Sunday, February 24, 2008

Using Windows Live Writer for Blogging

Some of you may have noticed my blog posts have actually increased as of late. Why? I used to use Blogger's online editor and the trouble I had with it really pushed me away from writing posts. I want my posts to look just the way I want, and the editor kept taking liberties with my visual formatting. SO FRUSTRATING!

So I posted the query to Twitter:
"I'm taking a poll: What is your favorite blog editor?"

Since then I've started using, you guessed it, Windows Live Writer.

So far I'm loving it, every post I've made matches the preview. Just like a WYSIWYG should. I've also started playing with the "Plug-ins."

I've recently added Insert Code Plug-in. Awesome! No more images of code for me. Here's a sample of what it does:

Inserting HTML Code (but I'm using XML):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
    <system.serviceModel>
        <services>

Inserting C#:

public static void SomeMethod(string someString)
{
Console.WriteLine(someString);
}

Inserting TSQL:

CREATE PROCEDURE someStoredProcedure
@someMsg varchar(256) = NULL
AS
BEGIN

I can only imagine what other tools will be coming out in the future. So for right now Windows Live Writer is for me.

3 comments:

  1. Good to see you blogging more often. I'm also a fan of both Windows Live Writer and the Insert Code plug-in.

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  2. Windows Live Writer for me, too. I haven't used any plug-ins yet, though. I'll have to check out the Insert Code one. Thanks for the tip.

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  3. I LOVE Live Writer! The blogger interface was/is just plain painful to use.

    The funny thing is that Live Writer got my asking a lot of questions about the Blogger.com experience, which promoted me to move to SubText. Still tweaking it, but it's only been 48 hours and I am already thrilled with the change!

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