New Release! Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update with Windows Live Gallery
This update to Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) features:
Tagging support
Support for Blogger Beta
Improvements to categories
And more...(details below)
You can also now visit the Writer community on Windows Live Gallery to download more plugins and extensions for Writer. Some of the plugins currently featured on Gallery are:
"Blog This" Extensions for IE & Firefox
Emoticon, Eventful, and Flickr plug-ins for inserting more rich content
RESPONDING TO YOUR FEEDBACK
The release of Windows Live Writer and the Windows Live Writer SDK was a very exciting moment for our team. We are so pleased to see so many people not only blogging with Writer but also creating Writer Plugins. The Writer team would like to thank all of the people who have been using Writer and/or creating plugins, especially those who took time to provide us feedback. We have received some terrific input over the last month and have learned a lot from you.
As a result we have created a update to the Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) that includes changes that address issues that were reported frequently or severely impacted your ability to use Writer. You can see a detailed list of the changes that are included with the update below.
We are also happy to announce that there is now a Writer community on Windows Live Gallery where you can upload and download plug-ins such as the "Blog This" extensions for Firefox and IE that let you blog using Writer directly from the browser or the "Insert Event" plug-in that lets you paste events from Eventful using the Windows Live Clipboard and persists the proper event Microformat when you post events to your weblog.
WRITER 1.0 (BETA) UPDATE
Click the "Download" button to begin installing the Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update now.
If you are already running Writer 1.0 (Beta) this download will automatically upgrade your current installation.
If you are not running Writer 1.0 (Beta) this download will install a complete version of Writer on your computer.
The following is a summary of the changes in the Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update:
Tagging support
Support for Blogger Beta
Categories are sorted by name and support scrolling, plus improved support for reading categories from your blog
Improved startup performance
Paste is enabled for Title region and TAB/SHIFT+TAB navigation between title and body supported
Insert hyperlink added to context menu when text is selected
Title attribute in Insert Link dialog
Custom date support for Community Server
Improved keyboard shortcuts for switching views
Change spell-check shortcut key to F7
Add ‘png’ to insert image dialog file type filter
More robust image posting to Live Spaces
Improved style detection for blogs
Fixed issues with pasting URLs and links
Remember last window size and position when opening a new post
Open post dialog retrieves more than 25 old posts
If something you were hoping for didn't show up in this release please be reassured that we heard your suggestions, have them on our list for the next release. Please keep the great feedback coming!
Rebecca Levine
Program Manager, Windows Live Writer
September 27 9:34 AMAdd a commentPermalinkRead comments (29)Trackbacks (6)Blog it
Introducing Windows Live Writer
Welcome to the Windows Live Writer team blog! We are excited to announce that the Beta version of Windows Live Writer is available for download today.
Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service.
Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium. Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone.
Writer has lots of features which we hope make for a better blogging experience. Some of the ones we are most excited about include:
WYSIWYG Authoring
The first thing to notice about Writer is that it enables true WYSIWYG blog authoring. You can now author your post and know exactly what it will look like before you publish it. Writer knows the styles of your blog such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, paragraph spacing, margins and block quotes and enables you to edit your post using these styles.
Writer also includes other views including HTML source-code editing and web preview mode.
Now you don’t have to waste time going through the process of publishing, refreshing, previewing, and tweaking your post to get it looking the way you want. It’s all right there in Writer as you create your post.
Photo Publishing
Writer makes inserting, customizing, and uploading photos to your blog a snap. You can insert a photo into your post by browsing image thumbnails through the “Insert Picture” dialog or by copying and pasting from a web page.
Once you’ve inserted the picture, Writer provides contextual editing tools to modify size, text wrapping, borders, and apply graphic effects. Writer also allows you specify a smaller thumbnail to that will link to a larger image for detailed viewing.
Photos can be either uploaded directly to your weblog provider (if they support the newMediaObject API) or to an FTP server.
Map Publishing
Whether you are blogging about a vacation or a political conflict, maps are a great help in engaging the imagination of your readers. You can do this using Writer's ability to insert a Windows Live Local map directly into a post.
Even better is that the map can be customized directly within Writer - including changing the view to show road, aerial or bird's eye detail and by adding pushpins (including custom links and/or photos for each pushpin).
When readers click on the map they get a larger view on the Windows Live Local site.
Writer SDK
Already thinking of other cool stuff you want to insert into your blog? Good!
The Windows Live Writer SDK allows developers to extend the capabilities of Writer to publish additional content types. Examples of content types that can be added include:
Images from online photo publishing sites
Embedded video or audio players
Product thumbnails and/or links from e-commerce sites
Tags from tagging services
We can't wait to see all the things people cook up with the SDK!
Compatibility
Writer is a great client for Windows Live Spaces but also works with other weblogs including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others).
Writer supports RSD (Really Simple Discoverability), the Metaweblog API, and the Movable Type API.
We want Writer to work well with every blogging service out there. If you can’t get Writer to work with your blog, we want to know.
Stay Tuned
We will continue to post updates and other information on the product to this Space in the coming weeks. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or visit again soon to get the most current information on Windows Live Writer.
J.J. Allaire,
Windows Live Writer
This update to Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) features:
Tagging support
Support for Blogger Beta
Improvements to categories
And more...(details below)
You can also now visit the Writer community on Windows Live Gallery to download more plugins and extensions for Writer. Some of the plugins currently featured on Gallery are:
"Blog This" Extensions for IE & Firefox
Emoticon, Eventful, and Flickr plug-ins for inserting more rich content
RESPONDING TO YOUR FEEDBACK
The release of Windows Live Writer and the Windows Live Writer SDK was a very exciting moment for our team. We are so pleased to see so many people not only blogging with Writer but also creating Writer Plugins. The Writer team would like to thank all of the people who have been using Writer and/or creating plugins, especially those who took time to provide us feedback. We have received some terrific input over the last month and have learned a lot from you.
As a result we have created a update to the Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) that includes changes that address issues that were reported frequently or severely impacted your ability to use Writer. You can see a detailed list of the changes that are included with the update below.
We are also happy to announce that there is now a Writer community on Windows Live Gallery where you can upload and download plug-ins such as the "Blog This" extensions for Firefox and IE that let you blog using Writer directly from the browser or the "Insert Event" plug-in that lets you paste events from Eventful using the Windows Live Clipboard and persists the proper event Microformat when you post events to your weblog.
WRITER 1.0 (BETA) UPDATE
Click the "Download" button to begin installing the Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update now.
If you are already running Writer 1.0 (Beta) this download will automatically upgrade your current installation.
If you are not running Writer 1.0 (Beta) this download will install a complete version of Writer on your computer.
The following is a summary of the changes in the Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update:
Tagging support
Support for Blogger Beta
Categories are sorted by name and support scrolling, plus improved support for reading categories from your blog
Improved startup performance
Paste is enabled for Title region and TAB/SHIFT+TAB navigation between title and body supported
Insert hyperlink added to context menu when text is selected
Title attribute in Insert Link dialog
Custom date support for Community Server
Improved keyboard shortcuts for switching views
Change spell-check shortcut key to F7
Add ‘png’ to insert image dialog file type filter
More robust image posting to Live Spaces
Improved style detection for blogs
Fixed issues with pasting URLs and links
Remember last window size and position when opening a new post
Open post dialog retrieves more than 25 old posts
If something you were hoping for didn't show up in this release please be reassured that we heard your suggestions, have them on our list for the next release. Please keep the great feedback coming!
Rebecca Levine
Program Manager, Windows Live Writer
September 27 9:34 AMAdd a commentPermalinkRead comments (29)Trackbacks (6)Blog it
Introducing Windows Live Writer
Welcome to the Windows Live Writer team blog! We are excited to announce that the Beta version of Windows Live Writer is available for download today.
Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service.
Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium. Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone.
Writer has lots of features which we hope make for a better blogging experience. Some of the ones we are most excited about include:
WYSIWYG Authoring
The first thing to notice about Writer is that it enables true WYSIWYG blog authoring. You can now author your post and know exactly what it will look like before you publish it. Writer knows the styles of your blog such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, paragraph spacing, margins and block quotes and enables you to edit your post using these styles.
Writer also includes other views including HTML source-code editing and web preview mode.
Now you don’t have to waste time going through the process of publishing, refreshing, previewing, and tweaking your post to get it looking the way you want. It’s all right there in Writer as you create your post.
Photo Publishing
Writer makes inserting, customizing, and uploading photos to your blog a snap. You can insert a photo into your post by browsing image thumbnails through the “Insert Picture” dialog or by copying and pasting from a web page.
Once you’ve inserted the picture, Writer provides contextual editing tools to modify size, text wrapping, borders, and apply graphic effects. Writer also allows you specify a smaller thumbnail to that will link to a larger image for detailed viewing.
Photos can be either uploaded directly to your weblog provider (if they support the newMediaObject API) or to an FTP server.
Map Publishing
Whether you are blogging about a vacation or a political conflict, maps are a great help in engaging the imagination of your readers. You can do this using Writer's ability to insert a Windows Live Local map directly into a post.
Even better is that the map can be customized directly within Writer - including changing the view to show road, aerial or bird's eye detail and by adding pushpins (including custom links and/or photos for each pushpin).
When readers click on the map they get a larger view on the Windows Live Local site.
Writer SDK
Already thinking of other cool stuff you want to insert into your blog? Good!
The Windows Live Writer SDK allows developers to extend the capabilities of Writer to publish additional content types. Examples of content types that can be added include:
Images from online photo publishing sites
Embedded video or audio players
Product thumbnails and/or links from e-commerce sites
Tags from tagging services
We can't wait to see all the things people cook up with the SDK!
Compatibility
Writer is a great client for Windows Live Spaces but also works with other weblogs including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others).
Writer supports RSD (Really Simple Discoverability), the Metaweblog API, and the Movable Type API.
We want Writer to work well with every blogging service out there. If you can’t get Writer to work with your blog, we want to know.
Stay Tuned
We will continue to post updates and other information on the product to this Space in the coming weeks. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or visit again soon to get the most current information on Windows Live Writer.
J.J. Allaire,
Windows Live Writer
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