Entries tagged with windows live writer - Channel 10

Sync Your Live Writer Drafts With Mesh

sarahintampa — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:35:00 GMT

If you’re a blogger, then you’re probably familiar with the Windows Live Writer program, arguably one of the best blogging tools out there. However, because this program is a desktop software application, the drafts you saved on one computer aren’t available on all your machines…that is, unless you have Live Mesh. With Live Mesh installed, you can sync your Live Writer drafts between all the devices in your Mesh. For me, this was a no-brainer. I sync all my documents, so the drafts folder just came with the rest of them.

Those of you with a work computer, though, might be a little more picky about what files and folders are being synced from work to home. In that case, you’ll want to just mesh up the Drafts folder itself. The location of the Windows Live Drafts folder is C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\My Weblog Posts\Drafts. At work, just add that folder to your Mesh and when you return home, sync up that folder with the same one on your PC.

(Thanks for the tip, Rakki!)

What’s New With Live Writer

sarahintampa — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:38:00 GMT

The recent round of Windows Live betas included an updated version of Windows Live Writer. Since this is a tool I use daily, I’m always interested in updates and new features to this program. For the most part, it seems that the features included in this version are very much the same as those that were included in the technical preview which I downloaded a while ago. However, for those of you who didn’t run the technical preview, you’ll definitely enjoy the new options. For example, now images can be cropped and tilted, additional border styles for images have been added, support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others) has been added, and you can insert videos from and upload videos to both Soapbox and YouTube. For blog authoring, the new version now includes some useful features like auto-linking, smart quotes, spell check in more languages, and a word count feature.

Like the other betas, Live Writer also has a new look and feel, which is a big improvement over the tech preview’s UI. However, one missing feature which I desperately miss is the button that would allow you to easily display or hide the sidebar. With this latest version, you'll need to learn the keyboard shortcut F9 for this option instead. For the most part, though, this makeover is more of a cosmetic one for me since most of the features were in the tech preview. I am hoping, however, that the back-end will now support uploading drafts to Movable Type weblogs now, but I’ve been too scared to test this out live. (Does anyone know?)

Three Flickr Plugins You’ll Love

sarahintampa — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:11:00 GMT

If you’re a flickr user, there are three plugins that you need to know about: Flickr4Writer, Flickr4Outlook, and Flickr4Word. I had mentioned the Flickr4Writer plugin before when I blogged about some of my favorite plugins for Windows Live Writer - it helps you to insert flickr photos into your blog posts. However, thanks to gHacks, I learned that there are also similar plugins for both Word and Outlook. Like the WLW plugin, they give you easy access to your flickr photos from directly within the application. You can also use the built-in search feature to find photos from other flickr users that match the tags you enter in the search box. The Outlook and Word plugins only support Office 2007 installations (Word 2007, Outlook 2007). All of the plugins are available from their respective sites (linked above) as free downloads. Hey, does this count as software+services? I think it might!

Zemanta Plugin for Windows Live Writer

sarahintampa — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:10:00 GMT

Zemanta is a technology used by bloggers that inserts automatic links, adds relevant photos, adds links to related articles, and automatically tags your posts. The technology is available either as a browser plugin or a server-side plugin that supports either WordPress, Movable Type, or Drupal. However, I recently learned that it’s available as a Windows Live Writer plugin, too!

After installation, the Zemanta plugin will appear in the right sidebar of WLW where you can see the content it is suggesting for your post. (You have to write at least 300 characters before it will provide any suggestions.) The plugin works on Live Writer versions 12-14. You can see what version you run by going to “About” from the “Help” menu in Live Writer.

To try the Zemanta plugin for yourself, you can download it from here.

Put a Digg Button on Your Blog With WLW

sarahintampa — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:56:00 GMT

Frank Arrigo recently revealed his trick for adding Digg buttons to the posts on his blog: he does it with Windows Live Writer. If you haven’t seen that option in your version of Windows Live Writer, that’s because the option is only available in the recently released Windows Live Writer Technical Preview. Essentially, this release is a beta app, so if you’re not one for trying out products before they go gold, then you’ll want to wait a bit. However, if that doesn’t phase you, I would definitely recommend that you check it out – I’ve been using it since its release and haven’t run into any issues yet. Besides, it comes with cool tools like that Digg button as well as a ton of other new features (see a full review here). There are even great plugins available that can take advantage of its new feature that lets plugins run after you hit publish – like this plugin to send out a tweet (a Twitter update) after posting. To get your hands on the new Windows Live Writer, you can download it from here. The “Digg It” button will be available right from the “Insert” menu.

Tweet About Your Blog Post Directly From WLW

sarahintampa — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:59:00 GMT

Wow – talk about a cool plugin! I just read about the new WLW plugin called Twitter from Windows Live Writer over on Digital Inspiration, and I immediately had to install it. This new plugin for WLW users gives you the option to notify Twitter as soon as you publish a blog post. Of course, you could use a service like Twitterfeed for that, but then you couldn’t really customize your tweet – whatever you set up in Twitterfeed is how the tweet will be displayed each time. With this new plugin, however, you can fill in what you want the message to read by default, but you’re also prompted to customize it each time you post.

Installation is easy, too – here are the steps, (courtesy of DI):

Download the file Twitter.WriterPlugin.dll and copy it to the following directory: C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins\
Go to Tools –> Options –> Plug-ins –> Twitter Notify and fill it with your Twitter username / password.

That’s it. Tweet away, bloggers!

Get Your Hands on the New Live Writer

sarahintampa — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 03:31:00 GMT

Windows Live Writer has got to be, hands down, one of the most popular tools out of the whole Windows Live lineup. I know many a blogger (myself included) who can't live without it. That's why the recent release of the Windows Live Writer Tech Preview has everyone talking. The Windows Live Writer Tech Preview is really intended for developers, but that didn't stop a slew of bloggers from downloading this latest version.

So what's new?

For one, the UI - there are now tabs at the bottom that switch you from Edit mode to Preview mode to Source mode. This definitely makes switching quicker and easier than have to choose it from a menu option. The toolbar also got a refresh and the "Weblog" menu got moved to the top on the right hand side. For bloggers with tons of categories, a new category search feature will be greatly appreciated - making finding the right one much faster.

Also nice are the improvements in working with images - cropping tools are built-in, alignment commands now work on images, additional borders are available, Lightbox is supported, contrast adjustments and tilt adjustments can be made.

You can also upload videos from your computer to Soapbox from the new WLW interface, which is great for video bloggers.

And now, there's an official word count feature - something I only had via a plugin before.

For developers, there's an SDK available that comes with a Twitter sample plugin. (Learn more here).

If you're not afraid to get your feet wet with a beta, the Tech Preview of WLW is definitely worth a look!

Insert a Screen Capture to Windows Live Writer

sarahintampa — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:52:00 GMT

There's a new plugin for Windows Live Writer that will help you easily insert a screen capture into your blog post. There's no installer for the plugin yet (next week it will be in the Gallery), but it's easy to implement. You just need to download this file and copy it to C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins directory. Then re-open Live Writer and you'll see an "Insert Screen Capture" link in the sidebar. Thanks to Joe Cheng for this plugin! (via/img courtesy of Digital Inspiration)

Windows Live Writer Goes Portable

sarahintampa — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:14:00 GMT

Blogger Scott Kingery, who recently took Windows Live Writer portable, just announced that he has created a new version of that portable Windows Live Writer app that now works with U3. (U3 is a software launcher found on most SanDisk portable USB sticks.) However, even if you don't have a USB stick that is running U3, Scott posts detailed steps, including screenshots, on how you can make it work on a non-U3 drive, too. Cool! The downloadable file is here.

Wordpress + Virtual Earth = Awesome Maps for Your Blog

sarahintampa — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:09:00 GMT

A new Wordpress plugin lets bloggers easily insert Virtual Earth maps onto any Wordpress blog. Using the plugin is easy - you just install it to your plugins folder as you would any other, but the best part is that the plugin is compatible with Windows Live Writer! When you use Live Writer to post to your blog, the "Insert" --> "Map" option becomes a Virtual Earth map instead of a static one. To see an example, check out the plugin authors' blog or to get started, you can download the plugin here. For users of the latest version of Wordpress (2.5), the download is here instead.

CeBIT '08 - Stephan Walcher & Live Writer Blog

lorigros — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:57:00 GMT

Stephan Walcher ist Microsoft-MVP und leidenschaftlicher Blogger. Er führt unter anderem den populären Live Writer-Blog in drei Sprachen: Deutsch, Italienisch und Englisch und verfügt vermutlich über die größte Plugin-Sammlung für Live Writer außerhalb der Windows Live Writer Plugin Gallery – darunter Plug-Ins für Video-Einbettung, Integration der IMDB (Internet Movie Database), Übersetzung und viele andere Sachen – und kennt die deutsche Bloggerszene seit den Anfängen. Wer interessante Insideransichten über die Unterschiede zwischen deutschen und italienischen Blogs erfahren will, oder erfahren möchte wie Stefan ohne Internet über seine Tour entlang der Westküste der USA mit GPS und Virtual Earth bloggen wird, der sollte sich diesen Beitrag unbedingt ansehen.

Polaroid Picture Plugin for WLW

sarahintampa — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:36:00 GMT

The Polaroid Picture plugin is a Windows Live Writer plugin that lets you add pictures to your blog that resemble Polaroid pictures. With the plugin, you can tilt you picture to the left or right as well as add a text caption to the pic. With Polaroid Picture, you can also make the picture's background transparent and create custom sizes in the "Size" drop-down list of WLW. You can download the plugin from the Windows Live Gallery here. Gotta love the WLW plugins! (via meraTechPort)

Wordpress Tags Plugin for Windows Live Writer

sarahintampa — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT

I just keep finding great plugins for Windows Live Writer! I recently moved my blog to WordPress and wanted to find out if WLW could support tags instead of just categories. As it turned out, the support to post tags is not enabled by default, so there are some things that have to be done in order to enable the support to add tags when you blog from Windows Live Writer. (I found this tip at ruhanirabin.com)

To enable tags in WLW, do the following:

Download the latest version of Windows Live Writer.
Download the File wlwmanifest.zip from Wordpress Trac.
Unzip and upload all the included files with directories into your blog' root directory.
Update or Add your Blog in WLW from the "Weblog" menu in WLW.
Re-open WLW and, at the bottom, you'll need to click on the double up-arrow to expand the rest of the menu, which is hidden. This menu gives you access to all the metadata for your post, and now the keywords tags (WP tags) are available for you to enter in comma-separated list.

New Live Writer Feed Insert Plug-In

sarahintampa — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 05:28:00 GMT

From Josh Legard comes an alpha release of a new Windows Live Writer plugin that makes it easy to pull multiple RSS or Atom feed items into a blog post. The plugin can be used to insert RSS items or even del.icio.us links into your blog post. The download includes an installer which also installs the source code in the WLW plugins directory on your computer, if you want to delve into it. To get started, download the plug-in from here: http://ledgards.com/files/folders/610/download.aspx. After installing it, you'll see a new option to "Insert Feed Content" on your insert menu to insert a feed. Enter the URL of the feed you want to insert in the pop-up and click "OK." The contents of the feed will be inserted into your blog post. (via BufferOverrun)

10 Useful Plugins for Windows Live Writer

sarahintampa — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 09:48:00 GMT

Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish content to your blog. I've been using Windows Live Writer for a long time to write my blog entries for the various websites I author. The software is intuitive and powerful, but, every now and then, I found something that it couldn't do or that I wished it could do in a better way. However, over time, I've found the solutions to all of my Live Writer wish list items in the Windows Live Gallery thanks to the developers who have taken the time to extend the application via the SDK. The Gallery is filled with Live Writer plugins that enhance what Live Writer is capable of. The ten plugins below are my favorites and, in my opinion, must-haves for any blogger:

1. Digg This Plugin for Live Writer: The Digg This plugin inserts a "Digg This" button to your Windows Live Writer posts and provides seamless integration with Digg.

2. Social Bookmarking Tags: Using this plugin, you will be able to add automatic social bookmarking tags to your blog posts like del.icio.us and Technorati. (Check out this URL for an example.)

3. SkyDrive Attachment Plugin: The SkyDrive plugin lets you upload, manage and use a SkyDrive file within your blog posts.

4. Amazon Book Lookup Plugin: This plugin helps you locate books in the Amazon store and now includes a thumbnail image of each book found.

5. Insert Website Image: This plugin inserts a thumbnail image of a website into the Live Writer window.

6. Insert File Plugin: This plugin lets you insert a file into a Live Writer post.

7. Insert Quick Link: Instead of having to click on the Insert Link in Live Writer, you can now bring up those options just by pasting a link into Writer with this plugin.

8. Imtech Word Count Plugin: This plugin counts the number of words in the selected text.

9. Flickr4Writer Plugin: Flickr4Writer is a plugin that enables interaction with the Flickr service. You can browse by tags, photosets, or a photostream. After browsing, the plugin enables inserting the image reference into a post. (Since I use Flickr, this is my favorite, others of you may enjoy these other photo plug-ins more: Polaroid Picture plugin, Live Spaces Photo Album Plugin, or Live Image Search Plugin)

10. Code Snippet Plugin: Great for techie geek bloggers, the Code Snippet plugin lets you interactively review the sample code before inserting it into your post. It also allows for formatting and/or applying syntax highlighting to the sample source code.

Upgrade your Windows Live Services

brianjo — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:12:46 GMT

Last week, Windows Live Services software was released and upgraded. If you had betas installed, or just earlier versions of the products, you can upgrade them to the latest and greatest in a few simple clicks. Check out the Windows Live Services page here for the link:

Windows Live Services

When you run the installer against the earlier versions of the products, it will look something like this:

This is the easiest way to get updated versions of Live Writer, Mail, Messenger and Photo Gallery.

Windows Live Writer 1.0 released, learn all about it here!

Duncan — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:54:00 GMT

Ever since its first beta release in August 2006, I've been a big fan of Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Writer is a fully featured Windows blogging client with support for spell checking, WYSIWYG editing, picture uploading and custom plug-ins (with a full SDK). In addition to the expected Windows Live Spaces support, it also supports a ton of other blogging engines including a generic metaweblog api setting that I can use to blog on both on10.net and duncanmackenzie.net!

With the 1.0 release it seemed like a good time to learn a bit more about this app, so I sat down with Becky Pezely from the Windows Live Writer team and got all the details. Check out the video for yourself, learn all about this cool product, then scoot over to download the 1.0 version. Don't stop there though, check out all the great plug-ins available for Windows Live Writer and if you are a Flickr user, make sure to grab Tim Heuer's Flick4Writer plug in (that I mention in the video) and insert your flickr photos into Writer with the greatest of ease!

Galeria de Fotos do Windows Live agora com publicação para Flickr

Galileu — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:58:00 GMT

Muitos usuários pediram e a equipe da Microsoft responsável pelo programa de edição e organização de fotos respondeu. A ferramenta que fará parte da suíte completa de serviços Windows Live, chamada Galeria de Fotos do Windows Live, virá com integração com o Flickr. Isso mesmo, você poderá publicar suas fotos ao Flickr ou ao Windows Live Spaces direto do programa sem ter que entrar na Web. Detalhe importante, os metadatos e as Tags, ou Marcas, serão retidos ao fazer a publicação para o Flickr.

Uma atualização automática via Windows Update trará as novas funcionalidades na forma de versão Beta 2.2 dos serviços Windows Live. Quem não tiver a suite e quiser instalá-la é só ir ao http://get.live.com para baixar qualquer um dos produtos. No Brasil, isso inclui o Windows Live Messenger, o Windows Live Mail, o Galeria de Fotos do Windows Live, o Windows Live Writer, a Toolbar e o Family Safety. Lembramos que esses produtos ainda estão em Beta, portanto o desempenho e a estabilidade não é igual a de um produto final. A suite de ferramentas está disponível tanto para o Windows Vista como para o Windows XP com Service Pack 2.

Confira as imagens:

Fonte: http://blogs.msdn.com/pix/archive/2007/10/18/do-you-use-flickr-then-check-out-windows-live-photo-gallery-beta.aspx

Live Writer Plug-Ins

sarahintampa — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:07:00 GMT

On September 5th, the Live Writer team offered a new version of the popular blogging tool, Windows Live Writer. The new version, Beta 3, includes several enhancements, including the ability to upload to Picasaweb via Blogger, publish XHTML-style markup, support for 28 new languages, print & print preview for your posts, the ability to justify posts, better image handling, and some other bug fixes. However, one of the best new features is the ability to insert videos directly from Soapbox or the web. To insert a video from YouTube, for example, you just copy and paste the video's URL and Live Writer automatically generates the embed code.

However, some of us crave even more WLW goodness, and this can be achieved through the use of plug-ins for Live Writer. I recently found this list of great Live Writer plugins, which I bookmarked right away. On the list is one of my favorite tools - the "Blog This" browser add-on. "Blog This" lets you quickly post some selected text from the web to your blog. Also making the cut is flick4Writer, which lets you blog your flickr pics to your blog using Writer. Another plug-in, Social Bookmarks, lets you add social bookmarking icons (like digg, del.icio.us, furl, yahoo!) in your blog posts. And then there is the Screen Captures plug in, which inserts a screenshot of a webpage in your blog post. Even more WLW plugins can be found at the very cool site, wlwplugins.com or in the Windows Live Gallery.

Screencast : Windows Live Writer

bgauth — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 15:14:00 GMT

Depuis quelques mois, j'utilise Windows Live Writer pour alimenter ce blog. Ci-dessus, une vidéo d'introduction (...sur SoapBox :)) pour cet outil que tout bon blogueur devrait posséder ;) :

Télécharger
Installer
Configurer
Création de son premier post
Ajout d'addins
Utilisation des addins
Mettre en ligne
Archivage

Liens utiles :