* Windows Live latest version available

The latest version of Windows Live product suit has come out of beta and are available for download.

http://download.live.com/

* Windows Live Wave 3 beta products available now

The very cool, popular and useful Windows Live Products are available now as betas for Wave 3.

You can get more details from following link .. http://www.liveside.net/.

This post comes from Wave 3 Windows Live Writer.

Here are the updated versions.

* Windows Live Writer 2008

My first post using new WLW which supports uploading images to picasa web album for blogspot blogs.

* Windows Live Writer Beta 2 Released

Windows Live Writer Team has released the Beta 2 of the windows blogging client.

Beta 2 comes with better authoring and integration capabilities like inline spell checking and SharePoint 2007 support.

For people who are new to Windows Live Writer, its a desktop based blogging client which supports most of the blog hosting services like blogger, WordPress, TypePad etc.

It is developed using .NET and one of the most popular blogging client, mainly among community (like me) who think .NET is the only technology to develop software.

This is my first post from Beta 2 :-)

* Writing Plug-in for Windows Live Writer - It can't get easier

Windows Live Writer has almost become the de-facto client blogging tool on Windows to compose and post blogs on various blogging sites. It is more popular among Microsoft community as it is developed using .net technology. Its still in its beta stage but much popular than lots of production ready tools.

Apart from its simple UI, the most powerful feature of Live writer is its extensibility. There are already thousands of plugins available on web to extend your Live Writer Installation. As its developed using .net, the plugins can also be written in .net using CSharp or  VB.NET.

The sdk for Live Writer provide two types of content sources :

• Simple : for inserting custom HTML into post.
• Smart : for inserting html content with editing capabilities using sidebar.

The main steps in writing a Live Writer Plugin are :

• Create a new 'Class Library'  type of project.
• Include reference to WindowsLive.Writer.Api assembly provided with sdk.
• Add namespace WindowsLive.Writer.Api to the project main cs file.
• Create your plugin class inheriting ContentSource class.
• Override CreateContent method.
• Build the assembly and copy it to C:\Program Files\Windows Live Writer\Plugins\ folder. That's it .. done :-)
• Below is the complete code for a plugin which will insert following tags to the post :

Add to : del.icio.us Digg this Technorati

The source code :    

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using WindowsLive.Writer.Api;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace VikasGoyal.WriterPlugin
{
    [WriterPlugin("25522063-0a17-47af-ad69-cc284bcb80ef", "Add To Favourites",
         PublisherUrl = "http://dotnetwithme.blogspot.com",
         Description = "Add to Favourties for various bookmarking sites")]

    [InsertableContentSource("Add To Favourties")]

    public class AddToFavourites : ContentSource
    {
        public override DialogResult CreateContent(IWin32Window dialog, ref string content)
        {
            DialogResult result = DialogResult.OK;
            content = "<p><font face=\"Verdana\"><b><font color=\"#FF0000\">Add to :</font></b>" +
                "<a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post\">del.icio.us</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;" +
                "<a href=\"http://digg.com/submit\">Digg this</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"+
                "<a href=\"http://www.technorati.com/faves\">Technorati</a> </font></p>";
            return result;
        }
    }
}

Some related links :

• Windows Live Writer download
  
  
• Windows Live writer sdk download

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* Windows Live Writer : First Post

Hope it works :-)