I finished up my first real customization with Windows Live Writer (WLW) last night.  The latest version of WLW gives blog software the ability to offer some custom features to their users and the BlogEngine.NET team is hoping to do just that.

The first feature I've added in is tagging.  By default, the Metaweblog API doesn't have support for tags only categories.  There are a number of ways around this, but none that I really liked.

 For now, using the WLW customization options, I've opened up the keywords property (You can see it along the bottom of my screen shot and open it yourself in WLW by pressing F2.)

Using the keywords field, you can enter your BlogEngine.NET tags (comma separated as always).  The tags will transfer both ways, whether getting posts to edit or publishing changes to existing posts.

Since I made the changes necessary to add tags in this way, I thought it would be helpful to view your tag cloud right inside of WLW.  I added a new button in the manifest and made a link to the tag cloud.  Now up the weblog area of WLW, there is a TAG button.  When clicked, it drops down and shows the tag cloud.

(Please beware the ugly button.  If anyone makes a better one, please send it to me, and I'll add it into the project.)

Anyway, since I added this in, I added tags to my site and went back and added tags to my previous posts.  One of the advantages to not posting regularly. :)  I'll be sure to put the tags changes in the indigo theme for the 1.1 release.  It needed a few tweaks to make it look right.

If anyone has ideas for other cool things to do inside of WLW, please let me know.  I'd love to get some other useful features added before the next BlogEngine.NET release.

After I got over the initial disappointment of the BlogEngine.NET error with the latest release of Windows Live Writer (WLW) and the lack of XHTML compliance, I've gotten more and more excited by the potential of the new manifest system they've put in place for blog software to add specific features for their users.

Initially, I couldn't think of too many things that would be great additions.  Scott Hanselman showed off Das Blog showing referrers from inside WLW,  While really cool, it didn't seem too useful to me.  It might be to others however.  I rarely look at referrer stats and when I do, it never has anything to do writing a post.

Anyway, I'm going to try to implement a few of the ideas I came up with for BlogEngine.NET over the next day or two, but was wondering if others had ideas of things they wanted to see from inside WLW.  If you have any ideas, let me know.

I've been ill for the past number of days and finally today feel like I'm almost back to normal.  As I tried to catch up on my reading this morning, the first piece of news in my inbox was the Windows Live Writer Beta 2 was released.

My first thought was "Cool.  I hope they added XHTML compliance."  My second thought was "I hope that didn't make any changes that will break BlogEngine.NET compatibility."

Well, it wasn't my day.  The new update does look nice.  So far, that is the main thing it has going for it.  It adds in the BlogEngine.NET icon next to my blog name.  The interface looks cleaner and it does seem more polished.  (Click the picture to see a larger view.)  Inline spell checking and a few other niceties were appreciated. 

To me, the big feature is the new weblog provider API which should allow us to do some very cool things for BlogEngine users.  It basically allow weblogs providers to add specific items for their weblog.  I'll be working on getting more BlogEngine.NET integration with the API very soon.  I only wish they had taken this API a little further.  There would have been some extremely cool things to do if they had opened it up further.

On the bad side of the update, I'm really disappointed about the lack of XHTML compliance.  The only thing more disappointing was that BlogEngine.NET has a issue with the update.  The issue is that on one of the api calls, some extra characters get sent in front of the XML-RPC request.  I had never seen this with the Beta 1 or any of the other tools we've tested, but that is what I'm seeing.  Kind of odd.  I've corrected it on my blog and I'll get the patch checked in this weekend.  BlogEngine.NET users are still able to post with the WLW Beta 2, but there may be some issues with it until you get patched up.

Overall, the beta 2 update was disappointing.  I still think WLW is the best API tool out there.  It has a lot of promise, but it could be so much more.  This update was a long time coming.  I hope the next update doesn't take as long.