Is Writer a-Live?
May 2, 2007
I’m wondering whether it’s time to change the tool I use for drafting my blog posts offline. I’ve been using Microsoft Live Writer beta since it was released in mid-2006, which when it was released, generated a lot of surprisingly positive buzz in the usually anti-Microsoft blogosphere.
Being a beta version, it’s not without its quirks - it doesn’t allow you to add new categories, for example; and displaying my categories as one long, drop-down list is annoying - but, for off-line drafting and editing of blog posts and off-line web preview, I haven’t found anything quite as good.
Live Writer was released at a point in time when Microsoft seemed to be catching the blogging bug in a really big way, which is why I’m surprised and little disappointed that the development of a potentially great app seems to have tailed off. The Spaces page for Live Writer hasn’t been updated since November 2006 when then last update to the beta was released, and searching for Live Writer at Microsoft.com shows that it doesn’t even have its own home page:
Even the activity on the Live Writer MSDN forum seems to have dried up - which, I’m guessing, is because people are losing interest in an application that isn’t being - or, doesn’t appear to be - actively developed.
What do you think? Do you use Live Writer, or do you prefer alternative products that allow for off-line editing? What do you use to update your blog?
Technorati Tags: Live Writer, blogging tools, development
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