This is an 'unofficial' user manual for Open Live Writer. In the days of Windows Live Writer, there was never an official user manual for the application from Microsoft, just a bunch of websites with some how to's.
I decided to write this manual for all the people who might like to have an user manual for Open Live Writer going forward. It covers every function Open Live Writer has from downloading it from the website to the information in the About option.
If you aren't sure, Open Live Writer is an offline blog editor that was once called Windows Live Writer; from Microsoft. Microsoft abandoned the application because it didn't fit their business model for their 'Windows Live' blog platform. Thankfully a group of developers, that happened to love Windows Live Writer, worked with Microsoft to take over the project and make it open source.
Just so you know, this is a 'living user manual' for Open Live Writer; meaning it'll be updated as new features and functions are included with the application.
You can download it from here.
http://www.lehsys.com/open-live-writer-user-manual/
Open Live Writer – User Manual [CHM]
Windows Live Writer: How to Change the Default Theme Appearance [editing with no theme]
Windows Live Writer has the ability to allow users to see their blog as it'd be posted as they are composing, but what if you were having problems with that; what if you didn't want to see the theme, or if your theme preview wasn't working correctly?
The standard editor for Windows Live Writer; editing with no theme means there's no fancy theme background, no fancy fonts and the width of the composition area.
Forget the graphics of creating a post. What most bloggers need is to roughly see the fonts, the links, images and at the width the post is going to be published. And this applies to any of the Blogging services [Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, Etc.] that Windows Live Writer supports.
Windows Live Writer: Working with the Default and Theme Templates
At times it's hard to explain the issues of why Windows Live Writer can't display a theme correctly. It's multifaceted, but it can be explained with a little effort.
The support forums for Windows Live Writer ask these questions from time to time and it's good to have an example to draw from. In this post I provide the location of the default theme in Windows Live Writer and the location of where the dynamic themes are stored.
Depending on what the sore spot is, the average person should be able to read this and then make some small adjustments, or just create a BASIC theme for themselves.
Windows Live Writer 2012: Exploring the Registry Entries
Windows Live Writer is one of the most popular off-line blog editors the bloggers use. Blog authors love the ease-of-use and the ability to copy and paste images directly into a post and then be able to keep those off-line for reference and do lots of other stuff.
I've noticed over the past couple of years people are always asking about changing this setting or changing that setting, and it really just requires people to jump into the Windows registry, by the Windows Live Writer entry and start making a few changes.
Some people are nervous about getting into the Windows registry but in actuality there's no harm in simply viewing the Windows registry. I've gone into my Windows registry and poked around and take a bunch of screenshots of the settings for Windows Live Writer so people can see what it's settings look like before they start poking around.
Windows Live Writer: How to Add Images/Pictures to a Post
Windows Live Writer is a fantastic offline blogging tool with a WYSIWYG editor. It interfaces with just about any blog service [Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, etc.] If you're a blogger you'll find this tool incredibly helpful- and it's refreshingly free from Microsoft.
But for the point of adding images to Windows Live Writer, I thought I would do a quick post on it.
Auto-link Plug-in: SEO Smart Links [free]
I added a new plug-in to my website the other day called SEO Smart Links to help me with linking to external resources. During the composition phase of an article you sometimes miss an opportunity to insert a hyper-link to a resource. Windows Live Writer has an auto-link feature, but the truth is, it's better to make the change on the server so all the previous posts get the update too. You can't do that with Windows Live Writer.
Windows Live Writer 2012: Continuing To Use An App That Microsoft Has Forgotten
I continue to be a little bit disappointed with Microsoft's progress on any development with Windows Live Writer. It seems that Microsoft has all but forgotten about Windows Live Writer. there hasn't been any updates to Windows Live Writer in quite some time in the program still lacks the basic ability for a find and replace function.
Having to come to the realization that Windows Live Writer may actually be a dead product to Microsoft, you have to start thinking about what application you're going to move to next. Such a concept is fairly depressing because Windows Live Writer has been such a well received application in the blogging community. It makes the overall blogging process so much easier, if for nothing more than being able to drag-and-drop images into the blog posts and to be able to see generally, what the blog post is going to look like before it's actually published.
Google's Picasa web offers free image and video storage – unlimited
I just had a person contact me through my website [IM]. They were asking for help because they said that their Google Picasa account was over the limit.
I found this interesting because according to the documentation from Google, Google Picasa does not limit storage of images or videos as long as they're under a specific size. That means unlimited storage…
Here's the link/page:
http://support.google.com/picasa/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1224181
'…Free storage limits
Photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards your free storage.'
Windows Live Writer 2012: Anyone happen to notice this?
I was setting up my new blog today and realize that I missed something with the new [whatever] version of Windows Live Writer 2012…
A new version of Windows Live Writer 2012 is out and nothing is new- so disappointing
Microsoft released a new version of Windows Live Writer this morning and I'm utterly disgusted with what Microsoft considers a new version. Nothing is new with the latest version. Hell, even the name is the same 'Windows Live Writer'.
Microsoft said Windows 'Live' is dead; it's supposed to be just Windows Essentials Writer. What the heck are they doing over there? The last update to Windows Live Writer was the so-called improvement by removing the sidebar and changing the toolbars to ribbon GUI's.
And they had yet to add a 'FIND and REPLACE' to the application.
The latest version was just released and there's nothing new about the application. Microsoft is nice enough not to tell anyone 'what's new' about the new application, so this becomes a scavenger hunt to see if people can find out what's new with Windows Live Writer.
Windows Live Writer users: We're going to miss you Zemanta…
I don't know when Zemanta stopped officially supporting Windows Live Writer as a plug-in, but I was pretty disappointed the other day when I received an e-mail from their support forum indicating that Zemanta had stopped supporting Windows Live Writer and moved on to strictly web-based blogging services.
The fight to save Windows Live Writer
The bumbling dance moves Microsoft makes in their existence is just astounding...
When Windows Live Writer was released, I'm sure it was meant as a complement to the blogging service that Microsoft was planning to offer to its users/members, in the form of Windows Live Spaces.
Overall, Microsoft has a real problem with project concept and follow through.
Microsoft thought that if they purchased some blogging software, and set up their own blogosphere [if you build it, they will come] that would be a huge hit for Microsoft, but the problem is, Microsoft purchased a small company that was producing an off-line blog editing application; they simply thought that if they threw up a blogging service like Windows live Spaces, people would just come in droves.
The reality is that Windows Live Spaces may have been a noble concept, but the execution Windows Live Spaces was simply just not given enough attention. There were so many things wrong with Windows Live Spaces that people chose simply not the blog with Microsoft; there was just too many features that were lacking, too many options that just weren't there…
So Microsoft killed Windows Live Spaces…
Microsoft killed Windows Live Spaces and advised all their users to transition their Windows Live Spaces accounts and information over to WordPress. WordPress was Microsoft's direct competition for Windows Live Spaces and was on a daily basis outperforming Windows Live Spaces at every point… Microsoft's perspective was that there was no way for them to beat WordPress; they were simply going to throw in the towel…
But where does that leave Windows Live Writer?
I don't want a Windows Live account to blog…
Don't get me wrong; I believe Windows Live Writer as it stands now is a great blogging platform, but there's so much change with Windows 8 and the Windows Live Essentials packages being linked in to the Windows Live service. It makes me all very nervous. I prefer not to require a Windows LIVE account linked to my Windows Live Writer when I'm blogging to something else. I prefer not to have to use SkyDrive to blog, I don't want Microsoft to know every single time I open my Windows Live Writer application.
It's my time, they don't need to know that; they don't need to know what I'm writing about. I hope there's an option to NOT keep posts and drafts on the SkyDrive. If not, that's going to just drag.
Windows Live Writer: Inserting/embedding a MP3
Windows Live Writer is a fantastic offline blogging tool with a WYSIWYG editor. It interfaces with just about any blog service [Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, etc.] If you're a blogger you'll find this tool incredibly helpful- and it's refreshingly free from Microsoft. I was knocking around the other day and started working with a music creator; I found the process of creating music really nice and I wanted to share the music in a blog post, but Windows Live Writer doesn't have a music import/link or any kind of way to have users link to a MP3 and leter readers just listen/stream the music directly from the site.
I checked the Windows Live Writer plug-in site. I found a plug-in to insert music, but it didn't' work; in fact it caused my version of Windows Live Writer to crash completely. Windows Live Writer was not liking the plug-in at all [or maybe the code it injected].
But I did find a better way to do it…
I have used a plug-in on Windows Live Writer several time and each time, it just seems to do the trick...
Windows Live Writer: my 500 Internal Server Error -just weird
But then again, there's the crap like this…
I was running in to an issues where Windows Live Writer is having a problem with a specific post…
I could and have published other posts, and even older posts just for testing... my problem was showing up when I was making an attempt to publish this one SPECIFIC post.
Windows Live Writer: WordPress and using the NEXTPAGE tag
And what I noticed during this process of researching the ability and how to accomplish it and IF it'd be a good idea; I found that WordPress and Windows Live Writer don't have the option to use the <!--nextpage--> tag in WordPress.
Baically, if you go in to the WordPress editor and in to Windows Live Writer 2011; you don't have these options.
How to set a default FONT with Windows Live Writer 2011
Regardless of the blogging service [Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, Etc.], Windows Live Writer doesn’t change that default font, BUT you can tell Windows Live Writer to use another font when your composing your blog post… essentially overriding the default FONT from the blog.
How to edit a published POST or PAGE with Windows Live Writer
Windows Live Writer is a fantastic offline blogging tool with a WYSIWYG editor. It interfaces with just about any blog service [Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, etc.] If you're a blogger you'll find this tool incredibly helpful- and it's refreshingly free from Microsoft.
Windows Live Writer is simple to use and yet some user still have issues with some of the simplest of functions; possibly because Windows Live Writer has no user manual.
But this is how to edit a published POST or PAGE
Tips for tagging posts with Windows Live Writer and WordPress
And how important a tag is to a post, considering that Google says they don’t use tags, but the point of this post is to show how to use tags with posts, and some tips on using Windows Live Writer with WordPress [and tagging posts].
How to Publish a PAGE to WordPress
Actually, the function has been there for a long time. Sadly, and the purpose of this post, users normally don’t attention to the options of the application.
I believe this mainly because there’s no Windows Live Writer Users Manual; there’s no definitive way to look up, on the user’s own, if the application can do it or not. And the forum search doesn’t work, so here’s this…
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