Microsoft released the beta of Windows Live Writer a couple of days ago. I thought I would do the "corporate thing" and give it a go. It looks really nice.
I have used a few different tools in the past to post to my blog. BlogJet is an excellent tool, and let me do just what I wanted. Windows Live Writer does look a little bit like BlogJet in places (particularly in the Category selector), but it has some great value-add features that I am enjoying.
My favourite one so far is the true WYSIWYG editing. When you set up your account in the tool, it goes off and downloads the CSS and HTML for the blog to use at edit time. Right now, I am writing this entry and the heading and fonts all look exactly right. Even better, press Shift-F11 and it will preview your posting IN PLACE in a downloaded version of your real blog. Nice.
It has some good photo publishing features, and a feature to insert a Live Local map inline in your blog entry. Just like this one, showing where I am writing this posting!
I set it up to work with both Spaces and dasBlog with very little effort, so it gets top marks there.
There is also an SDK available so that developers can add capabilities to publish additional content types.
A big thumbs up rating from me - give it a try!
