I’ve never understood the point of downloading a program that lets you make blog posts from your computer. I mean, if you have to go to the trouble of clicking around and opening up something anyway, why not just your browser window, where you have access to all your plugins too, and the ability to save on the server and edit from work (or home if you started an entry at work), etc?

Well, I heard a couple compelling reasons today. Enough, at least, to convince me that I need to check out Microsoft’s new offering. I’ll get into those reasons and their viability at another time, and after I have had time to draw a more well-formed assessment.

First Impressions

Thought #1: Instead of a clunky, ugly interface, it looks like I’m writing right on my blog. And not only did it auto-detect my blogging platform (/program), it accurately displays my styling (pink-bubble page-background and semi-transparent post-background with justified post margins, etc). Cool.

Thought #2: I’m not happy that in the installation proess, when it checked for my current settings, it posted a temporary test post without informing me it would do so. I could have switched off my mailings, but didn’t know I should have. Now I have an extraneous email that went out to all my subscribers to let them know of the new post, which wasn’t really a post at all. Not happy at all about that. But thankfully I don’t have a huge following or anything, mostly just people who know me IRL. So hopefully they’ll forgive me for that one.

Thought #3: I’d think spell-check should be automatic, as-you-type, and not something I have to pick out of a buried menu. And when I do take that time to dig… why does a “blogging program” not already have the word “blogging” in the dictionary?!? (Windows Live Writer marked “blogging” as a typo!)

Will have to reserve further thoughts for after I’ve poked around a bit more.