Windows Live Writer 2009 has officially shipped, and it is just great. I am a huge fan, to the extent that I run VMWare on my Macbook just so I can use Writer. If you are blogging regularly and you haven’t tried Writer, you really should- it really makes just about every aspect of writing new posts better.
Read all about the new features here.
Congrats to the whole Writer team on a great new release.
I’m more than a month into my conversion to a Mac, and so far I’ve adjusted nicely. The largest issue for me was the fact that I didn’t know any shortcut keys, so I was using the mouse a lot more than I’m used to. I’m overcoming that, though I desparately miss ctrl+tab to switch between windows of the current application.
There are two applications that I haven’t been able to give up in my transition, however.
Application #1 is Zune. Yeah, I said it. I’m not being a MS fanboy- Zune is a truly great application (the interface is far superior to iTunes, really not even comparable), but it also has subscription music, which is a huge money saver for me (I waste a lot less money buying music that I end up getting sick of or not liking at all). So enjoy the rich irony of Zune running on my MacBook Pro, and my horrible brown Zune docked to the awesomely great looking laptop.
The second application is, of course, Windows Live Writer. I actually spent the first week or so on the Mac without installing Writer, and it was just too painful. Trying to use the web interface was a complete non starter, and there was simply no comparison between other editors out there (ok, now I’m being biased). A quick VMWare and Windows XP install later and I’m running Writer on my Mac, using Unity to create a first class experience.
The transition was really smoothed by the addition of VMware- anytime I need to I can simply open up Windows and do what I need to do (I ended up installing Visual Studio there so I can whip up quick utility apps in C#, for example). to any windows users getting ready to make the jump, I can definitely give you two pieces of advice from my experience:
After one small hitch during installation, I am now upgraded to the latest version of Windows Live Writer and it is great so far. Just like Joe, I too am a fan of the new look and feel (among other things). I definitely recommend that you check it out for yourself.
And in case you’re wondering, I can attest that it is a great experience running Writer on a Mac using the Unity feature of VMWare. If you haven’t broken down and started using that yet, please do so immediately.
Ok, so I’m actually thrilled, because this post is coming from Windows Live Writer, but running on my new MacBook Pro (thanks to VMware and the Unity feature). When I switched to the Mac, I was wondering what would happen with Writer, and so I actually wrote a couple of posts without it. Wow, did that experience suck. The horrible web form was just so far from acceptable after being used to using WLW. So, I am now back to using the real deal, and nothing but happy about it.
BTW, the fact that I can’t add categories from Windows Live Writer on Typepad is just killing me.
So I’m going through a bit of a transition in my life (more about this later). As a part of this transition, the focus of this blog is going to change. It remains my personal weblog, but rather than mostly playing around with features of Windows Live Writer, I’ll be doing a bit more writing about my current technical interests. Top of the list is the iPhone (I know, I should get in line).
Stay tuned for more on the rest of the transition!
We’ve just shipped another release of Windows Live Writer. This ‘Technical Preview’ is chock full of goodness, including some additions to the WLW SDK. If you’re a fan of Writer or have been waiting to check it out, now is the time.
I’ve included a gratuitous picture just to illustrate some of the great new features we’ve included.
Windows Live Writer is well known as a great desktop environment for authoring blog posts. But at its core, Writer is really an application for authoring HTML and metadata. Today, this is mostly done on weblogs, but there are a whole host of systems that would benefit from a desktop application for content contribution. Telligent is working on Grafitti, a content management system, and it sounds like Writer works great with it (likely thanks to Telligent’s work). Very cool!
Scott Lovegrove put together a good article describing how to writer a plug-in for Windows Live Writer. Make sure you check it out!
ContentSource plugins are very basic plugins and will only insert text into the blog entry. You can edit SmartContentSource plugins’ content again at a later time.
From CoDe Magazine.
[edit: fixed link to code Magazine- thanks Jose!]
Ok, now I'm just playing around with a great Windows Live Writer plug-in which inserts very nicely formatted photos. It also lets me edit the 'rel' attached to the generated anchor tag, which should enable automagic lightbox integration. Let's see!
And as a quick update, it worked just great. Very nice work.
A few users have asked about 'Blog This' support in Windows Live Writer. When you install Writer, we also automatically add a 'Blog This' feature to Internet Explorer. It turns out, however, that if you have ever customized your command bar in IE, our button will not show up by default. Instead, you'll need to add it yourself. Here's a quick and hopefully simple set of steps to do just that.
