Windows Live Writer Test Post

Windows Live Writer (Beta Release)

"Welcome to the Windows Live Writer team blog! We are excited to announce that the Beta version of Windows Live Writer is available for download today.

Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service. 

Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium. Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone.

..."

Yesterday MS released Windows Live Writer, a free blog posting tool.

Being the beta freak I am, this is one of the first things I am playing with on my return from vacation (which was no where NEAR long enough  ;)

Do we really need another Windows client blogging tool? Maybe. My current fav is Post2Blog, but it's kind of languishing recently...

With a single post, it's not fair to evaluate an app, but my initial impressions are "it's good for a beta and the price is right."

The Web Preview is very cool. It's in-context preview looks better than Blogger's own preview...

I wish it had in-context spell checking and that it better mimicked Office's shortcuts (Shift-F7 for Spell checking? Why not just F7?). I really hate having to learn new shortcuts for common functions...

One of the issues I've run into with blogging tools and Blogger is Blogger's "New Line = break" feature. Few blogging tools handle that well and for legacy post reasons I have to leave that feature enabled (I've vented a bit in past posts on this...)

Time to post. Fingers are crossed. Clicking Publish now...

Update #1 8/14/2006 @ 7:26AM PDT:

Wow, the post formatting looks good. No Blogger Line Feed issue, etc. Nice!

Now I need to hook up some Pinging, find some Tagging addin's, etc.

Feature Requests (so far):

1. Let me keep a local/offline version of the post. For backup reason's etc.

2. In-Context spell checking (i.e. Word like, red squiggles, etc)

3. Blogger Photo Support
I'd really like built in support for Blogger's Photo uploading.

4. Faster App Loading
The app currently seems to take a while to load. I find myself clicking on the shortcut a number of times wondering if I didn't double-click it right, etc.

Yes, I know it's a beta and this kind of stuff is expected. But this kind of feedback is the reason you beta test in the first place... Now I need to find out where to post these (and future) items "officially"

All in all, Windows Live Writer is well on the road to becoming my primary blogging client... Nice job MS.