For most of it’s existence I have written this blog using free blogging software from Microsoft called Windows Live Writer. It provides a simple Word-like, interface with just the features needed for blog posts. Publishing finished content to this blog took only the click of a button.
Sadly, I hit a snag after clicking the publish button this morning.
After determining that I wasn’t going to solve the problem quickly, I copied and pasted my work into Blogger’s own interface. Yuck. I got my post up, but it was very fiddly. I didn’t want to have to do that for all my future posts.
A google search revealed that the bad news was that Microsoft had stopped supporting the product, and a change at Google meant that uploading to Blogger (a critical part of the publishing process!) was broken, as of only about a week ago.
The very good new is that Google held off on making the change they wanted until there was an open source fork of the original Windows Live Writer, called Open Live Writer, available. Apparently volunteers within Microsoft got the open source code ready, which Microsoft then donated. Well done to all concerned!
I’m using Open Live Writer to write this post. Installation was quick and easy, and it looks almost exactly the same as the interface I’m used to. A few features are greyed out or missing, for now. Because it was so new, my anti-virus threw up some warnings about lack of a user base, so fingers crossed it’s all OK! So far so good, as far as I can see.
If you are reading this on my blog, then publishing has worked and I’m happy once again.
Good news. Will try when I get home.
ReplyDeleteLive Writer is one of my favorite computer programs of all time. It is so well done! When it stops working with my blog, I'll move to Open Writer too.
ReplyDelete