Windows Live Writer update wasn't the one I was waiting for.

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.