Microsoft launched Windows Live Writer today. This is a free, downloadable application that runs on your Windows PC and allows you to write blog posts. Don’t bother clicking the link if you have a Mac, this is Windows PC software only.
Since most blogging tools are web based and not all allow WYSIWYG editing (where you see on screen exactly how the blog post will look), Windows Live Writer will be useful for some writers looking for a faster, easier way to post to blogs.
Tools like this have been around for a long time. For example Qumana, which I wrote about over a year ago. RocketPost is another company in this space, although they charge $12 for their software. Performancing (a Firefox plugin that people rave about) and Ecto (Om Malik uses this one) are two others. The biggest complaint about these existing services was that editing existing posts is difficult or impossible. I haven’t looked at them in over a year, so I have no idea if they’ve evolved to solve these problems.
Windows Live Writer has a lot of bells and whistles – preview in WYSIWYG or HTML mode, support for most blogging platforms (Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress and others), easy insertion of photos and things like Live.com Maps, and tagging. Good stuff, but none of it differentiates it from existing year old products.
What does differentiate Live Writer is that they’ve released an API that allows developers to extend the capabilities of the software to publish additional content types.
Too bad that, like Google and Picasa, Microsoft has ignored the Mac platform.
I use MT for my blog platform. I just downloaded and installed MT Writer. I tried to run it three times and every time it crashed during the set up.
Screencap: http://blognyc....riter-error.php
It apparently got as far as putting temporary posts on my site that I had to go back and delete. Here’s a screencap of those:
http://blognyc....55506253625.php
Anyone else have these problems?
This product was developed by OnFolio, a company Microsoft acquired. I can’t quite blame MS for ignoring the Mac here, but I can blame OnFolio by choosing to write their products in .NET, clearly to pimp up their acquirability (nice job guys, it worked!)
You don’t use bootcamp?
[I'm a member of Writer team]
Just wanted to point out that our WYSIWYG is different than any other desktop blogging tool–we try to accurately reflect the colors, fonts, and other styles of your blog, automatically. I’m sure the other desktop blogging tools will be trying to add that soon.
We also support opening existing posts from your website (and I think current versions of most other desktop blogging tools do as well).
Whas that coded by a monkey?
Probably not, a monkey would do a better job.
Looks like a great piece of software, considering it was only just released. I can’t wait to try it out. I’m thinking of a nice week-long test drive. I’ll post results and thoughts on my blog.
They need to release a mac version or Apple should build one for leopard.
Nice, but where’s the ribbon?
OMG!!!
A MS product that I’ll actually use. This is fantastic. Now I need someone to break into the Myspace code so I can blog on my blog and have it auto placed on myspace.
“I can blame OnFolio by choosing to write their products in .NET, clearly to pimp up their acquirability (nice job guys, it worked!)”
Are you serious? You know some people write applications in .NET because it’s easier and quicker to bring a product to market.
As a fellow Mac user, I highly recommend ecto!
I just spent $40 on BlogJet. Darn.
cool…I downloaded it and it looks very promising.
Very nice program that works well with my Wordpress blog. Apple needs to come up with something better than iWeb to compete with this.
Ok – Call me an idiot but why would we want a desktop tool vs. some online tool that we can access from anywhere with any computer?
I bet the 2008 version of office will be BC (blog compliant) LOL.
great
It won’t recognise my Blogger blog…weird
Impressive piece of work coming out of Redmond. The product feels much better than other windows based offline bloggers that I have used. This is going to be the product to watch.
Honestly, why would Microsoft bother with the Mac? Don’t get me wrong–the Mac’s a fine platform–but if they’re going to expend the effort it’s going to have to either be profitable (e.g., Office) or serve some strategic purpose (e.g., Internet Explorer… I mean Media Player… err). Microsoft’s blogging work seems (remarkably) standards compliant, so I’m reasonably sure Spaces can work with Mac tools; thus there’s no reason to put in the effort. The Mac community as a whole has a rather visceral aversion to all things Microsoft, which is likely a large part of why they’ve been receding from the Mac market–no use catering to a market that really doesn’t want you there. If you want them to share their toys, you’d do well to be a little less snarky.
This looks like a relly great tool, can’t wait to try it out when I get home. So far I’ve been writing my posts in msword and the copy pasting into the blog (such a time consuming process -__- ).
“Too bad that, like Google and Picasa, Microsoft has ignored the Mac platform”
Far from ignoring the Mac platform, Microsoft propped Apple up financially and prevented it from going under entirely not too long ago. Micorosft has provided Office for the Mac for years despite the tiny market share, and despite the fact that Apple is a rigidly controlled, closed platform that competes with Windows.
If anything Microsoft has provided too much support to a competitor. If Apple had decided 10 years ago that they wanted to capture 10-20% of the market and then actually did so then these complaints about lack of Mac support would fall on more non-deaf ears. 4% share just ain’t worth it most of the time.
Why do we need to download an application? Why isn’t there a Rich Internet Application to do this?
“Why isn’t there a Rich Internet Application to do this?”
Beacuse “Rich Internet Applications” cannot reproduce even a fraction of the flexibility and power available to a native application. This is why AJAX word processors pose exactly 0% threat to Word.
Microsoft doesn’t need to port this to mac anymore than ecto or mars edit need to port to windows.
Mac ???? whats that ??? you fan boys need to run bootcamp instead of cribing
Is anyone else having problems with it freezing up during the downloading of editing styles? I’ve uninstalled and re-downloaded it. Always freezes at the same place.
I’m using Movable Type.
I’m on MT3.2 and Firefox. So, I think I’ll just stick to me trusted PFF1.3 (Performancing for Firefox 1.3).
The FireFox based Flock browser includes a very nice blog editor, and supports the Mac as well. It lets me edit my blogger.com blog with easy Technorati tags and much nicer editing options than blogger supports. However I think the Vox.com blog editor is the nicest I’ve seen so far online.
i downloaded and installed this – it’s awesome! works for a blogger site i have and a dasblog site, easy!
Anybody know if iWeb is available or Windows? Hmm, I don’t guess I see why MS should release this for Mac. Windows Live services are geared for Windows. .Mac services are gears for… that’s right Mac.
I’m using Zoundry Blog Writer, which is actually a great piece of Blog Writer. It supports almost all of the various blogging platform, allows editing existing posts, has a WYSIWYG editor, spell checking, the works.
It also have built in tagging support, so you can add at the end of any of your posts Technorati, del.icio.us, Ice Rocket and a few other tags.
You can get it at zoundry and its even free!
AFAIK, it only runs on Windows, but it is mostly written in Python so I assume there is a reasonable chance of converting it, if enough interest is shown.
I use it for my two blogs hosted at Blogger and am very pleased about it.
@ Bryan
Most of us don’t want anything Microsoft has to offer anyway, hence the reason why we are using a Mac in the first place.
I could go the rest of my life without using any Microsoft product. Microsoft can keep all their products to themselves and release them on Windows only. I don’t want it. Its pretty much a sure thing that anything on Windows is already on a Mac.
I don’t call that snarkiness, I call it appreciation for a better computer experience. That’s my opinion, and I know its not others because I’ve heard the Mac vs. PC debate way too many times to care to hear anymore about it again.
Personally I think Microsoft isn’t going to release anymore software for Mac considering we can now run Windows on our Mac. Soon enough, we may not even need windows to run windows applications.
It looks not bad .
I’ve been using MarsEdit from Ranchero recently… pretty basic but does what it should. Then before that I was using TextMate and before that I was trying to use Flock. Someday, I hope.
I’d be interested to see the HTML output of this thing but alas, like you Mike, I’m on a Mac.
Frankly, if there’s some kind of integration with the RSS platform they’re building into Vista with this thing, they’re doing something smart (even if the UI looks like it came out of Win2K). If not, and it’s a one off app like Wordpad, hell, they should just add the API support to Wordpad and call it WordpadLive. Doesn’t seem like a major announcement to me otherwise.
The Windows Live Writer folks did a nice job. Also check out RocketPost, http://www.anco....com/rocketpost. It’s far more advanced than Writer, and there’s a free version. (I designed it.)
I checked it out and I like it. fast, easy and responsive. Much better than the blogger and wordpress editors.
This is great and should only get better seeing that the team includes Joe Cheng!
be careful – it crashed my typepad blog and deletes all google ads!? Great tool – but why are my google ads no longer avail? And I even didnt publish anything with the tool – I only setup my typepad blog.
With the advent of Intel-based Macs and Parallels, it is a lot less important now for companies to release “Mac native” versions of software. Most sophisticated Mac users have an Intel-based Mac and are running XP in a Parallels virtual machine, so blog posting from that environment is nearly as easy as it would be with a native Mac application.
Nice tool – and maybe something I will use in the future for my blog…
@ Chris Griffin
Eh… that was basically my point, albeit with the “technological cleansing” spin. I’m not looking for a geek face-off. I’m merely pointing out that lamenting the paucity of Microsoft software on the Mac–which seemed to be a major point of concern in Michael’s original post–is rather silly in light of the Mac community’s collective stance towards Microsoft. I’m sure Microsoft would love to develop more software for the Mac if they (a) had a valid business case and (b) believed a significant enough people wouldn’t turn their nose up at it without even a look. Like I said, the Mac’s a great platform, and I’m not trying to deminish it. So, uh… no need for chest thumping.
I guess with Microsoft now using the word “Live” in all their new releases, it eases the pain on their marketing department to come up with something good.
There’s a funny bit in this Channel 9 video, where Tony Williams (co-inventor of COM) is talking about a new product they were working on. The codename was xCal, but ended up being “Calendar Printing Assistant for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007″ He says something along the lines of “and marketing named it something horrible like…” and he names the long winded product name. The audience laughs and he rolls his eyes in disgust. It’s at about 48 minutes in. I think it sums up a lot of people’s reactions to some of the naming decisions at Microsoft.
http://channel9...x?postid=224935
I tried it in my blog based on Wordpress, but when I published a post via Writer, the post disappeared, I can’t find the post in anywhere -frontpage or draft. I checked out database and saw it finally, OMG, its timestamp is 1970!
@ Diego Barros
I saw that video. He refers to the name as “disgusting”, which I think is absolutely right. Most Microsoft software, from an engineering standpoint, is actually pretty good–IE6 notwithstanding. Where they consistently fail is their soulless and tacky branding and marketing.
waited for long time something like this to write blogs faster…thanks
“Too bad that, like Google and Picasa, Microsoft has ignored the Mac platform.”
You said something similar on the earthlink weblife post too – is that it that difficult for you to understand that any company, no matter how big or small, is going to go after the lion’s share after the market first (especially with free releases and alphas/betas/previews)??? Why would they basically set themselves up for double the customer support, double the design and manipulation and double the pain on something they have not fully developed yet. You make it sound like they are out to get all Mac owners. Hundreds of companies have spent years “ignoring” Macs. Who cares?
Hey I’ve just started up my own technology blog, please visit it and tell me what you guys think.
Thanks
http://www.philipaustin.co.uk
“Since I use a Mac, I won’t be testing this software.”
Thats a shame, as i’d really appreciate your non-biased review of the software
“Just wanted to point out that our WYSIWYG is different than any other desktop blogging tool–we try to accurately reflect the colors, fonts, and other styles of your blog, automatically. I’m sure the other desktop blogging tools will be trying to add that soon.”
The only thing that’s missing is any images that are in the style sheets. For example, I use CSS to style my unordered lists with images instead of dots as the bullets and I have an image in the background of my titles. In Windows Live Writer, my lists don’t have any bullets at all and the title image is not there.
But I think it’s a really good product and if this is the beta, I can’t wait to see what the finished version will look like. Only thing I could do without is all the Onfolio stuff that comes with the toolbar (yes, I know I could have opted out of installing it). I don’t mind the toolbar (especially since I’m in Firefox 99% of the time), but Onfolio adding to my startup files? Not so much.
Certainly can edit posts using Ecto on Mac though it’s not WYSIWYG it gives a decent approximation
Question: Mike – are you sure it’s an API not SDK? API suggests it can be hooked to other stuff, SDK is a bit different.