Windows Live Writer

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A screenshot of the Windows Live Writer program in 2011.

Windows Live Writer was a desktop blog-publishing application developed by Microsoft and distributed as part of the Windows Live suite of apps. The last major release came out in 2012, and by January 2017 the software was completely discontinued.

An open source fork of Windows Live Writer was released as Open Live Writer on December 9, 2015.

Functionality

The software featured simple authoring, photo-publishing and map-publishing functionality, and was compatible with Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint blogs, Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, WordPress, Telligent Community, PBlogs.gr, JournalHome, the MetaWeblog API, the Movable Type API, Blogengine, Squarespace, and all blogs that supported Really Simple Discovery.

Windows Live Writer introduced the Provider Customization API that enables rich customization of Windows Live Writer's behavior as well as the opportunity to add new functionality to the product. Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, and TypePad all took advantage of this API to expose additional service-specific features within Windows Live Writer.

Windows Live Writer was localized to 48 different languages.

History

Windows Live Writer was based on Onfolio Writer, a product Microsoft obtained from the acquisition of Onfolio.

On November 6, 2007, version 2008 was released. It includes inline spell checking, table editing, ability to add categories, page authoring for WordPress and TypePad, support for excerpts and extended entries, improved hyperlinking and image insertion, and a new "Paste Special" function. It also improved integration to SharePoint 2007 support, new APIs enabling custom extensions by weblog providers, automatic synchronization of local and online edits, integration with Windows Live Photo Gallery, and support for "Blogger Labels".

On December 15, 2008, Windows Live Writer version 2009 was released as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.

Released on September 30, 2010, Windows Live Writer 2011 introduced the Ribbon interface to the application.

On August 7, 2012, Windows Live Writer 2012 was released as part of the Windows Essentials 2012 suite. Version 2012 became the last major update to both the Windows Essentials suite and the Writer app.

On January 10, 2017, Windows Essentials 2012 and all its services, including Windows Live Writer, reached the end of support, meaning they would no longer receive new features, bug fixes, or security updates. The software itself is no longer available for download from Microsoft.

External links

• writer.live.com at the Wayback Machine