Windows Live Writer

I just came across the Windows Live Writer browsing Channel9 and had to try it out.  I fired up SVS, created a new layer, installed Windows Live Writer, updated the layer to include the Tag4Writer and here I am creating a new post on my blog using Windows Live Writer.  It seems pretty nice.  Nothing too bulky, simple, straight forward.  It even satisfied a co-worker of mine.  He was a user of Blogjet but he said he wanted one that supported tags, allowed you to set the title of the page (Blogjet does not do this but Windows Live Writer uses the name of the post as the title of the page) and writes good HTML.

A couple nice features: allows you to insert pictures and maps with the click of a button, gives you the ability to save drafts and has very simple style editing (if I'm going to write a fancy looking post, I'm going to write the HTML myself, not use a post creator).  It defaults to a Web Layout style, so as you type, your post already looks like what it will on your blog.  Then you can switch to the Web Preview and view the post as if you actually posted it (displays in the context of your actual blog).

Windows Live Writer supports a number of different blogs from Windows Live Spaces to Community Server to Wordpress to Blogger.  Check it out.  You'll probably like it.

Update:

Tag4Writer does not actually fully support tagging in Community Server.  It simply puts in links in the post to specific tags.  As far as I am aware, CS does not parse these tag links in a post.  I actually had to manually put the tags in myself and then I had duplicate links on the post for each tag.  So I decided to not use Tag4Writer for now.  CS 2.1 added the ability to add tags via AJAX right when viewing a post (if you're logged in).  That's good enough for me for now.  Hopefully WLW adds tagging support or Tag4Writer adds that functionality to their software.

Another thing I realized with WLW is that it allows you to update a post.  Tremendous!  However, I think it may be clearing the tags on my post when I post an update.  Hopefully it was just something I did.

Update:

Yep, the tags were removed.

Tags: Windows Live Writer, Channel9, SVS, Blogjet, Tag4Writer