Windows Live writer - Growing pains

Dec 26, 2006

I just downloaded Windows Live Writer

At first look, it looks good! I haven’t been able to say that about most Microsoft products off late. The last product that was awe-inspiring was perhaps VC++ 6.0 (such wide range of features), IE 6.0 (it was big deal when it came into the market) and maybe, to some extent Office 2003 (a lot less buggy and smaller file sizes than previous releases).

It is perhaps one of the few blog editors that provide an intuitive interface for adding links and particularly images. This is feature alone is reason enough to use this editor. (That is how painful, other editors tend to be).

I have a personal blog, using wordpress as my blog-engine, and would like to store pictures on my own server, that uploading them to some service that decides when to throw my stuff away! Live writer a is pleasure to use in this department. Just select your image, using the all too familiar File Open Common Control, and insert it in your post.

Inserting the above image, took just a coupla seconds (finally, I can do something useful using a M$ product, and I can do it very quickly too - Note to developers of M$ products - sorry about being soo sarcastic, but that is how exasperated I am using products that are way too generic. What we need these days are very focused and compact solutions, that don’t attempt to solve a zillion use-cases using a single product)

Some of the kewl stuf that can be done with Live writer and I’m talking just image manipulations! (Stop it with images!! … Can’t control it ….. Need to write about other features too!!)

**Images **- a lot of very kewl and easy to use options

Custom:

Small:

other sizes include medium and large, whose dimensions will be coerced based on the wordpress theme that you have. I use K2 and it tries to fit the image by shrinking the width.

A few more effects…

normal B & W