Publishing to Blogger

Well, I didn’t have to look too far for inspiration on this one.  I’m sure it isn’t original, so I’ll keep this one short.

I hate web applications.  Yes, they’re wonderful and hip and the supposed ‘way of the future’, and yes, they have a long list of real advantages over traditional applications.  But I still hate them.  And if I’m posting to this blog on a regular basis, I’ll be damned if I do all that work through a web browser.

So I tried Microsoft Word.  Word 2007 has a great new feature that lets you write blog posts right from within Word.  Just choose ‘New Blog Post’ from the list of templates that comes up with you click New from the Application Menu (the big round button):

 

Word will walk you through adding your account.  It’s slick, it’s easy, and it’s powerful.  And really, there is no finer application for writing than Microsoft Word:

Unfortunately, Blogger isn’t one of the services that supports image uploading from Word

So I tried Windows Live Writer.  It’s slick, it’s easy, and it’s powerful.  I’m happy.  The support for managing the blog itself is better than Word because it’s designed specifically for that purpose.  The actual editing features are more like WordPad than Word, but that’s probably sufficient for most people.  It also has some nice features I’ll never use, like adding an entire folder of photos at once and inserting interactive maps.  Anyone still using Blogger’s web interface really owes it to themselves to give it a try; you don’t know what you’re missing:

One thing that took a bit of extra research was code formatting.  Often, I’ll need to include source code, XML, configuration scripts, and other text that needs to be presented exactly as it was written.  Blogger doesn’t let you do that very easily.  Windows Live Writer on its own isn’t much better, but there happens to be a great plug-in for it that does the trick beautifully.  It’s called Code Snippet, and you can find it in Windows Live Gallery or straight from the author, Leo Vildosola.

I’ll probably have more to say about this once I’m an expert in this subject (give me a week or two), but for now, that’s the sum of all my wisdom regarding posting entries to Blogger.