Microsoft keeps one foot in old world with blog writer

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 15 August 2006 15:05

Your IT - Home IT

The booming market for online bloggers has provided sufficient bait for Microsoft to bring out a free product that some say has been lacking in the market - a good WYSIWYG blogging editor.

True to its roots, Microsoft has kept one foot in the old world by making Windows Live Writer a desktop based tool instead of a web-based editor. However, being a desktop based tool gives the Microsoft application some of the advantages and power that desktop tools have over their web-based counterparts.

Windows Live Writer allows users to display text and position images with the sort of WYSIWYG precision that most inbuilt online blogging editors simply cannot do. It can be likened to a desktop publisher for bloggers.

Another attractive feature of Windows Live Blogger, apart from the fact that it's free, is that it works with a range of blogging services other than Microsoft's own Windows Live Spaces. It even works with Google Blogger.

So what we have in essence is a free Microsoft WYSIWYG blog editor that works on the desktop but is compatible with some of the most popular online blogging services. Where's the catch?