I did a quick overview of Live Writer a few days ago. Since posting the article, I’ve continued to evaluate the product. It has started to grow on me — especially now that I’ve had a chance to further investigate the freely available extensions.
Most of my time was spent working with the Insert Code Plugin. This extension will format a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML, MSH, JavaScript, Visual Basic and TSQL for inserting into one’s blog article.
Here’s the Plugin in action. You can turn this cheerless, black-on-white piece of code into the beauty below in no time flat. Note that the line numbers and alternating rows are optional.
1: public string ModelID
2: {
3: get { return this._ModelID; }
4: set { this._ModelID = value; }
5: }
First, I want to give a lot of credit to the author of the plugin. It’s really nice work and this is functionality for which I’ve been desperate. The plugin is really cool and intuitive and thank goodness it is around but I would like to see a few things included in the next version.
[ In advance, I know I'm asking a lot here. Freely scoff at my suggestions, but this plugin is a quality product already so I've opted to first ask for the moon and then I got a little nitpicky. ]
First, the description says the plugin will “format a snippet of text.” Well, it does and it doesn’t. It produces appropriate font types and colors, but it doesn’t take a mangled block of code and tidy it up for you. Assuming my request for a “tidy this” button can’t be accommodated in the next release, a workaround would be to allow the tab key to be recognized in the editor. This might speed up manual editing a bit. Of course, this is my ask-for-the-moon suggestion and why can’t I just clean up my crumby code in another editor like VS2005 before pasting into the plugin?
Second thing. The nitpicky thing. The preview window is excellent, but what I don’t like is the refresh rate and how it was implemented. Since I’m hearing the infamous “form submit click” every second, I’m guessing this is the current approach. This clearly works, but the “click” is like a countdown to me and it makes me unnecessarily anxious. After all, I have all the time in the world to work my code, right? One could argue that this is more my problem than the author’s problem. All the same, I had to mention it. And maybe I’ll just have a couple of drinks before formatting my code next time?
One final comment: Code formatting wasn’t applied to my published post with the first attempt. I assumed it wasn’t a short-coming of the plugin but it was probably tied to how I am handling CSS on my site. I played around with the embed stylesheet options, but it didn’t do the trick. How did I get it working? I ended up copying the styles, generated in the plugin output, into the main JohnnyCoder.com CSS and it worked like a charm.
In my previous review, I mentioned the following: When including a hyperlink, I tend to copy the URL to my clipboard, click on the standard “Insert link in web page†button and associate the URL to the linked text. My current tool recognizes the URL is stored on the clipboard and 
automagically pastes it into the URL textbox within the link dialog. Live Writer doesn’t do this. As far as I know, no one else does this but it is such a super-smart feature that I would hate to lose it.
Well, wouldn’t you know it. The Insert Links Smartly Plugin provides this functionality. Unfortunately, this implementation isn’t saving me any time (as advertised.) Now, I have to drill into the Insert menu to add a “Smart Link” whereas the built-in “Insert Link to Web Page” button is easily available on the exposed toolbar. It’s too bad the plugin couldn’t leverage the existing toolbar option.
My next minor issues are the available properties. The out-of-the-box functionality allows one to set four elements: Link Text, Link URL, Rel and the option to Open in a New Window. The “Smart” implementation one-ups the MS version because it lets you add a Title, but the “Open in New Window” option is lacking. To their credit, the author of the plugin did opt to open the link in a new window by default which is a correct assumption over 90% of the time, but what about the rest of the time?
So, I’m back where I started — hoping that Live Writer includes this feature with their next release. In the meantime, there is a “Submit Feedback” link on the “Smart Link” dialog. I think I will do so.
Last but not least is the Insert Spaces Emoticons Plugin. I’m a sucker for these silly icons. They actually move, you know! Well, this plugin allows you to select one of the many Live Spaces emoticons and put them onto your blog. The best thing about this plugin is it’s not limited to just Live Spaces. You can use this plugin for any type of blog and still have the Spaces’ emoticons on it.
To the left, I’ve included my favorite emoticon. Why it is my favorite? Well, it’s called “Speedy” and this is one of the few that isn’t animated. Dare to be different, Speedy.
Browse the gallery and you are sure to find other extensions of your liking. That being said, there aren’t too many plugins out there yet. If you want to contribute, download the Windows Live Writer SDK and submit your stuff. Enjoy.