. Easily insert rich media
Inserting rich media like videos and maps are a walk in the park with Windows Live Writer. For example, if you want to upload the latest video in your YouTube account, rather than copying and pasting large chunks of code, you can login directly to your YouTube account from Windows Live Writer, and pick your videos to insert.
You can also quickly insert maps from Live Maps (Microsoft’s equivalent of Google Maps) – again, no copying and pasting code involved – just point and click.
6. Immediate access to drafts
Windows Live Writer allows you to store post drafts either locally on the client side, and have them displayed on the sidebar. This option of local drafts allows for instant access to any posts you’ve been working on so all your most recent work is only a click away.
7. Superior image handling and effects
When it comes to handling images, Windows Live Writer comes with a plethora of options so you can do all your image editing right there and then within the application. You can handle everything from adding borders, and resizing images, and even adding watermarks to your photos.
…and there you have it, 7 excellent reasons why you should consider trying out Windows Live Writer 2009 to update your blog.
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