Still in Beta, the new blogging tool from Microsoft, Windows Live Writer was released a couple days ago on their blog. Since they claim to have Wordpress support, I thought I’d give it a try and let you know if it lives up to expectations.

When you first set it up, once you give it your URL, username, and password, it analyses the page to try to determine what kind of blog you’re running, what its title is, and other assorted information:

Congrats to Windows Live Writer–it successfully found that I run a Wordpress blog. The WYSIWYG editor really works, too. If you’re used to using MS Office, this tool will be very handy for you:

The only immediate problem I noticed was no categories support with Wordpress. Sure, the post published, the HTML looked wonderful, minimal, and valid, but there was no obvious way to pick out categories! It took me a while to realize that categories were located in a drop down list in the upper right of the toolbar area.

One feature, though, that really makes my day is that the Windows Live Writer actually styles content with your CSS, to the best it can. What you write really is how it will look on the blog. Unfortunately, it was unable to find my stylesheet on this blog. Another killer bug is that copy/paste doesn’t work except within the editor itself. All in all, here’s the pros and cons:

Pros: What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) blog editing, automatic recognition of blog types, styles, and options, images, tagging, trackbacks, and most general blog options, clean output, spell checking

Cons: Lots of strange bugs, some editor weirdness, no copy paste, unpolished interface, each blog post opens in a new window

Update:

Since the release, a number of other bloggers have been covering WLW–here are the highlights:

• Paul’s review says, “Microsoft shocked me.”
• Joe Cheng is one of the devs
• Josh notices that you can search for users of WLW.
• Nick Starr says, “it makes blogging easy for those scared of HTML.”
• Valleywag … well, wags at it?

6 Responses to “Windows Live Writer Review”

1. Microsoft gettin’ all bloggy with it » Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work says:

   8/13/2006 at 11:56 pm

   [...] So far, Om seems pretty excited about Live Writer, Mark has given it a good early review, and Elliot Back seems to think it does a pretty good job too. My friend Paul Kedrosky, however — who is no slouch in the software programming department himself, having put together one of the first blogging platforms back in his GrokSoup days — is less than enthused, saying it is buggy and not very smart when it comes to configuring itself for his blog. I have to admit that his description sounds a lot more like the Microsoft software I’m used to, particularly when it comes to the early versions of the company’s products (please don’t send Steve Ballmer over to my house to convince me I’m wrong, he always winds up breaking something). [...]

   Reply
2. Windows Live Writer - Have your Say says:

   8/14/2006 at 12:55 am

   [...] Elliot Back – says it works and looks pretty good (although has ‘lots of strange bugs, some editor weirdness, no copy paste, unpolished interface etc and each blog post opens in a new window). [...]

   Reply
3. Zoli Erdos says:

   8/14/2006 at 5:04 pm

   Elliot, does it really support tagging? That’s one og the biggies I’ve been missing. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong ….

   Reply
4. Information Matrix » Windows Live Writer says:

   8/15/2006 at 9:45 am

   [...] Writes Elliott Back on http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2006/08/13/wind…; [...]

   Reply
5. SEO Firm » Windows Live Writer - Have your Say says:

   8/17/2006 at 2:03 am

   [...] Elliot Back – says it works and looks pretty good (although has ‘lots of strange bugs, some editor weirdness, no copy paste, unpolished interface etc and each blog post opens in a new window). [...]

   Reply
6. tokioahf says:

   8/17/2006 at 8:07 am

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   Reply