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Blogging with Firefox and Windows Live Writer just got better. Microsoft (on its Windows Live Gallery site) has released a Add on for Firefox called “Blog This” which adds a really nifty little icon to your Firefox menu bar. This new icon lets you choose to start a new blog post, or open a blog post in Windows Live Writer, but it’s the third option that I like.
The third option is “Blog This…” and what it does is open up Windows Live Writer with the subject line the title of the web page, a block quote with any text you have highlighted on the page and a link to the page. It also adds a toolbar above the post area where it says “Insert Link” so you can just highlight some text, click the button, and you have link. No more having to go back to the browser to get the link!
For me, this adds so much to my blogging style. For example, I went to the Windows Live Gallery site, highlighted the following text, and here it is:
The Blog This for Firefox adds a button to Firefox which starts a new Windows Live Writer blog post prepopulated with content and title from the current web page. Blog the whole page, or just selected snippets. Interacts with other registered plugins to parse and structure web content where appropriate. Blog quickly when you find something of interest on the web.
Source: Windows Live Gallery
The Source link was added, but all other links on this page I simply highlighted and clicked the new “Insert Link” box! Now I can do this for posts I want to write right now, or I can grab the snippet I want, save the draft, and come back to it later. Wow!
Hey! It sounds wonderful so I went and downloaded it, can’t wait to try it out…
Have you ever figured out how to time-stamp posts from WLW? If there’s a way I haven’t figured it out…and it’s the only thing I miss about posting directly from my blog. I’ve only posted from my blog about 4 times since I downloaded WLW…it’s a great tool!
:biggrin:
I have yet to try it with WordPress 2.1 to see if it still has that issue. What I do if I have posts that I want to set in the future is use the “Post as Draft” feature and then goto the Management tab of WordPress and set the Time/Date there.
Ah-ha. Haven’t tried that one yet…thanks!
So how do you schedule posts to publish at a future date?
Through WLW or through WordPress?
In WordPress there’s a box on the right hand side that is called “Post Timestamp”. Click the box that says “Edit timestamp” and put in the date and time you want the post to go live.
I really like this because I don’t have the time every day to write posts, so I write a lot at once and then schedule them to appear at regular intervals. That way you always know when a new post will be here, and I know that I can get a lot done in one sitting.
Hey, maybe I’d actually start blogging on a regular basis if I had something like this…. LOL…. probably not… but its neat just the same 😉 I might add it to my random list of free, useful software 😉
Who needs to blog when you can just write long comments? 🙂
You and Meg need to get on a project where you don’t have to write every day, but like once a week or once a month– hey… that’s like contributing at MInTheGap!
Well, at least it made your list!