Windows Live Writer… (A Test Drive)

[digg=http://digg.com/software/Windows_Live_Writer_A_Test_Drive] At this very minute I am trying out the new Microsoft “Windows Live Writer” which I downloaded just a few minutes ago. For those who are not aware of this software… MS Live Writer is a Desktop Blogging Program. It acts as an interface between you and your blog. Instead of typing directly onto your blogsite’s text editor, you post articles from the software itself.

I’ve been using Blogjet 1.6 for as far as I can remember and have been very satisfied with it. In fact, Blogjet is probably the most popular Blogging Software around. It’s not free, though. But the features of the program makes every penny shelled worth it. Just like other blogging software floating around the net, it has a rich text editor that uses a WYSIWYG interface, it has an HTML tab so you can see how your post is encoded and likewise makes you able to edit your HTML codes manually, but other features it has that other similar software don’t are the ones such as: it can detect and retrieve your personal categories so that you can tag your posts immediately while composing your article, you can access Flickr.com straight from the post you’re working on so image insertion is a breeze, image resizing is quick and easy, it keeps a list of ping sites (which you can add more to) which takes pinging to a whole new level, and a whole slew of other tricks.

Just a few days ago, Blogjet released its latest version of their popular software. Make way for Blogjet 2.0! Being the Blogjet fan that I am, I checked out their website and went through the “new features” section. I found out that the interface is better than the previous version, it looks sleeker and more user friendly (not that its predecessor wasn’t).

Blogjet 2.0 costs around $39.95 and an upgrade version would set you back around $19.95. Immediate email deliveries are available. Not bad considering how good the software is and the compatibility it offers to almost every available blogging provider on the net.

This ultimately brings me to Windows Live Writer. This program has been floating around for quite sometime as well. But given my satisfaction with Blogjet, I didn’t bother checking it out. After, the release of Blogjet 2.0… I decided to scout the playing field and see if other newly released versions of blogging programs have caught up with Blogjet’s really cool features.

I ended up trying Live Writer. This software is “free”. Yes, just like Internet Explorer can be easily downloaded, so is this. Remember how back in the 1990’s, it was Netscape that was lording it over MS in the “browser” arena… then Microsoft came up with Internet Explorer that had tons of features and offered it for free? Well, that’s how I see Blogjet and Live Writer today.

Although I am happy with Blogjet, I have to admit that as soon as I got my hands on Live Writer, it completely blew me away… every single aspect of it. Surprisingly, it was even Blogjet 2.0 that had bugs and problems. Oh, and did mention Live Writer is free?!

One feature that I absolutely love about Live Writer is that as soon as you configure the program to login to your blogsite, it gathers every possible information about it, categories, compatibilities, features of the blogsite, and the text editor even mimics the actual look (font, width area, font color, etc) of your current blog template… so you can actually see how your entry is going to look even before posting it. It also has a “Web Preview” feature that allows you to actually see how your post looks like once it’s been added to your site, complete with your header, sidebars, and recent posts (without really posting the article yet)!

But don’t take my word for it. Give it a spin yourself.

Microsoft Live Writer is available here.

NOTE:
Live Writer uses the Microsoft .NET Framework. So, if you haven’t installed the component yet, I suggest you download and install that first. The installer file size is about 22MB (but it’s well worth it). Live Writer will not install unless you have the .NET Framework.