What's different about this post? It has in it, a picture, and the text in it is also fully justified. These are two key improvements that have been added to the latest beta release of Windows Live Writer when working with Google's Blogger service. WLW Beta 3 also includes functionality for some blogging services to insert videos, publish XHTML markup, use additional languages, and various bugs have been fixed.
Windows Live Mail has also been updated to build 1365 with new features and functionality. I haven't as yet taken the opportunity to investigate these in detail; the changes to WLW are more significant at this stage. However as I am now using WLM at work I would expect to see impacts of the improvements that have been made in this product.
Microsoft has also created a single point install for these tools, which is a convenience for home users. Businesses and network administrators would, however, like to see full-file downloads, even MSI files in time, that they could streamline their administration with. I trust these will be available in the final releases of these products. Although there are other WL products available, these are the only two I am likely to use regularly, either at home or work.
Blogger users will find there is an additional step before you can upload pictures using WLW. You must go to the Google Picasaweb site and agree to their terms and conditions. WLW helpfully offers to open this website for you. Once you accept those conditions, you will see albums already created for any Blogger blogs that you have uploaded pictures to. You can then make full use of WLW's picture upload capability in Blogger posts.
