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Review of Windows Live Writer Beta

By Michael Tefft • on November 21, 2008

I have been using Microsoft Windows Live Writer Beta as my primary editor for posting entries to my WordPress blog for about 6 months now. I find Live Writer to be much easier and more powerful than the WordPress editor I had previously been using. Live Writer has all the capabilities of the WordPress editor plus many other features and capabilities.

The main thing I like about Live Writer is how much faster it is than WordPress. The auto-save feature in WordPress always slowed my writing down and there seems to be a latency in the WordPress editor that does not exist in Live Writer. Live Writer supports multiple blogs and it is very east to set it up to upload your posts to your blogs. You can choose to publish your post or simply post to draft. Live Writer also saves all your posts locally so it serves as a great backup for WordPress.

The toolbar has all the options that are available in WordPress such as insert hyperlink, insert picture, tables, fonts, numbering, bullets, etc. The insert picture allows for multiple borders, custom margins, text wrapping and effects. When you first setup Live Writer to work with your blog it downloads the current theme and uses it when you are editing and for previewing your post before publishing. You can add regular tags, Technorati tags and set the categories. There are three main work areas accessed by tabs; Edit, Preview, and Source.

Another great feature of Live Writer is the ability to add plug-ins to expand and enhance it’s capabilities. A few of the plug-ins I have installed include insert Book Details, Insert Website image and Insert Polaroid Picture. There are almost 100 plug-ins available online that can be added to Live Writer.

Using Windows Live Writer has made it much easier and faster to write posts for my WordPress blog. If it has any flaws or drawbacks I have yet to come across them. I use it exclusively for writing and editing for my WordPress blog. I guess if there is one drawback that is that it only works on the Windows platform. I do not think there is a Mac version and I am sure there is not a Linux version. So if you have a WordPress blog I would highly recommend using Windows Live Writer for all your writing and editing. It will make things much easier for you.