So now that you can download Wave 3, we’ve seen Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Live Mail, now let’s look at Windows Live Writer:

A lot of what is in this new beta was seen in the Live Writer CTP back in June, like the SDK we have already discussed, and nothing is new from that point of view. Obviously the UI has changed to look more in line with the rest of the Wave 3 products.

Inserting videos has been a part of Writer since the final release of Wave 2 last year, and in the CTP, Writer allowed you to upload your own videos to Soapbox and insert them without ever having to leave Writer. Well, they’ve taken that one step further and you can now post your videos to YouTube.

On the Windows Live Writer Blog today, they announced the availability of the Windows Live Writer CTP. With this new build comes a lot of new features, which I will discuss in this blog post. So why is this a CTP and not just a normal beta? Well the main reason is that it features a new set of plugin APIs (version 1.1) and the whole Technical Preview is more intended for developers rather than consumers. Nonetheless, there are still some nice new additions for consumers.

In this blog post, I will go through the main changes that have happened in this release, and in my next blog post, I will go through some of the new APIs that are now available. More details after the jump.

Download

In what can only be described as a bizarre and non-sensical decision, Microsoft has decided to pull the plug on Windows Live Writer. Our insider sources tell us that because of the long delay between builds for the final release of the first version of Writer that it was deemed to costly to keep the project going.

This is going to come as a big disappointment to a lot of bloggers as the software has proven itself to be immensely popular due to the rich array of plugins available for it as well as ease of use and the shear number of blog engines it supported.

I can only hope that the guys behind Live Writer decide to write an open source edition, or something similar so that the masses can still easily blog without having to go to their blog to actually do it. So Writer might be dead, but if you want to remember the good times about the program, remember to check our posts about the program.

SL

Today saw the much anticipated release of the next version of Windows Live Writer having seen no new builds since November. This new release comes as part of three Windows Live updates, which are Messenger, Mail and Writer, which means not only the new Windows Live UI that we saw in previous screenshots, but also an attempt to give it a more Vista feel to it, as shown straight away with the transparent splash screen: 

Once the program has loaded we get the first view of the new UI, and if you haven't seen any of the previous screenshots (here, here), the new UI is quite different to the original beta:

So what else is new? Lots! They include:

• Adding new categories/tags;
• Inline spell checking;
• Support for creating tables;
• Support for excerpts and extended entries (unfortunately not in Community Server though)
• Sharepoint 2007 support
• Plugins become automatically enabled after installation, even if Writer is running
• Service specific features within the UI (a button to take you to your Windows Live Spaces' Stats page, for example):
  
• Probably the biggest new "feature" this time round is it's available in 6 different languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese and Chinese.
• A nice easy way to get to Windows Live Gallery to add more plugins (if you get an error when going to gallery, or can't see the writer section as an option, please read my instructions on how to get them enabled).

One of the nice little features I like is the Publishing Reminders (Tools > Options > Preferences):
 

From a developer point of view, there are new things as well, although not for creating plugins sadly, all of which I will go into in another post soon. All of the plugins should still work as nothing from the original APIs has changed (although if you are a developer, it might be worth just double checking). All of mine work fully, including the popular Video Plugin.

To see more of the changes, go to the full article.

Source: Windows Live Writer Team blog entry.
Download: http://get.live.com/betas/writer_betas

SL

You might remember that back at the start of March, Nathan Weinberg put a post up showing off the current internal build of Windows Live Writer. Well, since then, there was been nothing new that has been shown by anyone, until now.