Windows Live Writer – suggestions for improvement

Having just written 13 new posts with Live Writer I have the following suggestions;

  1. When I am writing a number of posts I expect the post I have just written to close after posting and a new blank post to appear.  Or at worst when I click new I expect to get a new window without having to close the previous posted one
  2. Allow a default category to be automatically selected
  3. Remember my last window size and monitor, its annoying to have to resize and move it to a different monitor each time
  4. Provide a paste special option for unformatted text,  I hate it when I paste text from another web page and it has different formatting to the post I am writing
  5. Provide a way to define the style for block quotes
  6. Support tab for moving from the title field to the main body of the post
  7. Provide a way to size images at their native resolution, and by default size them at their native resolution if this is less than the default image size.  At the moment too many of my images are blurred at the default image size
  8. provide a way to define a preferred image size and layout. 
  9. Change the number of recent posts displayed depending on the size of the window,  at 1280*1024 res I have space for probably the last 15 posts, not just the last 3!

updates

  1. It would be great if the save format was the new Word XML format
  2. Right clicking on a post in the recent post list opens it in Live Writer,  this is very strange, I was hoping for a context menu to open up that would include “copy shortcut” to the URL of the post on my blog.
  3. A single click on the text colour button should change the colour to the default, clicking on a drop down should allow the default to be changed. 

Otherwise, good job, no crashes or significant issues so far!

Steve Richards

I'm retired from work as a business and IT strategist. now I'm travelling, hiking, cycling, swimming, reading, gardening, learning, writing this blog and generally enjoying good times with friends and family

2 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:

    Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I have logged issues to track the suggections as appropriate.

    1. We have received lots of similar feedback about this. I have added an issue to track fixing it.

    2. Issue logged.

    3. Issue logged

    4. I totally agree. Writer does attempt to “thin” the styles out of the HTML on paste, but sometimes its better to just paste as plain text.

    5. I don’t understand this request. Writer uses the blockquote styles of your blog by default. DO you want to customize the blockquote styles for the Normal view?

    6. Issue is logged.

    7. This is the issue I’m least happy with in our image handling….this will definitely get fixed.

    8. There is a save button in the top-left corner of the image editing sidebar. This will save the size, margins, and some effects settings of the current image as the default.

    9. Issue is logged.

    -Spike Washburn

    (Writer Dev Team)

  2. Anonymous says:

    Hi, thanks for the feedback.

    As to issue 5. My preference for block quote is to indent and set to italic, if I could configure that as the default style that would be great.

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