June 2007

Would you like to include the web feed from BestFreeApps on your site? If so, I’ve created a Widget at WidgetBox which will enable you to easily embed the content directly on your page. Simply follow the instructions and you’ll be up and running, delivering the very latest freeware news and reviews to your site.

I’ve added a Table of Contents page to the site to make it easier for you to find the review you’re after.

There’s also a permanent link at the top of each page.

[Homepage and Download]

I spend a lot of my free time blogging. It’s therefore important to me to have a useful tool with which to do it. For a long time, I’ve been using the ScribeFire extension for Firefox. Whilst a very useful application, I do find it a bit awkward to use and it very often messes up formatting when pasting in text.

I tried Beta 1 of Windows Live Writer and found it to be pretty unreliable and hence I stopped using it. However, I decided to take another look now that Beta version 2 is out and, well, what a difference a version number can make!

Here’s a screenshot of Live Writer whilst editing this very post:

As you can see, it’s a pretty clean layout, with all of the most often used functions (links, bullets, quotes etc) available on the toolbar for easy access.

Setting up a blog in Live Writer is easy enough. Just point it to the URL of the blog and it’ll do its best to auto-detect the type (Wordpress, TypePad etc). You then enter your login details and it’ll then go and download styles, categories etc from your blog. You’re then ready to go.

A couple of newly added features for Beta 2 are the ability to add pages and categories, meaning you no longer have to manually go to your blog to add these items, which is a nice time saver.

You can save posts as drafts, which is especially useful when switching between multiple blogs and multiple posts being worked on.

Image uploading can be achieved by using the blogs own API, or via setting up the ftp path to a location of your choice. Once set, you just upload your post and Live Writer looks after uploading the images for you. Couldn’t be simpler.

Another great feature is the ability to download as many previous posts from your blog for editing. I found SribeFire to be a little limited in this regard and find it a really useful feature.

Spell checking is built-in, so I’ve now got no excuse for typos in my posts

You can switch between various views: “Normal” is the default and presents you with a WYSIWYG editor, complete with drag-and-drop functionality for images and text. I find this is perfectly usable in almost all circumstances. If I want to do something fancy, I can switch to “HTML code” view, which lets me work directly with the source. There are also “Web Layout” and “Web Preview” views available, but I don’t tend to use these much.

Tagging support is built-in. Just select Insert Tags and a pop-up window is displayed, defaulting to Technorati, but with a list of others, enabling you to enter your keywords.

Another fun feature is the ability to insert a map, which uses Microsoft’s Virtual Earth as seen below. Just enter an address and insert it in your post!

You can also insert Tables as well as the usual Pictures and Hyperlinks.

A nice feature is that it will warn you if you try to Publish a post without adding any Categories. Handy for when the old brain cells start to switch off.

Live Writer supports Plugins, although I haven’t actually tried any as yet. It says something about the application that I haven’t needed any of them. There’s a 3-page list here showing what’s available and it looks pretty extensive.

Summary

Live Writer is a good, solid and dependable application. I use it multiple times every day and (so far!) it hasn’t let me down. It does exactly what I need it to do, without fuss. Very impressive, especially given it’s still in Beta. If you’re a blogger, there’s nothing else I would recommend over this, freeware or commercial.

In something of a surprise move (for me, at least!), Apple has released a version of their Safari web browser for Windows. My first impressions are pretty favourable, primarily in the rendering speed.

Here’s a screenshot of BestFreeApps in Safari for Windows:

I’ll write a review when I’ve had some more time with it. If you want to have a play with it, you can download it from the Apple web site, but it’s pretty busy right now

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