Downtempo LLC: Our Fantastic Blog

I made the big switch to OSX about a year ago, and for the most part have never looked back.  Apple makes damn fine hardware, the best desktop operating system known to man, and the lack of a need for antivirus software means everyday tasks (especially IO bound tasks) can be much, much faster.

But there have been a couple of apps that were sorely missed.  Most notably Google Chrome (previously noted here), Visual Studio, and Windows Live Writer.

Now, thanks to the magic of VMWare Fusion’s Unity feature, I have these running in OSX.

Why do I love Windows Live Writer so much?  Clearly it’s not for the closed source software model, or the virtualization performance hit. 

Nay, I’m in it for those scrumptious HotKeys.

As a developer, I take my craft seriously.  I hate touching the mouse.  I type faster than I can think (yes, that gets me in to trouble sometimes).  And hands, once trained in the art of a few simple key combinations, are hundreds of times faster than reaching over to wriggle that clicky laser mouse.

Windows Live Writer has keyboard shortcuts for everything that you need as a blogger:

• Ctrl-K creates a link
• Ctrl-L inserts a picture
• Crtl-B for bold, Crtl-U for underline, and other familiar formatting combinations
• Ctrl-Shift-C to categorize your post
• and Ctrl-Shift-P to publish when you are done

When I jumped to the Mac platform I did a  lot of research and decided to spend $30 on MarsEdit, which is IMO the best blogging software available for the Mac.  Big mistake.  Inserting images in MarsEdit is an extremely painful experience.  You basically have to do any image manipulation outside the app.

Live Writer on the other hand, includes killer features like pixel perfect resizing, crop, and rotate.

And best of all, it’s FREE (well, free if you don’t count the $80 paid for VMWare Fusion or the XP license, but those are not single use tools).