Why I Love Windows Writer

Why a much overlooked part of Microsoft’s Windows Live Essentials is dear to my heart.

Windows Live Writer: a must for any blogger.

I love blogging but I don’t like doing it via a web interface, it is just a bit clunky and all too often I’ve lost my work before I’ve had a chance to save it. What happens if you’re doing it on the move and you loose your connection before you can post it back to the site? You then end up saving it in Notepad or something. Well for sometime I’ve been using Windows Live Photo Gallery to organise my behemoth collection of digital photos and it’s really helped me get things under control, group tagging, renaming and add-ins to publish to services like Flickr and Facebook.

It was only When I was re-installing it one day I came across Windows Live Writer as one of the options to install. After a quick check online to read up what it was for and I thought I’d give it a go. Its one of those pieces of software that is pretty simple but really handy for what it does. Of course you can post to a MS Live blog but having tried it I’m not a fan of their online blog platform so i use Blogger from Google. WL Writer is happy to publish to a number of current platforms and maintains a list of accounts within it. Amongst the features I use most often are:

• Edit and preview your blog as it will look online and for nerds like me you can also edit the source easily.
• Spelling: real time checks and wiggly red lines highlight mistakes as they happen.
• Save draft versions locally but also to your blog.
• Set your publish date: a post might take me a while to get round to writing but might be specific to a particular date.
• Add categories and tags easily within the application, which also sync with your online account.

A word of warning about installing Windows Live Essentials though: DO NOT install the Family Safety thing. It really hogs your machine and I’m sure there are better alternatives to keep your machine use limited.