windows-live-writerAs David Hayden points out in his blog post, “Can blogging get any easier…”, Windows Live Writer makes composing and publishing html friendly blog posts as easy as composing an email. There are several pros to using Windows Live Writer over the Orchard web interface such as:

Working offline. I appreciate being able to go to a cozy “writer’s” corner and allowing the thoughts to flow freely. Later, I am able to go back to proofread/edit the draft before publishing it online. Of course, Orchard allows you to compose drafts in the online interface, but composing within Orchard itself requires an internet connection.

Rich text editor. Although its no replacement for Microsoft Word, Live Writer provides all of the text editing features you would expect from an html editor with another plus…it has a spell checker. Windows Live Writer features the spell checker functionality found in Microsoft Office products.

Support for specifying post dates. Because we all know that the date of our post does not necessarily correspond with the date of composition, the flexibility to specify the entry date provides writers with the flexibility to begin a draft at anytime and simply post it with the appropriate composition date later. Most importantly, if you are pulling in posts from a previous blog and would like to maintain the integrity of your blogging timeline, this can be a huge benefit.

Tagging allows you to specify keywords that act as categories for your blog entries. Windows Live Writer allows tagging for posts as you publish to your blog site.

The ability to quickly apply HTML styles to text, add images, hyperlinks, and video, all round out the awesomeness of Windows Live Writer.

Yes, I know that these features (spell check is hit and miss) are supported in the admin panels of many blogging engines but then, I can’t write my posts from a place like this:

creekside

So, if you’ve not yet given it a test drive, I recommend browsing over to Windows Live and giving it a spin.

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