If you’ve been using Microsoft Windows Live Writer since it first came out in beta – make sure to check back with the Live Writer website and get the latest beta. They’ve added a ton of cool new features as well as fixed a number of issues in the early releases. The current build is 145 and features:

  • Built in tagging support
  • Support for Blogger Beta
  • Improvements to Categories
  • Improved startup performance
  • Paste enabled for the title region (THANK YOU!)
  • 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 short cut key to F7
  • Add ‘png’ to insert image dialog file type filter
  • More robust image posting to Live Space
  • 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

I’ve been using this latest build for well over 2 weeks now and it’s great! It hasn’t crashed on me at all and it’s made my blogging life so much easier than dealing with the WordPress UI. Don’t get me wrong – I love the web based GUI and all but nothing beats a WYSIWYG Windows based interface.

However, my favorite fix has GOT TO BE the category dropdown menu fix. In the previous build that I worked with – the category drop down box would extend way past my screen if I had too many categories. Now they’ve added a scroll bar and a menu size limit so you can scroll to the category you want. WOO HOOO!

Check out the Live Writer website for further details on the latest build.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,