The new Live Writer beta rocks

I recently read that there was an beta version of Windows Live Writer out.  I made a note of it as I wanted to make sure that BlogEngine.NET 1.4 (coming very soon) would work fine with the latest release of this great product.

I had kind of forgotten about the update until tonight as I was working through my testing list and came across Live Writer.  Anyway, once I got it installed and fired up, I was really pleased with what I saw.

The best feature as I see it is the preview tab.  Down at the bottom of the post entry window are 3 tabs.  Edit (which is the typical entry place we are used to), Preview (which shows you what your blog post will look like in your blog), and Source (which as you guessed, shows your html).  The preview worked perfect for me.  I was a bit shocked to be honest.

There is now some image cropping/minor editing as part of the package so I will no longer need to use another program to make minor tweaks to my pictures.  In addition, there are a few new image border options to give things a nicer look as well.

There is a bunch of other things that are new as well.  Lifehacker has a nice overview article that includes the rest of the new features.  It is worth checking out.