Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Blogging on the Surface

Pardon the pun in the title, but I was reading a blog post by Barb Bowman, and I wanted to comment on it. Since her blog is closed for comments, I thought I’d make them here.

You see, Barb has just purchased a Surface RT tablet, and she’s hoping that it will be easier to make posts to her blog, using the Surface RT and Word 2013, than from her iPad. According to her, using her iPad and the Blogsy App is “inelegant”.

I have the feeling that trying to use Word 2013 to do blogging is equally inelegant. It may be a fine Word Processor, but an elegant tool for writing blog posts, it is not.

Microsoft already has a very fine tool for blogging: Windows Live Writer – and it’s free. It works with a wide range of blogging platforms (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and others) and works with your blog’s layout and themes. I use it for my blog.

Word 2013, by comparison, is like trying to use a rock to paint the Mona Lisa.

The trouble is, the Surface RT won’t run Windows Live Writer – it’s a traditional Windows application and these don’t work on the Windows RT operating system. Oops.

Microsoft does provide a version of Word 2013 that runs on the Surface RT, but quite frankly, I think Barb would be better off using the WordPress App that she can get for free from the Windows 8 Store.

Categories:

3 responses to “Blogging on the Surface”

  1. technogran Avatar
    technogran

    Totally agree Geoff. Tried out Word to write a blog post and what a palaver! For a start, you can’t see how your formatting, pictures etc are going to look (preview) as you can with Writer, so when I published, the font was far too large, and my photo not presented properly in relation to the blog post size, photos and pictures are a nightmare as it places them inside your post at the largest size by default, and there is no way to alter this at all. As you say, its like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and it its Microsofts intentions to all get us bloggers moving to Word, then they are onto a looser. But we all need to fight for Writer’s survival, many bloggers are not aware of it as Microsoft tend not to ‘advertise’ its existence, so its up to us Writer fans to blast out its virtues to all and sundry! #SaveourWriter!

    Reply
  2. barb Avatar
    barb

    I mentioned and bemoaned the loss of WLW in that post. And have made a lot of noise elsewhere, but I don’t see any chance that an RT version will appear. I don’t find Word 2013 RT to be good for blogging either, but I had hoped it would at least do what it was supposed to do.

    Reply
    1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
      Geoff Coupe

      Hi Barb, thanks for dropping by. I don’t think there’s a chance of a Windows RT version of WLW either. What I’m more afraid of, like other fans of WLW, is that Microsoft will drop WLW itself in the not too distant future.

      If Microsoft continue to develop the functionality of their Modern apps (e.g. Mail and Photos) to the extent that they finally match what we currently have in Windows Live Mail and Windows Photo Gallery, then I would not be at all surprised if they just drop the whole Windows Essentials suite, and bang goes WLW…

      I think the writing is on the wall with the news that Windows Live Messenger has been dropped because Skype is now seen as the way forward in the IM space. Rinse and repeat with the other members of the Windows Essentials suite.

      Reply

Leave a reply to barb Cancel reply

More posts