Live Writer: A blog editing application that may have value

Live Writer: A blog editing application that may have value

I have yet to be impressed with any blog editing software that I used. Most blog editing or authoring applications do not see to offer much in the way of new or additional features that is not contained in the  default WordPress. However, my opinion may be changing now that I have been playing with Microsoft Live Writer. Microsoft Live Writer is not perfect, but in several ways Live Writer is better than the default WordPress post editor.

Live Writer connected fine to my self-hosted WordPress blog and downloaded my tags and categories. I edited  an old post as well as create a new post and page. I liked that I could save posts and pages as drafts both locally or directly to my blog to finish of with the WordPress editor. Live Writer supports scheduling posts for future publishing and posting live to the site. The built in spell check worked well and allowed me to add words to the dictionary. The post images were uploaded correctly to the server and Live Writer allowed me to change, and standardize, the size of my blog images. The application supports plug-ins to extend the functionality, and it appears to have a decent development following with over 100 plug-ins available for download.

I had some display problems with right justified images, but they posted correctly to my blog. This was my only gripe with the software so far and may have more to do with my theme than the application. That is saying something.

So far, so good on the basics.  Now for the more challenging features.

One of the challenges working with the default WordPress editor is html tables. You need to use  a plug-in or code tables by hand. Microsoft Live Writer makes working with tables a snap. You enter the number of rows and columns you wish in your table, and you are done. You can customize the table with boarders and spacing as you need from the table properties. For me, the easy of working with table is the single greatest advantage of the application and why I will be using it for a while.

Microsoft Live Writer will not make you a better writer, nor will it save huge amounts of time, unless you are working with tables, but it is a solid blog editor. It is feature rich and easy to use. Live Writer is an improvement over any default blog editor that I have ever used.

Do you have a great blog editing application that you use that I should check out?

3 thoughts on “Live Writer: A blog editing application that may have value

  1. Ah- that makes sense, am I an idiot? lol… I didn’t even think to just add another column and put the text in there haha. Well- I gave up anyways and fixed it another way but thank you for the help, at least I will know how to fix it next time:p
    .-= Kristi´s last blog ..Yep =-.

  2. I am having a problem that you may be able to help with (hopefully). I use Live Writer as well and I love it. I am having problems wrapping my text around tables. The table is always inline, is there any way around this? I am new to all of this so I don’t even know if I am accurately describing my problem. I have a table on the left of my page and I want to input text outside and to the right of the table. It only lets me input underneath. Am I doing something wrong?
    .-= Kristi´s last blog ..Child Abuse =-.

    1. Hi Kristi,

      I am no HTML guru and hate dealing with WordPress pages and posts at the code level. I am sure there is a way to do it in line, but I do not know it off the top of my head. The way that I deal with the issue is to create an extra column on one or both sides of my table. I merge all the cells in the column and then place my text inside that tall cell. Live Writer does not support merging of cells or advanced tables. For that, I use Microsoft SharePoint Designer to create my table. Microsoft SharePoint Designer is now free, and it is an OK webpage designer.

      Once I create my table the way that I want it to look, I copy and paste the code into Live Writer’s Source tab. I hope this helps!

Leave a Reply