As one of the bazillion WordPress bloggers, I’m always on the lookout for tools to improve my efficiency. And, sadly, Microsoft’s surprising new OneNote plugin isn’t one of them. While Microsoft does seem to have intelligently integrated picture attachments into WordPress (including the Media Manager), the rest leaves something to be desired. The initial linkage is a kludgey exercise. Fortunately it’s just a one time thing — so, though it lacks polish and may seem somewhat arcane, the directions can be followed by most that first time. I was more concerned with the slightly dirty HTML and slow Notebook/Page lookup in brief testing.
Ideally, the only HTML that should move from OneNote to WordPress would be items I, as the writer, took some action on – specifically header tags and links. Random div tags, some even specifying container dimensions, should not be part of the package. Nor should extraneous paragraph and page break code, as WordPress handles these things. It’s probably not a deal breaker for most and given more motivation, I could work with it. What really kills this implementation, though, is speed. Or, more specifically, lack of it. In the time required to hit the OneNote button within the WordPress visual editor, then slowly browse your notebooks and page (assuming they all pop in, which they weren’t always), and wait for it to render, I could have cut & paste the text of any draft post multiple times from any number of sources. A better GTD approach, assuming WordPress allows it, would be to publish directly from OneNote… versus sluggishly pulling post content into the WordPress editor.
Should OneNote not get it done with future development, it looks like a new Windows LiveWriter could be waiting in the wings. In the interim, I’ll continue to experiment with Markdown and the corresponding Jetpack plugin for offline and cross platform editing.