Windows Live Writer Wrocks
Sunday, October 7, 2007 at 9:56PM 
I usually use Daniel Jalkut's MarsEdit on the Mac to edit my posts here. It's a sweet little program that works with Blogger, Wordpress, Movable Type, and most other blogging platforms. It allows offline editing, and greatly simplifies posting images from Flickr and so forth. I used Ecto for this for years - it's still around and works on Windows and Mac - but MarsEdit 2 is my tool of choice on the Mac.
A number of friends have been raving to me about the free Windows Live Writer (WLW), though, so I decided to try it this evening. Wow! For all the things Microsoft has done wrong (cough Vista cough), Windows Live Writer really is done right. It's designed for Microsoft's own blogging platforms, of course, but it also supports Wordpress, Blogger, and the usual suspects.
The picture embedding interface is an example of how rich this program is. It doesn't just upload an image and insert the relevant HTML, it has built-in picture editing tools, too. You can add a drop shadow or photo frame, resize, rotate, and adjust contrast. Or add special effects like sepia toning, watermarks, and more. All without leaving WLW.
There are some negatives. WLW embeds a lot of HTML into posts, which means they're harder to read if you edit them with Wordpress's own editor. And some of the layout defaults aren't great (notice the left justified "Sample Map" above). But considering this is only beta 3 there aren't many rough edges.I've always been really impressed by the Windows Live tools - these guys may be doing the best programming at Microsoft. At least there's some consolation for those of you stuck working in Windows, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Daniel doesn't add some of these features to Mars Edit, too, which will make Mac folks a little less envious.
Blogging, Microsoft, Windows Live Writer in Blog
Reader Comments (40)
"At least there’s some consolation for those of you stuck working in Windows, "
98% of us out there are on Windows and aren't stuck in it. This kind of condescension is what sometimes makes me cringe. I'm your biggest fan, just lighten up on Microsoft. They're a corporation just like your beloved Apple....
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt [ Made with MarsEdit] I usually use Daniel Jalkut’s MarsEdit on the Mac to edit my posts here … Microsoft has done wrong (cough Vista cough), Windows Live Writer really is done right. It’s designed for Microsoft’s own blogging platforms, of course, but it also supports Wordpress, Blogger [...]
Windows Live Writer is awesome. It's great that Microsoft is pushing the blog client market so strongly. Imagine if they were working/investing so diligently in the podcast arena?
What's especially great about WLW is Joe Cheng, the main developer I know of who works on it, is a really nice guy and a pleasure to work with as part of the larger community of desktop client developers.
Needless to say there are things MarsEdit can learn from other apps, and WLW is definitely one of the most interesting client apps being developed on Windows. Who knows for sure how everything will evolve over the coming years, but I think Microsoft's commitment helps validate desktop blogging as an important technology for all platforms.
Daniel
Well don't worry, Daniel - Mac+MarsEdit is still a heckuva a lot better than Windows+WLW. And that's not condescension, that's a fact!
Aw shucks, thanks Leo :)
Im not stuck on Vista, I have a Macbook and use Vista way more. Apple Prices cough (ripoff), sometimes your balance and views are blinded by a fanboy attachment to mac. Great machines, but there is a reason 98% prefer windows
I've been using WLW for ages now, this latest version is even better, but if you, like me have a number of blogs, then this handles multiple accounts really well.
Leo - the most interesting part of Windows Live Writer is support for external plugins - you can include Flickr photos, website screen captures, videos and more without leaving the editor.
And like the WordPress bookmarklets, there are extensions of IE / Firefox to blog quickly.
Leo, I told you that you'd like it :)
Anywho, I was speaking to one of the developers of Microsoft Skydrive at the FOWA expo and he said that they will be upping the storage. He asked me how much I would personally prefer and I said "probably about 5 or 10gb" and he said they'll be doing quite a bit more than that very soon, so that may be something to take a look at.
I use WLW on my blog, and you can tell the newer posts (the ones up from the Lucozade and Beechams packets) look much better :)
I completely agree, I started using it after you mentioned it on a podcast a few weeks ago. I actually downloaded all three, the new messenger, writer and live mail. The first three products from Microsoft I'm actually enjoying in quite some time.
"At least there’s some consolation for those of you stuck working in Windows"
"Well don’t worry, Daniel - Mac+MarsEdit is still a heckuva a lot better than Windows+WLW. And that’s not condescension, that’s a fact!"
Its this sort of crap from Apple fanboys that reinforces my view that Apple fanboys are the most arrogant, blinkered people in the world.
I use Vista now on both my laptop and PC(self built ) without any issues. I am not stuck on windows I use it because its my choice and I am not stuck using one manufacturers hardware and I have a wider choice of possible specs and manufacturers to choose from. I have had a Mac Mini for over 12 months and nothing I found on OSX made me want to switch in fact I haven't switched with thing on for a while now.
forst your layout looks like it got munged on ie6
WLW is great i did a couple of of line posts on the train and got asked if i was a journalist by the guy sitting next to me on the train.
Maybe it's coincidence, but this is the first time I've read one your posts, Leo, that didn't format properly.
I don't know if it's possible to paste an image into a comment here, so I won't try, but everything on the page is shifted to the right. I would say about 40% is still on the right edge of the white 'page'. The rest is on top of a gray background.
There's nothing malformed about the content itself. Everything's in its place, even the pictures. It just looks as though all the content was created on a sheet of clear plastic and that sheet has been placed down on a white layout board, but shifted to the right.
Ironicly, I'm using IE7. I don't have any other browsers installed so I can't check it against them.
OK, a quick followup. I opened another IE7 window to see if it would also be misaligned — it is.
However, I noticed something else: I can alter the placement of the content by resizing the IE7 window.
I have two 19" monitors. I found, if I stretch the IE window across both screens, I can get all the content onto the gray background. Conversly, as I make the window narrower, more and more of the content moves onto the white 'page'.
It's almost as if the whole of the content (not individual paragraphs) is somehow right justified. That's the best I can describe it.
Cheers.
Leo, I'm also experiencing the right-justified problem with your blog - but just with IE7. With Firefox it's left-justified. From what I recall your blog used to be center-justified, completely on a white middle with grey sides. It's not so bad if I proportion my window to a 4:3 ratio - but since I'm using a widescreen monitor, 16:9 leaves a majority of the text on the right-sided grey area of the page.
I think I hold off trying WLW until you get this figured out. Thanks for being a beta tester :D
I'm just trying to set up my blog (first one). I'm on a Mac. I installed MAMP locally just a couple of days again, and then put WordPress into that environment. I have MarsEdit post to my local blog. I can work on the fomatting, and the posting, and the look and feel all locally. Then I just upload it to my real blog out in the wild, wild, world. This set up is so awesome. Now if I only knew what I was doing.
Is it ok if I drop some mention of my blog later on once I get it started?
Sure, Tom.
RE: IE - drat. I had it working earlier Sunday. There was a minor rendering issue with font sizes that I fixed. Then I made a really tiny modification to the background and KABLAM. I know what's wrong and I'll fix it in a minute.
RE: Fanboydom. Seems to me a fanboy is someone who gets their knickers in a knot if someone says something even slightly negative about "their" operating system.
I was known as a Mac basher until OS X came out because OS 9 was an antiquated, barely usable operating system. Apple had the good sense to abandon it completely.
At this point Windows is really suffering from Microsoft's unwillingness to leave behind its legacy users. It's just no longer a world class operating system, no matter what "98%" of users think. (You do know that at least half of those 98% have no choice because that's what work provides them with, right?)
In fact, the point of this post was that Microsoft is doing some really really good stuff. It's just not Windows.
Well, the whole background is now white, but it's still 'right justified'. On a single 19" monitor the shadow from the right edge of the page runs down vertically through the comments.
ps. I only mention it 'cause I thought you'd want to know.
Hey Leo,
I was checking out the comments section on "New Tech Guy Stations" and all the text in the center column (main text and comments) are shifted to the left and clipped. I'm running IE6 at work. Thought I'd post it here as the discussion has drifted to formating of LoL.
BTW, I'll try out Live Writer for my Blogger account. Thanks for the tip.
Yeah I was fussing with the CSS to get the background to float with the content - it works for me now in Firefox and IE7. What's it look like in IE6?
Here's the CSS I'm using (based on the original Cutline template - I just added the background image stuff):
body {
background: #ccc;
text-align: center;
background-color: #BEC8CC;
color: black;
font: 62.5% Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
background: #BEC8CC url(images/lolbg.jpg) repeat-y center 0;
}
Hmmm, I couldn't say up to date, but about 3 hours ago in college it still looked very strange in IE6 (on the college machines they use IE6)... keep trying, unless someone else has something else to add?
I don't have any IE6 systems around anymore so I couldn't say sorry, I'll check again for you tomorrow.
Looks just fine in IE7 btw
Ditto, good for me in IE7.
Look s OK now for me on IE6.
Definitely my favorite Microsoft app at the moment.
I like the fact that the Windows Live Installer puts it on your system along with Live Mail and Live Messenger. It finally feels like there is some cohesion across the Windows Live desktop applications.