Comments on: 7 Features That Windows Live Writer Needs http://www.justinlloyd.org/402-7-features-that-windows-live-writer-needs/ A Mastermind's Guide to Personal Development Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:28:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Justin Lloyd http://www.justinlloyd.org/402-7-features-that-windows-live-writer-needs/#comment-51 Justin Lloyd Fri, 15 May 2009 08:50:22 +0000 http://www.justinlloyd.org/402-7-features-that-windows-live-writer-needs/#comment-51 Joe, thanks for the response. Appreciate you taking the time out of what is no doubt a busy product development cycle to answer a lone user's gripes. :) Often, understanding the reasoning behind the particular implementation of why a feature is the way it is, or why something is harder to do than it first appears certainly helps people to understand the development limitations some teams are in. I didn't realise that the "find" feature was built on top of Internet Explorer, I guess that would now make sense of "getting if for free" and only occasional usage. Of course, my post is a wish list, not all features wished for by the users are going to be implemented, the Universe will die before software developers can ever make the users truly happy. :) Joe, thanks for the response. Appreciate you taking the time out of what is no doubt a busy product development cycle to answer a lone user’s gripes. :) Often, understanding the reasoning behind the particular implementation of why a feature is the way it is, or why something is harder to do than it first appears certainly helps people to understand the development limitations some teams are in. I didn’t realise that the “find” feature was built on top of Internet Explorer, I guess that would now make sense of “getting if for free” and only occasional usage. Of course, my post is a wish list, not all features wished for by the users are going to be implemented, the Universe will die before software developers can ever make the users truly happy. :)

]]> By: Joe Cheng [MSFT] http://www.justinlloyd.org/402-7-features-that-windows-live-writer-needs/#comment-50 Joe Cheng [MSFT] Fri, 15 May 2009 00:45:20 +0000 http://www.justinlloyd.org/402-7-features-that-windows-live-writer-needs/#comment-50 Hi, I'm a dev on the Writer team. Thanks for all the great feedback! 1) Expanded Functionality From Other Microsoft Products The latest release of WLW actually uses Word's dictionaries for spell checking, though we haven't implemented thesaurus or other proofing. The other products are harder (in most cases impossible) to leverage but we're always looking for opportunities to do stuff like that. 2) Import Documents When copying and pasting, by default we throw out a bunch of formatting on purpose. We thought that most users would want the style of the content to match the style of their blog, not the style of the original document. We try to throw out the formatting that doesn't matter while retaining the formatting that matters, but obviously that's very subjective in some cases. If you'd prefer a higher-fidelity paste, you can do Paste Special and select "Keep Formatting" and we'll take whatever HTML is on the clipboard and drop it straight in. In most cases this'll be pretty close to the original formatting. Importing directly from a file would result in fewer steps but the fidelity would generally be worse, as we'd be the ones responsible for translating the data into HTML as opposed to the native program doing it (as happens with the clipboard). 3) Take A Tip From Microsoft Word There's a font formatting button on the toolbar in the latest release of WLW. However, we would rather you use Heading 1-6 and Paragraph whenever possible; this way when you switch your blog theme in the future, all of your previous posts will look consistent with the new theme. That's why we buried the command in previous releases, we were hoping users would learn to live without it. They didn't... :( 4) Built-In Scripting All of the plug-ins on the Windows Live Gallery website should work with the current version of Writer--we've never intentionally broken backwards compatibility. If you've tried some that didn't work, please let me know which ones. Also, you might be interested in my Dynamic Template plugin which lets you easily mix C# code with HTML: http://www.joecheng.com/code/DynamicTemplate/ 5) File Handling Where do you currently put these PDFs or ZIP files? FTP them to your server manually? In early releases we pulled this feature because we couldn't find a place to upload the files to (other than FTP which is not common among our users), as most popular blog services reject most non-image file types. (Now we have Windows Live SkyDrive, it's possible this feature could come back.) 6) Caching of blog posts This bugs me too, thanks for the vote. 7) Different Views Thanks for the feedback. Unchecking "View | Edit using style" (Ctrl+F11) is the closest we have to Draft view right now. 8) Synchronized Source Editing Thanks for the feedback. Bonus) Find and Replace Yep, if you notice the current Find dialog has an IE icon in the corner. We got the Find feature "for free" by building on top of the IE editing engine but have never had the chance to do a decent Find/Replace. It's something we're hoping to rectify in the not too distant future. Hi, I’m a dev on the Writer team. Thanks for all the great feedback!

1) Expanded Functionality From Other Microsoft Products

The latest release of WLW actually uses Word’s dictionaries for spell checking, though we haven’t implemented thesaurus or other proofing. The other products are harder (in most cases impossible) to leverage but we’re always looking for opportunities to do stuff like that.

2) Import Documents

When copying and pasting, by default we throw out a bunch of formatting on purpose. We thought that most users would want the style of the content to match the style of their blog, not the style of the original document. We try to throw out the formatting that doesn’t matter while retaining the formatting that matters, but obviously that’s very subjective in some cases. If you’d prefer a higher-fidelity paste, you can do Paste Special and select “Keep Formatting” and we’ll take whatever HTML is on the clipboard and drop it straight in. In most cases this’ll be pretty close to the original formatting.

Importing directly from a file would result in fewer steps but the fidelity would generally be worse, as we’d be the ones responsible for translating the data into HTML as opposed to the native program doing it (as happens with the clipboard).

3) Take A Tip From Microsoft Word

There’s a font formatting button on the toolbar in the latest release of WLW. However, we would rather you use Heading 1-6 and Paragraph whenever possible; this way when you switch your blog theme in the future, all of your previous posts will look consistent with the new theme. That’s why we buried the command in previous releases, we were hoping users would learn to live without it. They didn’t… :(

4) Built-In Scripting

All of the plug-ins on the Windows Live Gallery website should work with the current version of Writer–we’ve never intentionally broken backwards compatibility. If you’ve tried some that didn’t work, please let me know which ones. Also, you might be interested in my Dynamic Template plugin which lets you easily mix C# code with HTML: http://www.joecheng.com/code/DynamicTemplate/

5) File Handling

Where do you currently put these PDFs or ZIP files? FTP them to your server manually? In early releases we pulled this feature because we couldn’t find a place to upload the files to (other than FTP which is not common among our users), as most popular blog services reject most non-image file types. (Now we have Windows Live SkyDrive, it’s possible this feature could come back.)

6) Caching of blog posts

This bugs me too, thanks for the vote.

7) Different Views

Thanks for the feedback. Unchecking “View | Edit using style” (Ctrl+F11) is the closest we have to Draft view right now.

8) Synchronized Source Editing

Thanks for the feedback.

Bonus) Find and Replace

Yep, if you notice the current Find dialog has an IE icon in the corner. We got the Find feature “for free” by building on top of the IE editing engine but have never had the chance to do a decent Find/Replace. It’s something we’re hoping to rectify in the not too distant future.

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