Shanghai Tech WriterTechnical Writing, Technology, Web2.0, Google, Shanghai, China

I started using Windows Live Writer recently to write blog posts to publish here on Shanghai Tech Writer. I don’t know why I am surprised, but this is a great software and it’s free! Ten points for Microsoft!

Cool Features:

• Write posts/draft offline and save locally or online.
• Access all your drafts and published posts offline and update/modify them.
• Live Writer downloads theme template from your blog so you can see how your post will look like before you publish it.
• View your drafts or posts in different mode: normal, web layout, web preview, and HTML.
• Insert and edit images without having to upload them first.
• Insert and manage your hyperlinks. Save hyperlinks in link glossary and Live Writer will recognize  hyperlinked text the next time you need to add hyperlinks. Link to previous posts easily without searching for the permalinks online. 
• Live Writer downloads your blog settings so you can assign categories, keywords, author, slug, password, excerpt, and trackbacks offline.
• Schedule your posts to publish on a specific date/time.
• Install plugins to add extra features like insert pictures from Flickr, videos from YouTube, word count, and many other cool features.
• Inline spell-check.

Because everything is done offline, the speed is so much faster. No more waiting for an image or video to upload. No more saving a draft and waiting to preview a post.

Demo Features:

Insert map or directions—Here I’ve entered an address in the U.S. and am able to insert road, aerial, or bird’s eye map.

Insert table—Inserting a table was a piece of cake without messing with HTML.

Insert/edit images—Here, I’ve inserted a normal picture and chose Photopaper as borders to create a pretty photo image with shadow effect.

Insert video—Embedding a video like YouTube or Google Video is as easy as copying the URL link and pasting that into the Insert Video window.

Conclusion

Windows Live Writer is a great blogging tool and I’m loving it so far!  Windows Live Writer is the first blogging tool I’ve really used. I reckon I’m way behind in discovering the plethora of software and tools out there to write blog posts offline. I’ve heard of some and have read about a few, but have not really explored any of them until just now. I might have installed one tool before but whichever one it was, the software did not immediately fly off the page in terms of ease of use so I uninstalled it.

And that’s how it goes. If I read about a good software recommendation, I’ll download it, try it, and if I can’t figure it out in the first five minutes, I’ll uninstall it. I don’t bother reading documentation until I actually like the software and choose to continue using it. Then, I’ll look at the documentation to search for a specific task that I’m trying to perform, that’s if, I couldn’t figure it out from the UI.

Windows Live Writer survived my five minutes usability test. The software UI is very intuitive and I was able to figure out the basics as well as the advanced features immediately. In addition, the software actually made the tasks I want to perform easier! And that’s really the ultimate goal and requirement of any productivity tools. It if takes more time to learn how to use a “productivity” tool than the actual task(s) involved, than the tool is not very well-designed. Or at least, that’s my opinion.

So this begs the question how software and documentation should be designed for users like me who are kinesthetic and visual learners in addition to having limited attention span, otherwise known as ADHD. There are many users out there, like me, who would much prefer to figure out a software hands-on rather than reading documentation.

The five minutes usability test means five minutes is all you—the software—have to win a user over. So what does that mean? How will that factor play out in terms of software UI design and documentation?

To be continued . . .