The Writing Base

I discovered Windows Live Writer a few months ago and have been publishing the base through it. I wasn't expecting too much from Microsoft's desktop blogging application when I first downloaded it, but I was in for a surprise! It's one of the most comprehensive blogging applications I've used.

Seamless Transitioning Between Different Blogs

You can add as many blogs as you want and it let's you access them with a single click. Save your passwords and you'll be saved from one more step to hinder the process of publishing your blog.

Supports Other Blogging Platforms

While Live Spaces is the first choice it offers, we can add blogs from Blogger, WordPress, TypePad etc by choosing 'Other weblog services'. All you have to do is provide the blog URL, username and password of the service and it retrieves all the information on its own to set up your account on WLW.

Plug-ins

Windows Live Writer has the option to add different plug-ins to further enhance the blogging experience. Plug-ins that come with the application can insert hyperlinks, pictures, video, tables, tags and maps. Clicking on 'Add a Plug-in' leads to a Windows Live Gallery where there are different choices depending on your needs.

To learn about which plug-ins would be most useful to increase your productivity through WLW, check out '10 Must have plug-ins for WLW'.

Navigation

One of the best thing about WLW is the easy navigation.Everything is within sight and easy to understand. Formatting also has the same common keyboard function as that of Microsoft Word and other word processing programs.

Different Viewing Options

What stands out in WLW is the different previewing options. We can view our blog post in normal layout which has the usual white background with the post on it. The Web layout has the general outline of your blog page and the Web preview does a quick scanning of your weblog's template, downloads the settings and stores it to show a preview of how it would look like when published on your blog. The html code view is also there for people who like to tweak their own code.

Works Offline

Last but not the least, is the option to form blog posts and edit them offline. This option was the show stealer for me. We can even have a web preview while we're offline since it downloads our blog template when we ran the web preview option while online.

Verdict: Whether you're new to blogging or an old hand at it, WLW is great for all.

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