Sun weblog writer

Well after hearing some negative comments regarding the sun weblog writer, I thought i'd give it a quick spin; just to see how useful, helpful and time saving it might be – especially in comparison to microsofts live writer.

Well it took a few minutes to eventually get the download, either sun's servers were under a bit of pressure or to many people siphoning off my connection. But it eventually downloaded and installed without a hitch.

I looked for a new program, but nothing. Opened oow (openoffice writer), to notice two new icons. The first a little feather with an upward pointing green arrow next to it and the second another little feather with a downward pointing orange arrow.

So I clicked on the open weblog entry icon the feather and downward pointing orange arrow icon, to get the following pop up.

Clicking on either of them produced, well, a basic ui.  But unlike the many complaints I saw on the site, it connected and retrieved without a hitch, as can be seen in the image below.

But  rather than use that to retrieve an existing post and have it do something untoward, i created a new post - this one - to upload and see what happened. 

So clicking on the to weblog icon to upload a quick draft blog – this one – brought up the window (see image below), which was a tad basic but had the send as draft clicked.  Uploaded and then went to the blog to see how the first bit of the test came out...

Unlike windows live writer (which I must admit is a piece of software I find indispensable, I would even go so far as saying it's one of the best offline blog-producing bits of software i've used so far; it doesn't have the all in one place functionality i've become used toplaying with in wlv.  Just little things.  Like been able to easily change the displayed and click-able picture sizes by a couple of mouse movements, is an excellent implementation of resizing.

... and now over to the blog.  The sun weblog writer dismally failed.  First off, it published/posted to public despite the save as draft option been checked.  Secondly, the first image above failed to appear and paragraph spacing was doubled spaced.   Little things which wouldn't have made a great bit of difference four years ago, but things have moved on at breakneck spead!

So on this occasion the clear winner (splutter, cough, cough), is undoubtedly microsofts live writer.  Which, unless a decent open source alternative comes out, I heartily recommend.