Wednesday, June 11, 2008
I'm all about geeky stuff. I'm like a mosquito to bare skin when it comes to new internet thingamabobs and tools - I just can't get enough. So, when I read this post from internet neighbor Otis, it was incumbent upon me to check out Live Writer as well.
After a few moments of frustration with install (lovely, lovely Microsoft - still hasn't got the user-friendly part down), I was underway with this post.
This blog uses the Blogger API to publish to my domain. I'm pleased to report that the first test - the blog set-up - was a breeze. Score one!
Currently, I am using the Web Layout to compose the post. It presents a box formatted as my blog is formatted - CSS styles included. That is a very sexy feature. One press of the F12 key, and I have an instant preview of the post as it would appear published. F11 gets me back to writing in a snap. Score two!
I'm thoroughly anal about code, so I am thrilled to see that the auto-italics button codes the proper <em></em> tags instead of the deprecated <i></i> and the bold tags win with the <strong></strong> instead of boo-bad <b></b>. Score three!
Next is the image test - the photo at left right is from my recent trip to Philadelphia. I converted it to B&W, resized, selected the "Photopaper" border, added the "watermark" and used drag & drop to position it. Very, very cool. A big score four!
I rarely use tables, so I'll skip that feature. On to the Insert Map. I was impressed with the bird's eye view of Mt. Willis, so much so, I was inspired to go hunting for my current and previous abodes via the map feature which use Virtual Earth:
A snap to do the insert and a big plus is the caption function, but I encountered a problem with the format. I wanted that to be centered on the page. The code is there, but it's not centering in the preview. This could be a browser glitch if Live Writer is using IE for the views. Will have to wait to view in Firefox. Score five with reservations. [UPDATE] The centering affects the caption, not the map.
More abodes:
I'll skip the video embed. I'll accept it on faith that it's a breeze. Auto-score six!
Okay - so far I'm very impressed with the software. Now let's see if this baby publishes!
Score zero on the publish. It uploaded to Blogger, but did not publish to the domain. Will have to troubleshoot to find out why and get back to you later.
[UPDATE] I'm still not sure what went wrong with publishing. I've also tried my best to get the maps centered in the post and have been unsuccessful. My attempts at altering the the HTML were obliterated, stripped from the code.
The long way to solve the problem would be to download the map images and hard code them into the post. I'm just OCD enough to do that, but I don't have the time right now.
Bottom line is, I like the software. A big drawback, though, is that it's not web-based which would allow access from anywhere. As it is, it's a download to your local machine, which makes it portable only if you have a laptop and travel with it everywhere. That said, I will no doubt use if only for it's way-cool image inserter thingamajig.
