Mika
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Offline Blog Editing
09:37:57 pm on September 6, 2007
Microsoft released a new version of the Windows Live Writer beta today so I figured I’d give it another test. For those of you who have no idea what this is - it’s an offline blog editor that’s free. Works with Wordpress, Live.com and some other stuff that I really don’t care too much about.
Initial impressions are about the same as the last time I tried it. So I’m wondering how it will be after a few weeks of trying it out again.
I like the concept a ton, but the problem with using this is that it doesn’t support tagging and like most M$ products the HTML is pretty messy. I mean, Since WP already understands things like carriage returns, why does the M$ live writer have to wrap everything in <p> tags?
Maybe it’s just me - I’m kind of picky about how clean I like my HTML but I guess if it works just the same, who cares. Right?
Here’s something else that really annoys me. If you’re editing in HTML mode, Ctrl-Z doesn’t work after you format things using the formatting bar or insert links, etc. Whatever you do just stays there and you have to manually delete the HTML markup if you did something wrong.
One thing that is killer is the fact that it lets you write and save offline, then upload them and have the publish dates already set. Of course that was a bit buggy last time too, as many of my posts were dated in 1969… another thing I’m going to watch for.
Anyone else try some offline editors and have recommendations? Preferably something that works with the UTW plugin for Wordpress AND lets you edit the pages too, not just posts.