Review: Microsoft Live Writer blogging software

Blogging is a fun way to share news and opinions but creating blogs using the standard web-based editors can be frustrating.

Many of the tools that we take for granted when using Microsoft Word or another word processor are missing.

Word 2007 can in fact be used as a blog editor but at £90 it is a very expensive choice. The same company's Live Writer is a standalone program for creating blog posts, which comes with a spell checker.

Live Writer might be designed for blogging with Microsoft's Live blogs, but it is quite capable of working with other services as well, such as Typepad, Wordpress and Blogger. More than one blog can be set up so it quite convenient for those who are working on several blogs, even using different blogging services for each.

Setting up a blog for editing is as simple as providing the link, username and password - Live Writer will detect the other settings automatically. It then downloads the style of the blog so that the proper formatting is displayed while posts are edited. A full preview shows how the new post will look, alongside existing posts.

Drafts are saved on the computer, which is good when you are composing offline but annoying if you need to edit the draft from another computer. Images are automatically resized to fit in the blog's width, but the default options for images don't look too good.

As well as images, maps from Microsoft's Virtual Earth and videos can be inserted into the text. Other advanced features include adding tags for the blog and automatically telling blog search engines such as Technorati that a new post has gone up.

Live Writer's features can be improved with downloadable plug-ins, such as a button to activate it from Firefox or better integration with websites such as Flickr.

Installation is a little complicated because Live Writer is part of the Live series, so the installer offers to install all sorts of other software. It's easy to disable this, though. As a free blogging tool, Live Writer has a lot to offer.

Vista compatibility: Yes