Windows Live Writer beta

Reviewed by

Elsa Wenzel

on 08/14/2006

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As other Windows Live services play well with each other, Writer integrates with Microsoft's next-generation online mapping tool. You can insert customized Windows Live Local beta maps into your blog post, complete with detailed routes and descriptions and Local's Bird's Eye views. To write a blog entry about eating organic lunches in downtown San Francisco, we dropped in maps to show readers where to walk. You can customize maps after inserting them, should you change your mind about whether to show, say, an aerial view instead of a road map or to pick a different place altogether. Click a map within the blog composition window, and you can jump to Windows Live Local to sign in and save that content. When a visitor to your blog clicks the map you've embedded, a new browser window pops up, directing them to a Windows Live Local beta map that they can manipulate (it would be even cooler if readers could manipulate the map on your blog without leaving the page).

When inserting an image, you can tell Writer beta to upload it automatically to your blogging service or to transfer it to your blog via FTP. It's handy that Writer lets you change a picture's size and brightness and add effects, such as a drop shadow or sepia tone. However, during our preliminary tests, we didn't find any shortcuts for inserting a table or embedding videos or music files into a blog entry.

We like that Writer beta lets you ping servers easily at Technorati, Icerocket, and elsewhere to tell the world you've posted a new entry, which is a clunky manual process in TypePad. And it was easy to manage TrackBacks and Comments settings within Writer.

Windows Live Writer beta is a preview product, not a final release, so there are some testing glitches. Unfortunately, Writer mysteriously shut down while we were tweaking an image. We're glad that we could save a draft of our blog and later pick up online where we left off, but we couldn't retrieve a draft of a blog entry saved remotely at our TypePad account. And while we could add categories imported from our TypePad account, we couldn't figure out how to add new tags. During our tests, a searchable online knowledge base for Windows Live Writer beta contained only two topics, but that section will probably be expanded.

We like the easy setup, the straightforward layout, and the mapping tie-ins within Windows Live Writer beta, and we're curious to see how this product will change as Microsoft and third-party developers add enhancements.