Check your blog’s capabilities

Live Writer has a very useful option to check your blog’s capabilities.

From the menu, select Blog -> Edit blog settings and select Accounts (you might need to select your blog firs from the Blogs menu, if you’re managing multiple blog accounts). Then click on the View capabilities link.

Depending on the blog, some options may not be available and some of the tips may not be applicable. But if you’ve a WordPress blog, most of the options will be available.

Enable the auto save option

By default this feature is disabled. Enable this and even if there is a system crash you can recover the content (just like MS Word).

From the menu, select Tools -> Options select Editing and enable the option

Enable the auto remind option for titles, category and tags

Enable this option so that you won’t publish an article accidentally without entering titles or selecting category.

From the menu, select Tools -> Options select Preferences and enable the options

Enable the check spelling before publishing option

It is recommended to have spelling check enabled before publishing your content. This will ensure that there is no accidental spelling mistakes.

From the menu, select Tools -> Options select Spelling and enable the option

Can copy paste Video embed code directly to the editor

You don’t need to go to source code view or select Video insert option to embed a video. You can directly copy paste the embed code in the GUI editor. It is smart enough to understand the clipboard content.

Can copy paste images from clipboard

Images can be added from clipboard. For e.g.: you can use, the Windows snipping tool to capture part of screen and directly paste it to the editor – no need to save as a file (If you want better control over file names, it is recommended to save the image first as a file)

Make sure XHTML is selected

Make sure, XHTML mode is selected for better code generation.

From the menu, select Blogs -> Edit blog settings and select Advanced

Pictures can be uploaded to a specific folder or another server using FTP

Images can be uploaded to the blog in normal way (For e.g.: in WordPress, it will be organized by year and month) or you can upload it to another or same server using FTP. This way you can keep all your images in the same folder. (Not recommended for WordPress as it organizes the images in a good way)

From the menu, select Blogs -> Edit blog settings and select Pictures

Can save the post as a draft in blog and it can be accessed from anywhere

If you’ve drafted a post in one computer and want to continue editing in another computer, instead of saving the post as a local draft you can save the post as a draft in the blog. In this way, you can access this draft from anywhere.

Add ping servers

You can add ping servers so that whenever you publish a post, these servers will be notified and can re-index your blog.

From the menu, select Tools -> Options -> Ping Servers and enable the option

Following is a good collection of ping servers. Copy and paste to the text area.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Make good use of the split post functionality

Split post functionality is useful if you don’t want to show the full post content in home page. You can split the post and only the first part will be shown in home page (This is different from excerpt). Please note that, this may not be supported in all blogs.

After the desired portion of content, click on the split post icon in toolbar.

Make good use of the Auto Linking feature

Live Writer has a good option to insert links automatically to  certain words and phrases. For e.g.: if you want to link to the YouTube video site automatically when you write YouTube, it can be set in the Auto Linking. It is better to limit it to happen only for the first occurrence.

Make good use of the Paste Special feature

If you’ve copy pasted contents from MS Word, you might’ve seen that it produces lots of inline style tags which may affect the layout of your blog or cause HTML validation errors.

Live Writer has a nice feature to avoid this – Paste Special. Using this, we can either remove all tags or just remove special tags.

After copying the content, from the menu, select Edit -> Paste special (Ctrl+Shift +V)

Change default image sizes and image style to match your blog

Live Writer supports automatic resizing and styling of images. The image border option is an excellent feature. It has support for shadow, rounded corners, reflection etc. You can add some effects like Sepia, black & white etc or adjust brightness and contrast.  A copyright watermark can also be added.

For image resize you can set 3 options. You can change this according to your blog. For e.g.: set the size of  “small” to the thumbnail size in your blog, “medium” to the full width of the main content area.

Select the image and you’ll get the image options in right sidebar.

Enhance features with Plug-in

One good feature of Live Writer is the ability to support plugins. The functionality can always be expanded with plug-ins. There are already some good plugins available (I will do a separate post on plugins).

Some useful shortcuts

Publish to blog – ctrl + shift + P
Paste special – ctrl + shift + V
Categories - ctrl + shift + C
Edit view – F11
Preview - F12
Source view - Shift + F11
Toggle edit using theme – ctrl + F11
Insert hyperlink – ctrl + K
Insert image - ctrl + L
Check spelling – F7

Related posts:

1. Windows Live Writer – Surprisingly good!

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/

Related posts:

1. Live Writer tips for offline blogging
2. Windows, Linux and Mac – A comparison
3. Windows 7 beta will shutdown in every two hours from today