Thanks to Scott Dorman’s post I was made aware of the latest CTP release of Windows Live Writer. I have used Live Writer to compose my blog post for some time, but have been unable to use it at work because the Live Installer has been blocked. Mainly because it also contains the Windows Live Messenger install, which we are not allowed to use. Don’t ask, different story. The advantage of the CTP is that it comes in it’s own installer. Yea! Me! I can just wrote this post with the new install, I am in blog heaven.
There have been a lot of changes between the last beta and this CTP, including some much needed UI improvements and new features, including:
- Upload videos to Soapbox
- Image cropping and tilting
- Additional border styles
- Support for LightBox
and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
- Support for centering images
- Auto Linking
- Smart quotes/typographic characters
- Word count
- Tabs for view switching
- Improved category control with search/filtering
There are also some SDK updates that will provide a lot of flexibility for plug-ins, including a new set of experimental API hooks for pre- and post-publish events. For more details about the SDK, check out the blog post on Windows Live Dev.
Tags: cool tools, live writer