microsoft, mobile, windows

Blogging with Surface

5 Comments

I generally post to this site using Windows Live Writer. Unfortunately this does not run on Microsoft’s new Surface tablet, since it is a desktop executable and Windows RT only allows Windows Store apps to be installed. So how to blog?

This site runs WordPress, and of course you can post using the browser. However I prefer to use an offline editor, and the only choice in this respect that I know of is Microsoft Word. I looked at this years ago and decided it was poor; but needs must.

One of the issues with using Word is that while it can connect successfully to the WordPress api for posting, it cannot apparently post images using the WordPress upload API – though if you know a way of configuring Word for this, please let me know. It does support FTP, so I set up an FTP server for this purpose. I did all this on the surface, though in order to make an SSH connection to the web server to sort out the DNS I resorted to VPN and Remote Desktop so I could use Putty, another Windows utility that does not work on Surface RT.

If you can see the image above, then it worked.

5 thoughts on “Blogging with Surface”

  1. Hmmm, I was sure that there was a native Windows RT WordPress application out there, although when I tried it the editor wasn’t up to all that much – certainly nowhere near as good as WLW is. May be worth a whirl though.

  2. It’s interesting that the Windows Live tools do not run on Surface RT, even though Sinofsky oversees the Windows/Windows Live division.

    Whereas Office, which Sinofsky no longer runs, is bundled with Surface RT.

  3. I guess the Mail/Calendar/Photos/etc. apps are (the early incarnation of) the new version of Live Essentials. If Office had made a Metro style version for this release it probably would’ve been a similar cut-down thing.

  4. I share your pain over Microsoft not moving Live Writer forward. I’ve used many blogging tools and Live Writer was so simple. The image integration in Live Writer was great…
    Now I find myself staring blankly at the screen…

    – Do I switch to Work the way you have using Word? (NO! I really didn’t like that experience compared to Live Writer)
    – Do I Remote Desktop to a machine that does have Live Writer? (How do I get Charms to come up on the remote machine?)
    – Do I leave my surface and go pick up my notebook?
    – Do I use OneNote to prepare the blog and then only post when I can get to a Windows 8 machine (by copy/paste from OneNote into Live Writer)?

    For now I’ll use OneNote, but when my new lighter notebook arrives, I’ll probably go grab it unless I’m sitting on an airplane… The person that body slams their seat backwards to recline didn’t even touch my tiny surface as I was typing. Thanks for the post and the ideas. Let me know if you become aware that Live Writer starts to gain momentum again.

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