Isn’t Life Strange?

I updated my older version of Windows Messenger today and the installation gave me some options to install some programs that are part of Microsoft’s Windows Live family.  I downloaded a few of them that seemed interesting to me, including Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Mail, and Windows Live Writer. 

Windows Live Writer is a particularly interesting program that a blogger can use to create, edit, format, and publish content.  Much like a word processor, Live Writer includes simple functions for basic text formatting to offer a true WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) experience.  For example, this is the first entry in my nearly two years of blogging that I have included a hyperlink in an entry without having to manually enter or alter HTML code! 

I am almost giddy with excitement about this thing.  If I want to add bold text, all I need to do is click on the B in the toolbar, just as I would do in Microsoft Word.  The same goes for the rest of the basic formatting functions. 

Users can even add ordered and unordered lists that operate just like "bullets" in Microsoft Word. I’ve not been able to make this work as seamlessly as I had expected, as there are a few formatting idiosyncrasies with surrounding text.

At this point, you’ve probably guessed that I am using Live Writer to write and post this entry.  You’re right.  You would also be right in assuming that I am playing around with the functions.

Using the "Add Map" function, I’ve embedded this image of Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros.

The image above was placed into a table I added with one click of the mouse. 

Something particularly helpful is the ability to seamlessly switch between edit, preview, and html views through a pull-down menu function.  The preview shows a complete view of your blog as it will look once the new entry is published.  Want to tweak something in the code?  That’s easy!  Simply select the HTML Code option and make the changes.  All changes made are dynamic, meaning you won’t need to click any pushbuttons in order to see updates in the preview. 

Live Writer even offers support for many plugins, offering the blogger a great number of options for creative content. 

This is pretty exciting stuff from the gang in Redmond. I’m looking forward to seeing what else it can do.