Frustrated with Wordpress’ built in table editor this afternoon, I went scanning the internet for a WordPress plugin to fix the problem.  Finding nothing suitable, I went looking for some software that could be installed on windows machines at our schools to easily post content to our new WordPress school blogs directly from the desktop.  I knew there was a program for the Mac called MarsEdit which a lot of bloggers like to use to write posts from their desktop computers, say offline or on a laptop.  The author of MarsEdit is not interested in making a version of that program for Windows, but does recommend Windows Live Writer to people who ask. So, with no small amount of skepticism, I downloaded and installed the Windows Live Writer application for testing on our WordPress 2.7 blog installations.  Let me tell you, this is awesome stuff.

There’s an old quotation that I find as applicable to computers as anything else:  “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.” – Otto von Bismarck.  Point being, if you like to work on the computer, you should never take a job fixing them.  You’ll soon learn to be distrustful of software in general.   This is why it’s all the more surprising when we find a program that we really like, and probably why 90% of the internet is filled up with “computer guys” blogging about the newest, shiniest piece of software out there.

So here goes, I’m writing a post about Windows Live Writer, because I think it’s a fantastic piece of software.

Tables were what originally led me to this app, let’s see how well it does them:

Easy enough.   It’s easy to add a new row to the table by right-clicking, and it’s easy to stretch the table around by dragging the right edge, which is displayed as a dotted line in the editor.  One can even easily move the table around in a post, or resize individual columns.

Let’s try a picture or two.  It actually let me select two of these from the file window at the same time.  Effects are applied to the images client-side and saved to WordPress’s photo gallery with effects intact.

What’s surprising to me is that it’s a Microsoft program, and here it is working hand in hand with an Open Source application, using open standards (in this case, the MetaWebLog API) to transfer data around behind the scenes.  Five years ago, Microsoft culture would never have permitted this.  They’re finally beginning to recognize the importance of interoperability, and this is the result.  Not bad, Microsoft.

Here’s a list of stuff about Live Writer that has impressed me.

• Easy enough to set up
• When you start a new post, it downloads your wordpress theme to the client side, so what you see is a lot closer to what you actually get.
• It appears to support all of the features that WordPress supports, so it’s not a dumbed down editing experience at all.  This gives it a very powerful feel, like software that’s doing its job.
• Has the same kind of editing feel as MS Word, so our users in schools will probably have a very easy time adjusting to this.
• After publishing, I found out that the code it generates is actually really clean.  That makes my inner geek happy.
• It supports posts AND pages.  What’s not to like about that?