Now that we have a new Essentials version of Windows Live Writer, I thought that I might show you all the brilliant new features available to you for displaying your pictures and photo’s right inside your blog. First of all of course you will need the latest version of Writer downloadable from here. Once you have set up Writer for your Space or blog, then just follow these steps to try out the new features.
1. Click on Photo Album under INSERT on the left hand side of the composing window.
2. Now you have the choice to include pictures from FROM FILES on your computer, or from an existing PHOTO ALBUM on your WINDOWS LIVE.
3. For this demo I will choose some pictures from my computer, so select ADD PHOTOS. You will then be taken to your Photo files and folders.
4. Choose the pictures that you want to include in your new PHOTO ALBUM and also inside your blog. Please note here that I could not get DRAG AND DROP to work and so had to ADD PHOTO’s by selecting them from my chosen folder.
5. Then you can give the album a name.
6. Then just click on INSERT, and the pictures will then be added to your Writer Compose page. They are displayed INLINE and as a SPREAD by default.
7. Now you can choose how they are displayed in your blog, so click on the pictures and notice the new choices open to you on the right hand side of the Compose screen.
8. Some choices are very similar to the ones for a single picture. You can now try out other ways of displaying the Album right inside your post, so lets try some out shall we?
9. Click on Your PHOTOS to see the PHOTO ALBUM menu, then click on the small black arrow to the right of the ALBUM STYLE window. Let’s select a different view. Let’s try GRID,LEFT. Now you will see your pictures displayed with a larger one to the left and the other pictures in the Album to the right of it.
10. Click on the Photographs again and try some of the other styles out until you are happy with how the Photographs are going to be displayed inside your post.
11. You can also have the text in your blog ‘wrap around the Photo Album in much the same way as you can when just inserting one picture. Also you can place the Photo Album in the Centre, to the right or to the left of your text. For this How to, I am going to place my Photo Album to the right hand side and then have my text ‘Wrap around it so let’s see how that looks shall we? I will also add some MARGINS to the PHOTO ALBUM so that the text doesn’t butt right up to the edge and make it look too ‘busy and untidy.
You may also have noticed that the PHOTO ALBUM menu also has a choice for you to SET ALBUM PRIVACY. So lets do that shall we?
12. Click on the PHOTO ALBUM to enable the PHOTO ALBUM menu, then click on SET ALBUM PRIVACY.
13. Here you can choose whether or not visitors to your WINDOWS LIVE PROFILE can see the ALBUM, and also set whether the details of your PHOTO ALBUM, such as camera used, TAGS, LOCATION and any descriptions that you gave to the PHOTOS are included or not by just ticking or unticking the boxes next to each choice. Then click on OK.
Once you are satisfied with how your PHOTO ALBUM is to be displayed, then you can go ahead and publish the whole post with your included PHOTO ALBUM to your WINDOWS LIVE space.
Anyone viewing and reading your SPACE can now also click on either the ALBUM pictures or VIEW FULL ALBUM to then be able to view the whole ALBUM in your PHOTOS on WINDOWS LIVE.
TG 
