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What do you Hate About Windows Live Writer?

That was the question that I was asked as I happened up to the booth at Blogworld in Las Vegas last week.  It was a great question and I knew right away what my answer was.  In fact, I had just signed off of Windows Live Writer a few minutes earlier as I blogged an article about the keynote address.

I am a Windows Live Writer devotee, but that does not mean that it could not improve or get better.  I knew this and so did the Windows Live Writer team.  When you are good and when you are smart, you can have the confidence to ask tough questions like that from your customers.

My response to the question included the following points:

• When I publish, it takes a minute or two for the article to actually publish onto my blog.  WLW goes to a white screen and I have to wait.
• When auto-save, saves a copy of my draft article (I’m set at 10 minutes) The program locks and the screen again goes white, while it saves the copy.  I in essence get cut off in my writing while it auto saves.
• After I have successfully published an article to my blog, I seem to no longer have a copy left on my computer for things like (ahem ah a Google Desktop search~ slightly embarassing moment there, but that’s what i use)

Their Quick Suggestions

Now they took my hatred seriously.  ;)  They also suggested that I download the latest version of WLW, which apparently came out a couple days before the show, while I was packing for Vegas.  They also reminded me that if I turn off the checkbox that opens the published article in a new browser window, it might speed things up. (You see I use Firefox for my browser and WLW calling Firefox may be a little slow).  Also, the blank out might come from the part of the program that saves a local copy.

Why I love Windows Live Writer

Now I use this software program everyday, almost all day long.  I am a Social Media Expert and a Problogger and this software rocks.  The only tool out there that even comes close is Scribefire and Scribefire just doesn’t quite work for me (Firefox plugin as opposed to stand alone).

There are dozens of reasons why I love Windows Live Writer, but identifying the things that I passionately hate (so that they can be improved) was a very brave question.  I hope they asked everyone the same question.

Separately, we also talked about one of my other favorite software programs, MindManager from Mindjet.  I promised to connect the Windows Live Writer team to the Mindjet team so that they might finish up the API’s necessary to enable a MindManager export to Windows Live Writer.(Already sent the emails out, and working that as I type this.)  Holy Cow (there was one of those at the show too) that would be a product that would definitely change my life!

Then I could sit down and kick off a brain storm session with a client, such as Delta faucets, come up with a strategy, kick off some ideas for articles, and export those articles with rough notes and links straight over to WLW, where I could polish them off with a good write up and pictures for export.

see for more Writer Zone: Writer will be at BlogWorld Expo