Writer DevZone

How to Develop Writer Plug-ins

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:50:05 GMT

Catherine Heller (Channel 9) interviews Charles Teague (our Dev Lead) on Windows Live Writer.

Charles discusses the Windows Live Writer SDK which includes a managed API for extending Live Writer. He demonstrates the Polaroid Picture Plug-in and also shows how to build a "Hello World" plug-in in Visual Studio.

Charles Teague: Building Windows Live Writer Plug-ins

Technical Preview: Now Available for Download

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:19:34 GMT

You can now install the latest technical preview of Windows Live Writer. Here's what you’ll find in this release:

SDK Updates

This release is largely about updates to the Writer SDK, which now includes hooks for pre- and post-publish events.

PLEASE NOTE: These updates are experimental and the APIs are not final--we may make changes based on your feedback that break plug-ins that use these new methods. Further, you will not be able to upload plugins that use the updated SDK to Windows Live Gallery.

The biggest changes are the additions of two new plugin types: publish notification hooks and header/footer content sources. Publish notification hook plugins allow you to execute code before and after Writer posts content to a weblog. They can examine the contents of the post and have the option to cancel the publish operation. Header/footer source plugins insert headers or footers during publishing. Headers and footers are not directly editable by Writer users and do not appear in Writer’s editing views, but are visible in the Preview view (and of course, on the published blog post).

In the SDK Technical Preview you’ll find the following:

New SDK Features.doc – Detailed descriptions of the new plugin types. (Start here!)
SDK Reference.chm – Reference documentation for the entire Windows Live Writer API.
Samples – Source and binaries for two sample plugins:
- Twitter Notify – Prompts you to make a Twitter status update after publishing a post
- DiggThis – Automatically adds a DiggThis button or badge to each post

Known Issues

In our final testing of the Plugin SDK Technical Preview, we found a few issues we’d like to make you aware of.

The “SDK Reference.chm” contents may not load, due to security restrictions in Windows. If this happens to you, follow the instructions in “SDK Reference README.txt” to unblock the file.
For header/footer sources, returning null from GeneratePreviewHtml or GeneratePublishHtml will cause an error in Writer. Return the empty string instead.
According to the “New SDK Features.doc”, content source plugins can now read the title, body, and other properties from the active blog post. In this release, support for this scenario is incomplete.

New Features

You’ll also get an early look at some improvements and new in-product features we’ve been working on. To get more details read the blog post.

Send Feedback

We look forward to hearing your feedback about this release. The following resources are available to you for providing feedback to the Writer team:

For feedback about the Technical Preview, please use our Windows Live Writer (Beta) Forum.
For feedback about the SDK, please use our Windows Live Writer Developer Forums.

We hope you enjoy the Technical Preview!

The Windows Live Writer Team

Troubleshooting: Writer Fails to Publish Posts on Blogger (Fixed)

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 20:13:25 GMT

The Picasa Data API newsgroup has reported they have fixed the issue that was causing posts that contain images to not publish on Blogger (thanks Jeff Fisher for the quick response!). We have verified that the fix does addresses the issue Writer was having publishing to Blogger.

If you continue to have problems with Writer please post on our newsgroup.

Thanks to everyone for their patience and sorry for the inconvenience.

Troubleshooting: Writer Fails to Publish Posts on Blogger

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:44:20 GMT

Today, the Writer team learned of changes to Blogger that cause Writer to fail when publishing posts that contain images. When attempting to publish a post that contains images, Writer will show the following message:

We're currently investigating a fix for this issue and will post an update as soon as we have more information.

Thanks to everyone who reported this issue.

Windows Live Writer: Out of Beta

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 23:01:04 GMT

Thank you to everyone who tried out the beta releases of Writer over the last year and gave us feedback. Over 1.5 million of you downloaded our last beta release, and your input helped make Writer the product it is today.

Our goal from the start has been to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone. Today, we’re proud to announce that Windows Live Writer 2008 is now available!

Windows Live Writer 2008 (version 12.0.1366.1026)

Most of our work over the last few months has been focused on raising the quality of Writer and putting the final fit and finish on the product. However, there are still a few new features in this release to check out:

Easier Spaces creation and configuration
Whether or not you already have a blog on Windows Live Spaces, now all you need is a Windows Live ID username and password to configure Writer to your Spaces blog.

Spell checking in four languages
This includes three flavors of English dictionaries:

English (US, UK, Canadian)
French
German
Spanish

Generic AtomPub Support
Configuration and publishing to services that implement Atom Publishing Protocol 1.0.

We have heard from many of you about the pain and frustration in the last beta release when support for installing on x64 systems was not supported. We're happy to share that this has also been fixed and now installation on Windows Vista x64 is fully supported.

As always, we're eager to hear feedback and learn about what you like and what you don't like.

Later this week you'll have an opportunity to tell us in person. Members of the Writer team will be attending BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas. We’ll have a product booth with this release of Writer for all to try. Come by and chat with us!

The Windows Live Writer Team

Talk to us
Send feedback
Contact support

Windows Live Writer Beta 3 Now Available

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:09:09 GMT

We have received a lot of great feedback since our last release and have done our best to respond in this with this update. This is the last beta before our final release so please give Beta 3 a run and keep the feedback coming in!

Version 12.0.1277.0816

Some highlights of this release:

Insert videos using our new 'Insert Video' dialog
Upload images to Picasaweb when publishing to your Blogger blog
Publish XHTML-style markup
Use Writer in 28 additional languages
Print your posts
Justify-align post text
Better image handling (fewer blurry images)
Resolved installation issues from last release
Many other bug fixes and enhancements

Also part of the Windows Live release today are new beta versions of Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Toolbar, and OneCare Family Safety. Take all of these products out for a spin and let us know what you think!

The Windows Live Writer Team

Talk to us
Send feedback
Contact support

Changes That Affect Plug-in Developers

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:53:48 GMT

In an upcoming release of Windows Live Writer, we are changing the location that Windows Live Writer’s program files are installed into as well as the location of our registry settings. These changes could have an impact upon plug-in authors, though we have done our best to maintain backward compatibility. The following describes the changes in more detail and specifically discusses the impact that this will have upon existing plug-ins.

Installation Directory

In an upcoming release of Windows Live Writer, the location where Writer’s program files are installed will change. In previous betas, Writer the files would be installed to

<program files>\Windows Live Writer\

Starting in the next release, they will be installed to

<program files>\Windows Live\Writer\

Many plug-ins that are currently distributed simply install into <program files>\Windows Live Writer\plugins\. Though this isn't the most desirable installation location, we will continue to load plug-ins that are installed into <program files>\Windows Live Writer\plugins\. However, there are still cases where this change could cause problems for existing plug-ins.

1) At install time, the plug-in installer may validate that Writer is installed by looking in <program files>\Windows Live Writer\ . This validation will fail starting with the next release, and so the plug-in will not be installable. The installer should be updated to use this registry key to detect the directory in which Writer is installed into:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live Writer\InstallDir

This value will only be present when Writer is installed (Writer un-installs the key when Writer is uninstalled).

2) At runtime, the plug-in may rely on loading assemblies or other resources based upon the application working directory. If the resource is located in <program files>\Windows Live Writer\plugins\ and the current working directory is <program files>\Windows Live\Writer\plugins\ then the resource may fail to load. Starting with Beta 2 of Windows Live Writer, plug-in authors could install their plug-ins into independent directories and register those directories with Writer, as described here (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa738841.aspx). For plug-ins with external dependencies, this is probably the best model since you will then have the freedom to create arbitrary file and directory structure without risk of collision with other installed plug-ins. If you do continue to install into the ‘plugins’ directory, it would be best if your plug-in did not depend on the working directory of the current application to resolve full paths to resources or external dependencies.

Since the above scenarios can cause install time or runtime errors, these scenarios should be addressed as soon as possible. The changes suggested above can be made immediately and will work correctly with the existing version of Windows Live Writer that is currently available as well as the upcoming release.

Registry Key Paths

In addition, the registry path where plug-ins should register themselves will also be updated from

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Windows Live Writer\PluginAssemblies
or
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Windows Live Writer\PluginAssemblies

to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Windows Live\Writer\PluginAssemblies
or
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Windows Live\Writer\PluginAssemblies

We will continue to load plug-ins registered in the old registry locations, so plug-in installers should be updated to use the correct location when the opportunity presents itself. Since the old location is used by both Beta 2 and the upcoming release of Writer, plug-in developers should likely wait to make this change until the upcoming release is broadly distributed.

If you haven’t read the most recent version of the SDK documentation for Windows Live Writer, you may want to take a quick look.

Windows Live Writer SDK (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa738906.aspx )
Distributing Plug-ins (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa738841.aspx )

As always, we really appreciate the community of developers out there that are making Writer better for our users - thanks!

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to drop us a line!

-Charles Teague

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 Now Available

Wed, 30 May 2007 22:14:16 GMT

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

Talk to us
Send feedback
Contact support

Writer Beta SDK alert - avoid using ISmartContent.AddFile

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 01:18:25 GMT

It came to our attention today that the ISmartContent.Files.AddFile method has a bug that will cause the file being added to be re-written to a zero byte file. Use of this API should be strictly avoided by developers to prevent deleting the contents of files you may be using to test the plugins you are developing. This API is not used internally by any built-in Writer plugins, so it does not affect end-users.

In the next beta refresh, ISmartContent.Files.AddFile() will be marked as obsolete and will be replaced by a new ISmartContent.Files.Add() method. This will prevent future plugins from using this API so that they don't accidentally cause corruption of end-user files when the plugin is installed on un-fixed versions of Writer. Plugin developers interested in attaching local images to blog posts can still use the ISmartContent.AddImage() method. Developers who need to attach non-image files will need to wait until the next beta refresh is available so that you can use the new ISmartContent.Files.Add() method.

This bug affects Windows Live Writer Beta (build 109).

[Update 11/10/2006: the ISmartContent.Files.Add() method is now available for developers to use in the latest Writer builds.]

Writer Plugins Gallery

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 19:58:42 GMT

We're excited to announce that in late September, there will be a new section for Windows Live Writer plugins on the Windows Live Gallery that will allow developers to share plugins they have created using the Windows Live Writer SDK.

In preparation for the launch of the Writer plugins gallery, we're trying to engage the developer community so that plugins submitted by developers can be pre-approved for the gallery when the new section is launched.

The gallery will be a great way to let other users discover the cool Writer plugins you have created, so please participate in the pre-approval program if you have plugins you'd like to share!

Writer Plugin Pre-approval Program

To minimize frustration to Writer users when installing plugins, we will be doing a preliminary review of plugin submissions to verify that they meet the minimum quality-level and packaging requirements. After the review of a plugin is completed, we will send feedback to the submitter to let them know about any issues that need to resolved prior to the final submission deadline.

If you are interested in participating, please be sure to review the Windows Live Gallery content submission agreement. The preliminary review deadline is Friday, September 4. The deadline for the final review is Friday, September 15. To submit your plugin for pre-approval, please follow these steps:

Package your plugin an Microsoft Installer (MSI).
Before Friday, September 4th, send an email with your plugin MSI attached as .zip file to wlwplgns@microsoft.com. Please include your contact information and a short description of what your plugin does and how to use it.
After the plugin is received, your submission will be reviewed and you will be contacted with any changes required for approval as well as any other feedback or suggestions.
If, after receiving the preliminary feedback, further development on your plugin is necessary please resubmit your updated plugin by the final review deadline.
After the final review is completed, we let you know if your plugin has been pre-approved for the gallery. We will also provide any instructions for posting to the gallery.

If you happen to miss any of the deadlines for pre-approval, don't fret, you can still use the standard gallery submission form to kick off the normal approval process after the Gallery launches.

Plugin Submission Guidelines

To make the review process as painless as possible, please review the following guidelines.

Installation Guidelines

Plugins must be packed as a Microsoft Installer (MSI) that installs the plugin DLL into the Writer's plugins folder. Please see the "Distributing Plugins" of the Writer SDK.
Plugins that require .NET Framework 2.0 must provide bootstrap support in their installers so that users can upgrade to .NET Framework 2.0 as part of the installation. For more information about bootstraping .NET Framework 2.0, please read the following articles:
- Using Visual Studio 2005 to Redistribute the .NET Framework 2.0
- Use the Visual Studio 2005 Bootstrapper to Kick-Start Your Installation

Plugin Design Guidelines

Plugins should provide appropriate error handling and display messages
Plugins should not cause any unhandled exceptions
Smart content plugins should provide a sidebar control and handle resizing appropriately.
Plugin dialogs and controls should provide reasonable tab ordering.
Plugins must not contain any copyright/intellectual property violations
Plugins should not expose undue security risks

Learning More About Plugins...

There are many opportunities for developers to create Writer plugins that make blogging easier and more fun. If you are interested in learning more about creating plugins for Windows Live Writer, please check out some of these resources:

Custom List: Plugin Resources

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 23:43:21 GMT

Plugin Resources