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Now is the time I’ve been waiting for. Finally Microsoft has released download links for Windows Live Essentials Beta for us. There are two download options. If you are already familiar with all the programs that Windows Live Essentials offers then you might want to go for first download option that lets you download everything inside Windows Essentials Beta. Other option lets you choose what you want to download, like Windows live writer beta, Windows Live messenger, photo and movie maker, etc.

I like the later one obviously and I think many of us would as well. I just wanted to download Windows Live Writer in all of them. Because I feel that Windows live Writer is great for blogging offline. It is really easily and you can preview your post without the need of an internet connection, however, you must have an internet access if you want to connect your Windows Live Writer to your blogging account and see a direct preview of your post in your theme (it downloads the theme for preview purpose).

I know that there are now multiple posts regarding review of Windows Live Essentials and its entire programs, but every review is unique and if you are looking for some more reference on windows live writer, then you must read this post.

1. First of all, downloading of windows live writer only is really quick but you must have a 256 kbps connection or it might take some time. But nothing to worry about, you can grab a cup of tea or coffee. Then, as usual, when the downloading and installing has been finished, the program will ask you to configure your blogging account for the first time.

You may do it right away or you may skip it and use the program and configure your blogging account later on.

2. Interface: The interface of Windows Live Writer is much simpler than before. Here is a screen-shot for better look.

As you can see, the interface looks less cluttered than before because they have removed the sidebar and reset its options in the main menu.

Starting from top: a) Now you have ribbon feature just as MS Office’s applications.

The ribbon might be taking some space but it’s helpful at the same time. It includes save, undo and redo by default, and (when you click the downward arrow) new post, open, publish, print, print preview, show below the ribbon and minimize the ribbon options (or buttons).

I find all of these options helpful and ready to work if we are working under another tab and we want to quickly publish our post. Publish button on the ribbon can become very handy and same goes for ‘open’ command, since I don’t use print and print preview options a lot (as I don’t print my posts), I don’t feel the need to put them in the ribbon.

b) In main menu, you will only find three options, i.e. ‘Home’, ‘Insert’ and ‘Blog Account’.

Home option has all the necessary tools that we need to format our post as we please. Like paste, cut, copy, managing blog account, adding new blog account, font, font size, B, I, U, subscript, superscript, strike through, bullets, numbering, quoting, text colour, highlight colour, hyperlink, adding picture and video, spell check, word count and select all.

Do you get my point now? All the options that are handy and just like MS word are present in Windows Live Writer beta.

Insert Option has adding picture, video, photo album, map, post tags, emoticon, Add plug in and plug in options.

Adding plug-in in Windows live writer was always a great feature. It lets me optimize my Writer’s experience.

Have a look at this screen shot, showing options under ‘Blog Account’ tab.

So basically, that’s all you get in the first look and that’s what on your plate and even for a new guy (for windows live writer), familiarizing and working on this program won’t be difficult.

However, there are some things that can be considered as downside for some bloggers and may be, a good thing for others.

As I said that windows live writer looks less cluttered than before because of the lack of sidebar. You can pop it out, when you click ‘view all’, at the right extreme corner of the main window (next to ‘set publish date’ option). Here’s what you get when you click on ‘view all’.

You can select categories, add tags, determine publish date (all of these are available without clicking on ‘view all’), turn on and off comments, allow or deny pings (you can provide your own web address of website where you want to ping your updates) and select Authors (if you have created them within your WordPress control panel).

So, if we conclude this one addition of ‘view more’, it doesn’t take much of our time, because many of us won’t need it. Think about this, most of us just create a post, select a category (or many), and add tags and if they don’t want to publish right away then determine a publishing date. So we don’t even need to click on ‘view all’, so not only now our workspace is wider than before, but also we won’t have to worry about clicking on ‘view all’, because we won’t even need it.

3. Posting: Nothing new, I must say. It’s basically same as before. However, now we don’t need image editing software anymore, because now we can add images with nice effects and border from this program quickly. We can upload a photo from our computer, from web, create a photo album and even add an online album.

Have a look at all the options we now have to edit our image right away.

As before, when you want to add a video, you can paste your link from YouTube and if you want to upload a video from your own computer then Windows Live Writer will upload the file to YouTube’s server and then add the link to your post. So it’d be better to create an account on YouTube if you don’t have already.

So I guess that’s pretty much all that I can tell you about it. Program is nice and less cluttered, all the necessary options are available and I’ve experienced no crashes on Windows 7 until now. I’ll update this post if I do come across something like that and possibly, will be to tell you the reason. Till then, enjoy blogging from this program.

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