Windows Live Writer gets a beta overhaul

Since the first release of Windows Live Writer (WLW), Microsoft has greatly improved what was a fairly solid, stable blog editor.

Just after release of the first beta version of WLW last September, I reviewed the Microsoft product, finding it incredibly stable, both for a beta product, but also for the lack of proverbial bash-factors — things people like to find and use against the maker, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft. Unless something radical has happened that hasn’t made the news, the WLW development team is being led by JJ Allaire, the guy who helped create ColdFusion, OnFolio, among other things. He eventually sold off his company to Macromedia, which was bought out by Adobe last year.

Microsoft released its latest beta, version 1.0 (12.0.1183.516) of Windows Live Writer (WLW), on Monday, June 4, bringing with it a more Vista-like look, even for non-Vista users, I’ve been told by one user, Melody Quick, of TheHometownView.com, along with many other improvements under the hood, as well as on the front end, for the user, even on the Windows XP platform.

For starters, the splash screen for Windows Live Writer takes on the appearance of Windows Vista’s Aero look, being glossy and seemingly reflective.

While the new graphical user interface, including the Aero look, doesn’t really add anything to the overall product aside from eye-candy, the wrapping makes the work environment a little easier on the eyes.

One of the most evident changes for uses who upgraded from the last version of Windows Live Writer is the ability to change the overall theme color of WLW’s graphical user interface by simply clicking a paintbrush icon, located just above the left column of the blog editor.

The column is used to display a list of all blogs you have registered in Windows Live Writer, allowing you to write new posts, edit posts previously published — no matter whether they created in Windows Live Writer, the blog’s default editor, such as FCKeditor or TinyMCE, or even another software- or Web-based blog editor, such as BlogDesk, w.Bloggar, or ScribeFire, formerly known as Performancing for Firefox.

One argument many in the blogging community have, especially in the WordPress community, is that the default editor, TinyMCE, isn’t updated to the latest version, but it also isn’t, by default, set to be as powerful as it could be from the user perspective. Sure, tweaking it, heck, for that matter, downloading and installing a current version of TinyMCE, isn’t hard to do. For people who aren’t familiar with working on the backend of servers, playing in FTP, and other seemingly simple tasks, the switch can be daunting — if they even know it can be done.

For WordPress, as for other blogging editors, as well as full-fledged content-management system (CMS) platforms, such as Drupal and Joomla, there are various add-on tools. In WordPress, they are called plugins, and one plugin for WordPress, to switch out the default editor, is Dean’s FCKeditor for WordPress.

In order to use the online editors, you must have Internet connectivity. Some people, even in 2007, do not have permanent connections, such as high-speed cable connections, to the Internet, relying, instead, on dial-up connections through a variety of local, regional, or national providers.

For other bloggers, as well as those folks who have tweaked their regular Web sites, using a blog editor to create new content on their computer, working leisurely and without worry of losing their connection — even with high-speed Internet connectivity. There are other reasons many people opt to use computer-based editors, such as Windows Live Writer. They include:

• the ability to write at your leisure
• write, edit, and revise more quickly than saving to a MySQL database
• be able to work on the content anywhere, at any time — without worrying about connectivity
• additional tools that aren’t always available (or always as easy-to-use) in online-based editors or actual blog software, such as insert and format a table, insert acronyms, and insert special symbols.

Yes, I know, all of this can be done easily online — in WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Joomla, Drupal, and others — if you know what you are doing. Therein lies the key: if you know what you are doing. Not everyone who is blogging, creating content, or posting articles or messages on the Internet today actually know what they are doing when it comes to even “basic” issues such as HTML coding.

Some “purists” in the blogging community, especially those self-appointed and/or self-described evangelists for various blogging platforms, chide others who opt to use anything other than the built-in text editor in the blogging or CMS platforms.

Looking at the official information on Windows Live Writer’s blog, here are other features that have been added to the software:

New Authoring Capabilities

• Inline spell checking
• Table editing
• Ability to add categories
• Page authoring for WordPress and TypePad
• Support for excerpts and extended entries
• Improved hyperlinking and image insertion
• Paste Special

Integration and Compatibility

• SharePoint 2007 support
• New APIs enabling custom extensions by weblog providers
• Automatic synchronization of local and online edits
• Integration with Windows Live Gallery
• Support for Blogger Labels

More plugins!

Yes, there is now a larger selection of plug-ins, as well as many updated plug-ins for Windows Live Writer than even last September when I first reviewed the early beta of the Microsoft software.

Last evening, while exploring the Windows Live Writer plugin site — called extensions in Windows Live lingo, I found there are now 43 extensions available for the blog editor. They include extensions to allow:

• easier ways to insert links faster and easier, but with additional options
• a simple way to add XHTML Friends Network (XFN) code to your content
• inserting a variety of symbols, such as the U.S. cent sign, the euro symbol, and others, quickly
• the quick addition of tags to your content, such as for Technorati, on-site, and other tagging options
• the addition of a Web site image (a glorified screenshot) to content
• and the list goes on … check it out!

Improved stability

In the eight months since the last WLW release, I’ve had very few issues. In fact, I can remember only one crash — and that one wasn’t really tied to WLW, but rather the fact I had far too much happening on my computer at one time.

Managing sites through WLW

The new account editor in Windows Live Writer, which doesn’t seem to have gotten too much of an overhaul, still quickly creates new accounts for a variety of blog platforms, including Really Simple Discoverability (RSD), the Metaweblog API, and the Movable Type API.

Once your account is replicated in Windows Live Writer, you can upload content via the Media Object API, as well as FTP.

Like most all blog editors on the market, once you have your account created, you will be able to see the backend of the server, accessing all posts that have been previously published, including future-dated posts. Since they are available in the WLW interface, you will be able to edit them freely, then republish them quickly and easily.

Managing content in Windows Live Writer

In my timed trials over the past day, downloading old posts, editing them, and republishing them took less time through the Windows Live Writer beta than through my WordPress blog’s editor. Mind you, I do not use the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), instead, coding everything manually as I go, that should help the default WordPress editor save a little faster. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like it is.

As I said last September, I will repeat now. Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer is:

[a] great tool, stable as far as I’ve seen so far, and I’ve used it for blogging on several sites, as well as playing with it simply to try crashing it, and I haven’t had it crash yet. Now, for a Microsoft beta product, that’s really saying something!

It seems anything JJ Allaire touches turns to gold, and many others see Windows Live Writer as a major success, as well, including ZDnet. First it was ColdFusion, then came OnFolio, as a solution to his frustration over trying to keep track of massive amounts of research he did using Google’s search engine, and now Windows Live Writer. Yes, he’s been involved in other things, too, but this is a summary. More information about Allaire may be found at Wikipedia, but you can also find his personal blog at http://flyingupsidedown.wordpress.com/.