Windows Live Writer 2010 – Just Minor Updates

With Windows Live Writer 2010 looking like it’s going to be a few more months away from release, it’s looking unimpressive right now.

Windows Live Writer is the best blogging tool out there, but it’s development is so slow; it’s depressing. It’s no wonder Internet Explorer is taking such a beating.

If you were paying attention to the Twitter world this evening you’ll see that some more screenshots of Windows Live Writer 2010 were published and besides the change in the GUI, not much has changed, and there’s no details from the developers to say different.

Everything is hush right now.

That’s what I think is so awesome about open source; they keep you posted. They tell you what’s going on, there are true BETA releases to test with. Microsoft did this so well with Windows 7, but now it’s like this lost art.

So what are they offering? What’s new and different in the new version?

All we have are a few screenshots…

This is a side by side comparison to Windows Live Writer 2009 and 2010:

Obviously the GUI is different, but what else has changed? Not much. The truth is that people liked the drafts and the recent posts- the plug-ins needed to be better organized.

• The size/styles of the font can be changed in the toolbar – nice, but not much else.

And what about the plug-ins?

From the Ribbon toolbar [which I dislike], has the INSERT option and this is where the plug-ins and options will be kept. It’s irritating because it just looks like all this work, with everyone waiting for 14 months already for an update to this popular blogging tool and this is the result… a change to the GUI; making it look more like Microsoft Office.

And what’s more, Windows Live Writer 2010, from the formatting bar, still doesn’t have an indention option; to indent paragraphs of information. And I’m going to keep arguing this because a BLOCKQUOTE is NOT an INDENTION, and the PROBLEM with BLOCKQUOTEs is that it’s treated different with each Theme. Moving between themes is not fun if the information is not handled generically. The CORRECT way to handle this is via a PARAGRAPH margin.

Does Windows Live Writer 2010, to you, look like a huge improvement over the last version? This should've been Open Sourced. Yes. No. View Results  Loading ...

An INDENTION of text in a WordPress blog is a standard feature in the options, when editing online. Why Windows Live Writer 2010 can’t have this-

I’ve seen some other screenshots of the properties and I didn’t see any options for pasting images as JPG or PNG.

Did they address it or fix it.. we don’t know. It can’t be explained…

So, Windows Live Writer went ‘LIVE’ in January 2009. In 14 months, and probably more by the time they release it, HOW much progress is Microsoft going to have made on this application?

Have they focused on integration with their own products, or have they just made it pretty and not really worked on being more compatible globally… are they still depending on the plug-in writers to do their job for them and filling in the feature holes in the program?

…we don’t know, but right now– it ain’t much.

Thanks,
L. Henry Jr.
http://www.lehsys.com