12 Reasons Why I Like Windows Live Writer
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Writing a post while connected to the Internet has the chance of you being tempted to check for new mails or to check your earnings or being disturbed by someone wanting to chat with you. To focus on writing a better post, I would suggest disconnecting from the Internet and to use a desktop blog editor instead of the writer provided by the blog platform you use.
Many bloggers still don’t use a desktop blog editor and don’t realize that they are wasting a lot of their precious time waiting for their blog platform’s writer to load when a desktop blog editor will let them write, preview, save and publish a post very fast.
There are many desktop blog editors available like Windows Live Writer (WLW), Ecto, w.bloggar and Qumana. Being a Windows lover, I use Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer. Below are the reasons why I like it.
Why I like Windows Live Writer
- Write Blog posts offline: Windows Live Writer lets me write and save posts as drafts even when I have trouble connecting to the Internet. I can publish the post whenever I get to access the Internet again.
- No need for FTP software: Earlier to insert images on my posts I had to open SmartFTP and wait till my images were uploaded and then head to my WordPress ‘Write Post’ page and insert the image. Using Windows Live Writer, I just have to copy and paste the image to the post and Windows Live Writer will upload the image automatically when I publish the post.
- Write on multiple blogs from one place: Windows Live Writer supports most blog platforms like WordPress, Blogger and TypePad and so you can write for all the blogs you own or write for from one place. No need to login to each blog platform anymore.
- Support for Plug-ins: Windows Live Writer lets you install plug-ins that extent its functionality. For example, there is a plug-in called Flickr4Writer which lets you search and insert images from Flickr (it would have been helpful if the plugin-in would also have an option to search only within Creative Commons-licensed photos and those that can be used commercially and be modified).
- Web layout view mode: Windows Live Writer has a cool Web layout view mode that lets you see posts just the way it would look like on your blog while writing the post itself. WLW also lets you update the Weblog Style whenever you want, very useful if you redesign your blog. This is one of my favorite features of Windows Live Writer.
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Post Draft to Weblog: Windows Live Writer allows to post my drafts to my blog and even lets me edit it from there.
- Link Glossary: I don’t need to type a frequently linked site over and over again. Windows Live Writer provides a feature called Link Glossary that will let me save the links (URL, Text and Title). Link Glossary is available in Tools>Options>Link Glossary. You can add a link to the Link Glossary by right-clicking it and selecting ‘Add to Glossary’.
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Image Effects: Windows Live Writer lets me give a Drop Shadow or Photopaper effect to my images. Other image effects include black and white, sepia tone, temperature adjustment, color pop, sharpen, Gaussian blur and emboss. Windows Live Writer even lets you add a Watermark to your images.
- Image Actions: I am able to rotate and even adjust the brightness and contrast of my images through Windows Live Writer itself. The Windows Live Writer logo you see on this post was rotated this way. Earlier I had to use Photoshop for it and wait for it to load.
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Automatically save drafts: Just like WordPress writer, Windows Live Writer too saves posts as drafts automatically, you can even change how often it saves. Remember that this features is not activated by default. You can activate it by going to Tools>Options>Preferences and selecting ‘Automatically save drafts’.
- Insert Tables: I am not sure about other blog platforms but I have not seen any option on WordPress writer to insert tables, I had to manually insert Tables when they were needed. Windows Live Writer lets you insert Tables easily.
- Less time is wasted: I no longer need to login to my WordPress Admin Panel and wait for the ‘Write Post’ page to load or to save and preview a post. Using Windows Live Writer, I can save and preview posts instantly with the click of a button. No need to waste time logging in too.
Windows Live Writer Screenshot
The drop shadow on the above screenshots were added using Windows Live Writer
Windows Live Writer can do most of the things your blog platform’s writer can do but one thing I would like it to have is an option to search the older posts on my blog. It will be helpful when I need to link to them. WLW can display up to 500 of your previous posts, but a search option will make it easier.
Other desktop blog editors should also be able to do what Windows Live Writer can, though I can’t guarantee as I haven’t tried any other editor yet other than WLW.
You can download Windows Live Writer from here and it’s plugin-ins from the Live Gallery and WLWPlugins.com.
I hope this post encourages you to use a desktop blog editor as they are really a time saver and makes blogging much easier.
Do you use a desktop blog editor? Which one and why?
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Posted on November 27th, 2007 | Category: Blogging |
Shivaranjan
November 27, 2007 at 9:52 pm
My favorite is also Windows Live writer and it has really made my blogging life lot more easier.
LcF
November 27, 2007 at 10:43 pm
I use Ecto, the best blog editor for Mac
JohnTP
November 27, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Thanks for commenting guys. I think I should be trying other Blog editors too.
Keith Dsouza
November 27, 2007 at 11:18 pm
I have been using Windows Live Writer since it was released and have seen with time it has improved quite a lot. I usually draft posts and complete it later when I get time. With WLW I easily am able to write for other Blogs too which makes it a pretty useful too.
pearl
November 28, 2007 at 12:45 am
I love Windows Live Writer, except its inability to add videos.. haven’t found a plugin for that yet.. I love how easily you can change the pictures…
will be checking other plugins from the links… thanks
PS: may be i’ll just scratch my live writer post from the drafts now
JohnTP
November 28, 2007 at 9:25 am
pearl- Windows Live Writer does allow to insert videos to the post. There is also a plugin-in to do it.
Shankar Ganesh
November 28, 2007 at 7:31 pm
That’s just an awesome write up, John.
I had installed it before a few months, but then was hesitant to use it since it took a lot of time to start up. Now, I believe things have improved as new versions have come out.
Your post just tempts me to try it out again.
JohnTP
November 28, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Shankar- Thank you. WLW is much faster now. For me, it just takes about 3 seconds for it to start.
dk
November 30, 2007 at 3:16 am
It really is much faster, however (unless I’m missing it), you can’t set a Wordpress post to be viewable at a later date. That’s the most important function to me, to be able to write posts several days in advance and have them show up on schedule.
Shashank
November 30, 2007 at 7:16 pm
After reading this post many would try it for sure
Awesome post.
JohnTP
November 30, 2007 at 11:51 pm
dk- Windows Live Writer does allow to set the publish date for the post.
Shashank- Thank you
Srinivasa K. Ramanujam
December 4, 2007 at 11:44 am
I like windows live writer very much as it is very easy to use tool, especially when I don’t have a net connection to my computer. However, the installation requires high speed internet connection to one’s computer for downloading such a huge file (5MB). I was not able to download the application which I want to install in my other computer that is not connected to net!
nitinpai
December 4, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Hey John,
I am running Windows XP with SP2. But the LiveWriter installation stops by displaying “Choose other apps to install”. And when I cancel it, it uninstalls all.
Could you please mention how do I go about installing it?
Abraxas
December 10, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Great Post,
You made me want to try out this app since I have a couple of blogs of my own.
I run to some problems though. I use Wordpress that I have installed manually (I am not using Wordpress.com) and when WLW tries to connect to the my blog it pops out a message saying “403 Forbidden” and stops there.
I have tried it with two different blogs I have installed , on the same server, and the story is the same.
Any ideas?
Denise
December 17, 2007 at 11:02 am
Good article, but I’m not very impressed with LiveWriter. Yes, it’s much better than writing post using the WordPress admin tool, but I find that sometimes I lose the cursor, as if the app is not responding, and I frequently have to restart the app to connect to my blog. I haven’t tried any other tools, so it might really be the best out there…it just leaves something to be desired for me.
In fact, the way I I came across your blog was by searching for “tools like live writer”…
CypherHackz
December 18, 2007 at 3:35 pm
If you love simplicity and neat interface, I suggest go for blogdesk. I use it right now. Very easy to use.
alex flex
December 20, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Great article! thanks
Stephen Cronin
December 25, 2007 at 10:36 am
JohnTP, I really like Live Writer, mainly for points 5 and 7. However, I don’t publish directly from WLW - I copy and past the source to WordPress. I may look at changing this in future, but I use some plugins in the WordPress Write Post screen, that don’t have equivalents for WLW yet.
shoban
January 3, 2008 at 10:21 pm
I did not sucees in installing both live writer and blogdesk.. The error occurs after I give the path for xmlrpc.php … Can you please help?
Shoban
Mike L
January 17, 2008 at 10:14 pm
I have been using WLW since beta and like the convenience, features, and preview abilities before publishing. One problem I’m here searching for a fix is that the tables I create in a post do not align in the WP content area. I’ll look into WLW plugins and my theme css but wondered if anyone else here had experienced this.
Abhishek Kumar
January 21, 2008 at 9:23 pm
I am used zoundry blog writer and live writer both but in my opinion zoundry blog writer is light weight and user friendly as compared to live writer.
Soren
January 26, 2008 at 2:00 am
Does anyone know of a weblog client (windows) that can add comments to WordPress posts?
I’ve been trying out WLW and really like it but I can’t figure out how to add a comment to an existing post.
Small Fish Big Money Online
March 19, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Hey John,
I blogged about Windows Live Writer too, here is the link for my opinions.
http://smallfishbigmoney.com/2.....-tutorial/
Thanks for the post, I really enjoy coming here!
Yours truly,
Fabien
hip hop news
April 9, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Jeez. Windows Live Writer saved me SO much time. John, you only tell me his now??
muhibbuddin
July 27, 2008 at 5:49 am
Man. I can’t isntall it, I don’t know why?
siput
July 29, 2008 at 1:45 pm
me too.. can’t install the software. try install it sooo many times…
