Recently I tried Windows Live Writer, a free offline blog editor from Microsoft. When I heard about it first, I thought it can only work with Microsoft’s blogging platform (Windows Live Spaces). But to my surprise, it supports almost all blogging platforms including WordPress, blogger, typepad etc. The application automatically detects the blog platform using the blog url and uses the blog platform’s APIs.

Features

The features are  excellent for a free tool. A very unique & interesting feature is, this application downloads the theme (css style sheets) from your blog and you can always preview your post when you are editing it and you can even switch to the full preview without going online.

Interface

The interface is good. The toolbar has the common editing options. It also supports heading (h1 – h6) tags. In the footer, there are three tabs to switch between Edit, Prview and Source mode. And below that you can set categories, tags and Publish date. It can be also expanded to show more options that are specific to the blog platform. For a WordPress blog, it showed the option to change slug, excerpt, password, author selection etc.  In sidebar, you have the option to switch between blogs, open draft posts and the insert options.

Image & Video support

It has excellent image & video support. Images can be resized into three configurable options and can also add nice effects to it on the fly(shadow, photo border, reflection etc). It also has Photo Album support, but these images will be uploaded to your Windows live account.

You can insert videos using embed code or direclty from Youtube and Soapbox (Micrsoft’s own video sharing service). Or you can select a video from your local machine and it can be uploaded to Youtube or Soapbox.

Other features

Unlike many other blog tools, it supports tables. Tables can be inserted & edited easily.

The integrated spell checker is a good thing. It will highlight misspelt words as you type and you can right click to look for a matching word.

Code generation

I have also checked the code generation. Most of the time it is good and produces XHTML valid code. Bold or italic text produces correct XHTML code (<strong> and <em>). But sometimes, it produces a lot of nested <div> tags and inline styles, mainly for images & video, which could have been avoided. Also the code for table is XHTML valid, but it does not produce <thead> or <tfooter>.

Advantages

• Supports virtually all blogging platforms through the blog’s APIs.
• Table is supported
• Image & Video support
• Map support (Not supported offline)
• Tag support
• Can show preview of the post while you’re editing even in offline mode
• Good spell checker
• XHMTL valid code generation
• Split post support (This will enable you to show a certain part of the post in home page and will show an option to read more).
• Can edit almost all details like slug, password protect etc (Specific to blog platform)
• Can extend functionalities through plugins.

Conclusion

This is a surprisingly good application from Microsoft. The best thing is, it supports non Microsoft platforms and tools. The features can also be extended using plugins -there are already a lot of live writer plugins.

If you’re searching for the best free offline blog editor for Windows, your search ends here.

You can check more features and download the software from Microsoft site.

URL: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

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