DragonStyle

Page Support in Windows Live Writer

A feature in Writer that not everyone knows about (yet :) ) is it's support for publishing pages. This support is (to my knowledge) currently limited to Wordpress and Typepad. Writer does use the Wordpress API for publishing pages, so any other providers out there that would like to add support just need to implement the page portion of the API and then use the Writer Provider API to notify Writer that pages are supported.

If you are using Wordpress or Typepad today, you are in luck- here is a quick tour of pages in Windows Live Writer.

Blog World Expo

I'm here at Blog World Expo, currently sitting in on the Keynote address. I'm going to spend most of the day in the Windows Live Booth, which is #528, for my reader out there who wants to stop by!

 

 

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer,Blog World Expo

Windows Live Writer 1.0

The day has finally come and we have shipped Windows Live Writer without calling it a beta. Even though it's version number appears as 12.0.1366.1026 (I'm not sure I want to explain how a first generation product gets to be '12.0', but there it is) in the 'About' dialog, and even though it called 'Windows Live Writer 2008', it will always remain Writer 1.0 to me.

Joe, as always, has put together a great synopsis of the release featuring highlights and lowlights, and as should be the case, there aren't a lot of lowlights anymore. We spent most of the last couple of months ironing those out, and getting the product ready to be called Gold.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on and contributed to Windows Live Writer 1.0. Creating a product from nothing is an incredible challenge, and I am incredibly proud of the product that we have created.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer,Final

Writer Now Supports Inserting Video

For those of you still using an older version of Windows Live Writer, here's a new reason to upgrade to our latest beta-- native support for inserting Video. Scott has put together a great and full featured plug-in for inserting video, but video is getting to be such a basic way of communicating on the web that we really needed support built into the product, at least for basic video publishing scenarios.

If you haven't upgraded yet, video may just be the reason to do it now!

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer,Video,YouTube

Windows Live Beta 3 Ships

We've just shipped our most recent Beta of Windows Live Writer. Joe has a great write up of highlights and lowlights  that you can check out to get the complete run down. One of the things that I really like about this Beta is that it addresses some of our most requested features, XHTML support and Blogger image publishing support. But my favorite of all? The fact that we no longer munge images unless we absolutely positively have to. This means that when you post screenshots like the one to the right here, they can look picture perfect. It's a little thing, but one that can really get under your skin if you post images.

If you haven't downloaded it yet, I think now is probably the time.

 

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer

Paste Special in Windows Live Writer

When you paste HTML in Windows Live Writer, the application actually does some clean up (we call it 'thinning') of the HTML. The net effect of this is that most of the formatting is actually removed from the pasted HTML, and it ends up taking on the style of your weblog. This is great for pasting random HTML from the web or other applications, because now you don't have a bunch of mucked up formatting in your post.

There are times, however, when you actually would like a little more control of what gets pasted into Writer. Enter 'Paste Special'...

A Note for Plug-in Developers

If you have written plug-ins for Windows Live Writer, you may want to check out this post, which has a description of some upcoming changes in Writer that could affect your plug-in. We spent a lot of time and effort maintaining backward compatibility, testing the existing plug-ins we know about, and reporting any issues to the plug-in authors, but we may have missed you. If so, give this a read.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer,SDK

Windows Live Writer Customization

Since we launched Beta 2 of WLW, I've been keeping watch for the all the ways that people would take advantage of the new provider customization capabilities that we added.

Blog This In Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer includes the ability to blog about interesting stuff you find online. Basically, when you're surfing the net and you find something you'd like to write about, you can simply use the 'Blog This' button to launch Writer and pre-populate it with content from the web page. The great thing about this is that it allows you to reference content you find online, and it builds in things like a link back to the URL where you found the content.

Read on for a more detailed summary of the feature and it's capabilities.

Post Draft and Edit Online

Another little tiny thing we added in the last beta of Writer (but a little thing that can be incredibly useful) is 'Post Draft and Edit Online.' This is great if there is customization or fine tuning that you like to do using the web form before you publish a post.

A great example of this is if you have a set of Wordpress plugins that you'd like to set before you post. Just write your post in Writer, and when you're ready to publish, hit 'File > Post Draft and Edit Online', and Writer will publish the post as a draft and open it in your online editor. You can then do your fine tuning, press publish, and you're done!

 

Technorati Tags: Writer, Tip