Windows Live Writer beta

CNET editors' take

• Reviewed by:
  Elsa Wenzel
• Edited by:
  Robert Vamosi
• Reviewed on: 08/14/2006

Windows Live Writer beta is a free desktop blogging application that lets you create and format blog entries and post them to multiple accounts. Why not use your own blog service's editing interface or a Web page creation app, such as Dreamweaver, to do such work? Unlike other WSIWYG editors, Windows Live Writer beta lets you drop customized maps from Windows Live Local beta into your blog posts and also make adjustments to pictures without needing to open an image-editing application. Because Microsoft has made the code of Writer beta public, we anticipate that Microsoft and third-party developers will eventually add plug-ins to enhance this app's capabilities.

The download and installation of Windows Live Writer beta took us less than five minutes on a Windows XP machine. No Windows Live ID is required. Once we opened Writer, it walked us through configuring the program for our personal blog. You can use Writer to make posts to a Windows Live Spaces blog or to a blog hosted by Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, or WordPress. Windows Live Writer beta also offers MovableType, RSD, and MetaWeblog support.

We gave Writer beta the URL, the username, and the password for our TypePad blog and sat back for several minutes while Writer beta said it was detecting our editing style. Writer verified the name and location of our blog, then opened a blank page with the same background color and font type as our blog so that we could compose prose and insert images instantly. A drop-down menu of categories let us choose from among the tags we'd used to categorize our posts in the past. Unfortunately, Writer did not import our past blog posts, a feature we'd like to see added so that we could archive and refer to our content in one locally saved place.

Later, we added our Windows Live Spaces blog to Writer, which again displayed our blog's formatting as it renders within Internet Explorer. Writer let us switch back and forth between our pair of blog sites with a quick pick from a top drop-down menu.

The interface is self-explanatory, featuring a blog composition pane in the center and drop-down menus and formatting icons on top that link to Writer beta's features. You can view a post in progress, see a preview of the published version, or view the HTML source code. A list of recent posts appears along the collapsible right edge of the screen.

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  "Good stuff... and it's free!"

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