Giving Windows Live Writer a Whirl

I’ve been using Windows Live Writer the last few days for an upcoming post and I wanted to give a quick write-up about it.

What is Windows Live Writer?

Live Writer is a free desktop blog editor. It can write and publish posts without having to log into WordPress admin.

Why I needed a desktop blog editor?

I was frustrated with the TinyMCE editor used in the WordPress admin. I was always having issues with it adding or removing things like paragraph tags.

I wanted something that let me focus more on my post writing. Writing in the WordPress admin can get distracting and cramped with all the other things in there.

I needed something that didn’t require an internet connection to work. I like to write at my local Borders and since they don’t have free internet I could only do my post writing in Word, which is not an ideal solution.

These are just my reasons there are plenty other reasons for using a blog editors.

20 Benefits of Using a Offline Blog Editor

Why choose Windows Live Writer?

I read a number of posts all comparing the pro and cons of various blog editors.

Most of the highly rated ones are for Macs only and since I am not a Mac owner I am stuck with a Windows options only.

Of the Windows only options, Live Writer received good reviews so it was my first choice. I might sample some of the others like BlogDesk if I find that Live Writer is unsuitable in the future.

Here’s some of the posts I used to help my decision making:

15 Desktop Blogging Tools Reviewed

10 Desktop Blog Editors

Desktop Blog Editor Comparison

15 Alternative to your Boring Blog Editor

20 Useful Desktop Blog Editors

What are my first impressions?

So far, very good.

It’s nice to have something that feels like a word processor but that is tailored towards blogging. I can easily link to my older posts with the built in functionality. Adding pictures is also easy since there is no uploading required.

Live Writer has some built in photo editing options that aren’t half bad. Images can be cropped, watermarked and given borders. Some images in the post I’m writing will have subtle drop shadows that don’t smack of tackiness.

It’s simple to give posts categories, tags and publish dates. If you have multiple blogs that you maintain, switching between them is effortless.

I do have some concerns related to images and their alignment.  I don’t know how to get the images I use in Live Writer will coincide with the custom image alignment styles I’ve made in my WordPress theme. We’ll see what happens after I get a few posts up.

Also something that I’m concerned about is on image sizes. If I set one to a certain size even though the original is some gargantuan 3000×2000 px size does only my set size get uploaded to to my blog. I don’t want to have readers downloading twelve 2meg pictures. Sucks for them and sucks for my bandwidth.

I haven’t tried any of the more advanced options that seem easy to add in Live Writer like adding video or maps, so as I get more advanced in my blogging my opinion of Live Writer might change depending on how well it does with those things.

Apart from those few concerns, that I shouldn’t be too hard to find workarounds for, Windows Live Writer is looking good and will be my preferred choice for blogging. For now.

If you are Windows bound in your blogging adventures, you should give Windows Live Writer a whirl also.