In no way did I plan on reviewing two different blog authoring tools today but after listening to Monday’s Buzz Out Loud podcast I heard of this one. This is Microsoft’s foray into the space. It has a very Word like look and feel.
The installation process asked if I had a spaces account or wanted to use my own blog software. After selecting my own, it asked for the URL and username and password. After that, it auto detected all the settings without issue.
To insert this screenshot, I clicked Insert Picture which took me to my local machine. I browsed for the image and them was presented with a nice interface for alignment, drop shadow and other effects.
Unlike Writely, this software does have the option for setting trackbacks and currently there are two plugins available. One allows you to browse Flickr photos to add to your post and the other generates tags for Technorati and other tagging search engines. These two plugins appear to be community written but obviously some one had advance notice from Microsoft to prepare them.
It is very much like Zoundry, which I have been using for quite some time. It does feel a little lighter on system resources.
The web preview is really nice. It took my wordpress template and apply it perfectly giving me an acurate representation of what the post will look like. I am a little worried about the HTML/XHTML it produces. We are all a little nervous after seeing the code Frontpage produced.
Anyway, not a bad first go at it.
tags: Microsoft, Live Writer, Blogging