Procrastination… or Just Pure Laziness?

I have espoused the wonder that is LiveWriter before, and probably will do so again. Anyone who is blogging should at least give this FREE program a try. It not only gives you a WYSIWYG interface, it allows you to post to more than one blog with ease and the touch of the mouse, and it makes the handling of links, catagories, pictures, etc simple and requires absolutely zip knowledge of HTML, CSS, or any other acronym.

With the above paragraph fresh in your mind, you would think that I would be using the newest version of my favorite program, especially since (as before mentioned) it is free. You would be wrong.

I recently turned a returning Blogger on to my very favorite posting miracle and when she had questions, I promptly answered them…. only to have her e-mail back that her version didn’t have a button or some such in the spot I said it was. Turns out that I had an older version of the program on my machine and that the older versions do not check for updates on their own.

So…. the moral to this story? If you have (and love) LiveWriter, you might want to pop over and make sure you have the newest version. The version I have now has a ‘Check for updates’ option under the Help menu. Something that my previous version did not.

End of Public Service Announcement – Oh, and if any one from the government wanders across this endorsement, let it be perfectly clear that I receive nothing from Microsoft for endorsing their product… although I am open to any monetary recompense they would like to pass on to me at any time and for any reason……

A Better Way to Write a Blog Post

 

 

The above is a screen shot of one of my favorite programs for doing blog posts. Live Writer is a free program that you can download. Why use an offline Blog Post Editor? One reason is avoiding that annoying thing the editor online at Blogger does where what you see isn't necessarily what you get when you hit publish. Live Writer allows you to see exactly how your blog post will look when it is published. This way you are sure that your pictures are in the right spot and things are spaced as you want before you hit publish.

Another advantage is the way you insert pictures. You are given  option#1 of inserting the picture from your computer (and having it uploaded to Picasa) , or choosing option #2 to insert the url of your graphic from some other service where you have uploaded the picture to... all without going into html.

       

                     Option#1                                     Option#2

Once a picture is uploaded, you are also given some pretty good options for things like changing the size of the picture. You are offered small/med/large... but you are also offered the choice of the original size it was uploaded at or even to choose the height and width that you choose with the ratio locked.

 

One more advantage? It's an offline editor... Your post is on your computer till you hit publish, so if something happens on the way to posting you don't lose all of your hard work!

There are a lot of other features, but I will save them for another time... or if anyone is interested enough to ask LOL! Oh, and I am not in anyway associated with this program, I just like it!