Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Testing blogging from Windows Live Writer

Someone asked for an WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) authoring tool, and I responded asking why should one need a WYSISYG authoring as the COMPOSE mode is WYSIWYG (well, almost). However, Brett of Maven Mapper's Information suggested Windows Live Writer. I use an ADSL always on service provider, and perhaps for me, there is no need for such a tool, but now I can see the need for one who is using dial-up and/or time based service provider. Also, if this works out, it will tie in nicely with the method I suggested for preparing post to be published in the future. See How to prepare a post to be published in the future. So I am now testing to see how it works out. I am going to try putting in some images:

Well, looks like it inserts an <img> tag and the source of the picture is a path to the file in my computer. Now, when I publish this, I wonder what is going to happen.

UPDATE: Well, the photo just appeared a a blank square. Perhaps that was because I want to try to make the picture a hyperlink to Guide to Malaysia for reasons I will explain later. For for that, I need to be in the EDIT HTML mode. I post below the actual screenshot of Windows Live Writer as I tried to prepare the above post:

Windows Live Writer

I am going to try to do the same thing in the next post, but this time use the WYSIWYG mode. I have done it and you can see the result at Testing blogging from Windows Live Writer again, but this time using WYSISYG mode

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Pete,

There are at least 4 ways and types of pictures that can be inserted with LiveWriter.

One is through the task bar on the right which is then uploaded, which requires that you configure a destination to receive pictures.

The second is through the menu at the top for linking to an image already on the internet.

or third through the menu at the top you can also upload there.

Fourth is to hard code one in through html.

Once you have picked the picture whether its on your hard drive or on the net, you can view it in Web Layout mode, which is the mode that I use 80% of the time (sometimes I tweak the html code in html mode and on rare occassions I will get a preview of what the post will look like on my site - I never use normal mode)

Once you can see the image, you can select it and a host of formatting tools will show up on the right. You can then add links or borders or alt text to the image with the interface which will draft the proper html.

This is one of the very handy features of livewriter.

ps I'm on dsl as well and almost always have a connection. However, when I travel, I can still blog on a plain or in a train or where ever. Plus, I can save drafts which are held at my desktop level.

So if I get a half of an idea, I jot down the title and some things save it in draft mode, close it and come back to it when I get more ideas, research, information or time.

The big advantage of this tool v. online editing through blogger is that you save a lot of time flipping back and forth between screens.

Plus, when the bogger servers are on the brink you can sometimes upload a post with livewriter even though you can not login to the server to compose, that's priceless.

Manature said...

Hi Brett,

Thanks for taking the time to add in the extra information. Regarding the publishing of pictures, it still appear to me that you either must have the photo already hosted on the Web or you have to be publishing via FTP. Am I correct? If not, how do I publish a picture saved in my computer without FTP?

Peter a.k.a. enviroman
Enviroman Says

Unknown said...

I think its probably easiest with a hosted plan or ftp.

There are flikr add ins and a few other services that you can use. I haven't tried Google's photo service.

I personally use a ftp host (one that I have for my other sites).