Microsoft’s Live team have come up with another great app, Windows Live Writer. This is a free, downloadable application that runs on your Windows PC and allows you to write blog posts.

Since most blogging tools are web based like wordpress and not all allow WYSIWYG editing, Windows Live Writer is a very useful way for a faster, easier way to post a blog post. For the last few posts this is what I have being doing.

Tools like this have been around for a long time. There are some other ones RoketPost,Qumana,Ecto and MarsEdit 2 (mac only). Windows Live Writer (WLW) is a windows only. I have not used any of the other so I can’t compare.

Windows Live Writer has a lot of great feature such as the viewing ability’s which allows you to view Normal,Web layout, Web Preview and HTML. WLW support for most blogging platforms (Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress and others). WLW makes it so easy to insert photos and things like Live.com Maps,Videos,tables and tagging.

The viewing feature is a great way to see what it is going to look like because you can download the style used to make your site and WLW will format what it looks like if you are in Web Layout and Web Preview. Web Preview is even better because it allows you to see exactly what your post should look like (I say should because it is still a beta so some odd things do happen but in this week only 2 thing that are minor have happened and I fixed them in seconds).

Most of this can be achieved in other app’s the thing that makes this one to watch is the plugins feature Microsoft have made an API so people can make plugins for the app.

Conclusion

In conclusion this is a definite piece of software to check out and one I suggest you have a look at it is only windows so if you are on a mac the one with the best review is MarsEdit 2. If you use WordPress and work on a windows PC I think this is what you should be using to blog.