Windows Live Writer

Wow. As I said in an earlier post I am testing desktop blogging tools today. Since I can not use the firefox only Scribefire plugin because of an apparently unsolvable problem with firefox, I first tried out Qumana and now Windows Live Writer. So far, all I can say is wow…it downloads your theme so you can type directly in a true WYSIWYG — So, far, I’m truly impressed. The preview is a real preview. All the features are here and more. Here is the break — much more after it.

Let me list my first impressions as I am using it for this first time…

• Easy to install, unlike a lot of blogging tools that had to be handheld to the remote blogging API, this one found it right way. all I needed was my url and username and password.
• It downloaded the theme…..awesome.
• Great usability — the features are labeled well, and easy to find.
• Looking around now for more…what is this “colorize”..oh…it changes the color of the application….not very interesting, they could have hid that under a menu….
• Spellcheck works
• Preview is awesome…
• Nice category tool
• Easy to set the date
• Plugins….what’s this….105 plugins….one to integrate with Firefox…created by microsoft (!) . Lots of interesting plugins. Seems to be an active community.
• Easy to link to earlier posts…wow.
• Inserting images…wow, adds nice like drop shadow… automaticlly created a thumbnail

I think we might have a winner here.