Back to Windows Live Writer

Back in 2008, I experimented with Windows Live Writer. Those were the salad days when working at UCLA provided me with more-than-20% time. Now that I’m back in the commercial sector (or, alternately, the poor house) there’s trouble finding any time for growth and experiment without feeling like a sneak.

So let’s eek out fast with follow-up bullets, addressing the 2008 version of Live Writer with the current one:

• “Smart” or curly quotes now work!
• Semantic markup like code or kbd must be written in HTML Code View (Shift+F11).
• The concept of styles (from the world of MS Word) is still limited.
• I’m almost sure that my ancient MS Word custom dictionary can be used with Windows Live Writer (see “Edit the Windows Live Writer Custom Dictionary”).
• I’m hoping the “Set publish date” feature works with WordPress correctly. I’m optimistic about the plug-ins I’ve installed but no mention here until they get into my comfort zone.

My return to Windows Live Writer is another attempt to deal with the current “challenges” in my miserable life, specifically those mentioned in a previous post. It’s clear to the happy few regular readers of my Blog that I’m getting about one post a week published, down from five per week when my situation was more flexible and stable.

What’s out of whack? What on earth does Bryan have to complain about? Here’s the “nice” list:

• My web sites need to be upgraded, getting me out of YUI and into jQuery—out of SQLite as a first-class repository and into OData—out of so-so visual design and into something supposedly better, etc.
• More kinté cast episodes!
• My work currently fails to address the mobile space, which is just pathetic.

rasx()