Using Windows Live Writer – A Windows 7 Experience

I woke up this morning still not feeling great (I’ve had the flu in one form or another for the last 8 days or so), so I thought I’d make a slideshow to music of a recent trip my girlfriend and I took to Leelanau County, Michigan. For those of you not from the Mitten State, the upper portion of the lower penninsula is generally referred to as “Up North” by us Michiganders, while the upper penninsula is the “UP.”

When deciding to make the slideshow, I realized that Windows 7 doesn’t natively come with an application capable of making such a thing. The application you would see Kylie using in the Windows 7 commercials is Windows Live Movie Maker, and is available through Windows Update. I went onto Windows Update, and also noticed another

application when choosing what Windows Live programs to install; Windows Live Writer.

The description mentioned that Windows Live Writer was primarily a blogging tool, that allowed you to more easily insert photos, videos, tables, and other more “advanced” items into your blog. I went through the simple setup of telling Live Writer about my Cold Boot blog, and now I’m using it to write

this column. It’s more of a test than an actual article, but it seems to be fairly intuitive. I’m not as limited as to where I would like to insert a picture, or what size it’s going to be, and the “preview” tab at the bottom of the program does a great job of giving an accurate portrayal as to what the blog post will look like once finished.

Windows Live Writer doesn’t add a ton over what I have available to me through Google’s Blogger, but it’s just user friendly enough for me to continue to use it for at least the next few posts. It still drives me kind of crazy that there’s no native support for a “caption” underneath a picture (how hard is that?), but there are ways around it.