A miracle of modern technology came up a while ago under the optional updates section of my Vista Laptop. Most of the components Windows Live offered were uninteresting to me. Family Safety (Parental Controls), Live Call, Live Mail, Photo Gallery (similar to Picasa), Toolbar (I absolutely hate toolbars), Outlook Connector, etc… Live Messenger I’ve used since its inception and I use it more than any other chat program, but that’s not the purpose of this post.

Windows Live Writer is.

I’d heard of it, but initially I expected it had something to do with the strange new social networking function that Hotmail has been working on. Or even a desktop front-end for some Microsoft-centric Blog service.

How wrong I was. Well… not wrong, as it does write blogs for Live Spaces, but lets just say I was missing the big picture.

As it turns out, Windows Live Writer supports most popular blog platforms by interfacing with the xmlrpc. Recently I experimented on Drupal with whom I have a bit of a love-hate relationship. There were some issues using the Live Writer but like any good open-source community, there was a plugin to correct it.

Adding images is a snap, including some pretty nifty formatting that codes itself in html and gives a small icon representing what each option will do.

The image on the right here shows how you have the option to wrap text (this paragraph in itself a demonstration of that), change margins to give images a bit of space so as not to be crowded, change borders and more. The Advanced section gives options such as watermarking photos, rotating the image, changing contrast and modifying the display size (which you can also manually do by dragging the corner of the image, which by default maintains its original aspect ratio). And finally the Effects tab brings in options like adding sepia or embossing.

My favourite feature, though? Easily editing directly using the theme. Live Writer visits your site, analyzes the code, even downloads the CSS in order to allow you to edit visually using your theme. If you’re not incredibly impressed by this, I’m not explaining well enough so I will include another capture.

So as you can see, I am able to edit directly into the window and show exactly how it will look when it has been published.

As you can see from the window, you can set categories and tags (that are pulled in from your site and offered as a list of checkboxes) at the bottom left. At the bottom right you can set a deferred publish date (or even post it in the past). On the right is the sidebar which starts off with direct links to your public site or the admin backend. Then you may open directly from your site any previous post which you can then edit the same as any other post. Then a list of recent posts followed by some general inserts (which can be supplemented by some nifty plugins available by clicking on “add a plugin”). At the top right of the menu bar you can select the blog you’re writing for – you can register multiple blogs with the system and merely have to change the selection which automatically changes the look to match the CSS of the site being drafted for.

All things considered, this is easily my greatest tool right now, and I know of no equal. This type of awesomeness is usually Google or Apple territory, and I’m glad to see Microsoft has still got it.