Windows Live Writer

Jan 222010

Blogging Offline

I must admit that, up until now, the concept of offline blogging confused me a little. I could see the point if you were in a place that just didn’t have a connection, but if you can connect, why not use the facility?

Well, I’ve just ‘Gone Mobile’ and realised that this presents two problems.

The first is that my bandwidth is limited. I’m paying for my data on a ‘Pay As You Go’ basis and this makes me much more aware of the cost.
The second reason kind of relates to the first. It’s all about distraction. If I’m online, I do a lot of research that often just turns into surfing! This is not good when you’re trying to do something specific but it’s also not good when you consider point 1!

Therefore, I thought it would be logical to look for a client that I can use offline and then upload to my blog.

Hardware

I’ve just managed to treat myself to an Asus Netbook (despite Asus saying today that the Netbook is dead!). I bought it to replace a broken laptop but also because I wanted a very compact machine I could bring along to hospital (That’s where I am now!).

I’m very pleased with the machine and it’s certainly doing it’s work keeping me entertained whilst stuck on this ward. More on that later!

Software

I then researched the offline blogging tools that are available. The result was a little surprising. Despite being a recent convert to Ubuntu Linux on my Desktop machine, for the moment I’m opting to keep my Netbook running on the Windows XP it came with. I would normally do all that I could to find an open source solution to my problems but since many of the reviews pointed to Windows Live Writer, that’s where I headed for first.

I have to admit that, so far, I like it! It’s nice to have a WYSIWYG editor that actually imports the theme from your blog – a little surprising too considering my blog sits on WordPress and not a Microsoft product. Live Writer also gives you many facilities not immediately available in WordPress like tables and some rich formatting options. Of course, these options are available through WordPress but they are not so readily available without digging into plugins or writing your article in HTML.

Experiment – Success?

It’s probably fairly obvious that I’ve only just started playing with this programme. Really, I wanted to publish an experimental post to see if it would publish first time with the ease I would really like from my software. If you’re reading this, it worked and I’m really chuffed! Expect to see more articles written directly with Window Live Writer.