The Writer team has been working hard on a new release and we're excited that it is now available for download!

This release incorporates a ton of feedback from our discussion forums and your blogs. Here are some of the new features you'll find in Beta 2:

New Authoring Capabilities Inline spell checking Table editing Ability to add categories Page authoring for WordPress and TypePad Support for excerpts and extended entries Improved hyperlinking and image insertion Paste Special Integration and Compatibility SharePoint 2007 support New APIs enabling custom extensions by weblog providers Automatic synchronization of local and online edits Integration with Windows Live Gallery Support for Blogger Labels Plus... New look and feel Available in 6 languages Improved accessibility and keyboard support Many other frequently requested enhancements!

Tables and spell checking     Adding categories Page authoring

We're also excited to announce that Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, and TypePad have all taken advantage of our new Provider Customization API to expose additional service-specific features within the Writer UI.

These APIs enable both rich customization of Writer's behavior as well as the opportunity to add new functionality to the product.

If you are a weblog provider check out the API documentation here and don't hesitate to contact us with your feedback and questions.

Final note: Along with Writer, new beta releases of Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger are also available today. Hope you enjoy the new releases and keep letting us know what's on your mind so we can make all of the products better!

Windows Live Writer Team

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Starting last Friday, Writer had problems posting to Blogger Beta. Since then, we've been busy getting a fix made and tested.

We've fixed the issue and have updated our Beta (to version 1.0.1 build 6 if you're keeping track). If you're using Blogger Beta, you should download and install the latest version of Writer. You can just install over your existing version of Writer, it will upgrade it automatically. Once you’ve installed the new version, you should re-add your Blogger Beta account and everything should work fine.

Sorry to everyone who was affected by these issues.

-Charles Teague

In our latest Beta update release (build 141), we added support for Blogger Beta. However, just after we completed our final testing, Blogger Beta released an update that caused Writer to not work correctly.

We have fixed the problems and have updated our Beta (in build 145). If you're using Blogger Beta, you should download and install the latest version of Writer. You can just install over your existing version of Writer, it will upgrade it automatically. When you configure your Blogger Beta account in Writer, everything should work fine and you shouldn't be required to take any manual steps.

Sorry to the users who ran into problems with this. Thanks very much for reporting the problems and for your understanding!

Charles Teague
Development Manager, 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

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:

1. Images from online photo publishing sites
2. Embedded video or audio players
3. Product thumbnails and/or links from e-commerce sites
4. 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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