Is it Live or is it Microsoft?

The biggest news in the weblog world in the past week or so seems to be the new weblog posting tool spewed forth from the maw of Redmond. Still in beta, the Windows Live Writer seems to be getting favorable comment here and there. While it appears to have been created for Windows Live Spaces (no, I don't have a site there yet), and will probably tie into the ever-expanding Windows Live agglomeration in other ways, it has a surprising amount of support for other sites and back-end tools.

Yes, I'm trying it out. No, I'm not entirely sure what to think of it. As the screenshot here shows, it gives me a pretty WYSIWYG interface, even pulling my template down from the server for the background. I'm so used to typing in my own raw HTML that I'm switching back and forth between "Web Layout" and the HTML source to get things laid out the way I want them. At least it doesn't seem to produce the kind of horriffic back-end markup I've come to dread from other Microsoft products. I'm mildly afraid of the built-in "Insert Picture..." feature, until I know where the tool plans to store my graphics (I'm betting some service named "Live" is involved), so I'll stick with Flickr, or maybe my own gallery, for now. While it does have some metadata support, it doesn't give access to Movable Type's new tag functionality, so I'll have to go into MT later and add tags.

Nitpicks aside, this is a handly little tool, and I'll have to see how I like using it over time.

P.S. The tag formatting in the current (Purple Crush) theme I'm using looks like ass. I think I'll have to go in and dink with the stylesheet at some point if I decide to stick with this design.