Today Microsoft opened up the beta for Wave 4 of the Windows Live Essentials tools including Windows Live Writer.  I have been a long time user of WLW and have come to really enjoy both the simplicity and the power of the tool when writing my blog posts.  I really didn’t see a lot that needed “fixing”, and in this release of WLW it looks like that is exactly what I got – not a lot that has been fixed.

That is not to say that a lot hasn’t changed, because from a UI perspective, it is almost completely different.  The biggest change is that the new live writer now proudly sports a fairly standard ribbon bar just like those found in Microsoft Office.  And just like in Office, I find that the new ribbon bar is somewhat of a step backward.  People are by their natures creatures of habits.  Once we learn how to do something, we don’t want to have to relearn it without a very good reason.