Windows Live Writer 2009: Firefox v3.6+ BLOG THIS

It’s no secret that the developers from Microsoft for Windows Live Writer and the BLOG THIS plug-in for Firefox haven’t been keeping up with demand from the public.

It’s been over a year since the plug-in was updated. As you read through the reviews of the plug-in and you can see it’s just being completely ignored by the Microsoft Windows Live Writer team.

There’s a lot of bloggers out there that use Windows Live Writer to do their publishing, but as Firefox progresses and adds new features, the Windows Live Writer team hasn’t been placing much love on the much used plug-in; they haven’t updated it in a great while.

But now you don’t have to worry about that… there’s a workaround.

A recently updated plug-in for Firefox not only allows you to ENABLE the BLOG THIS plug-in, it also allows you to report back WHEN it’s NOT working.

Normally, the developers write a plug-in and it’s only compatible for x versions, but it may still be compatible, but they just haven’t tested it; this leaves the users writhing in pain until there’s a new release.

This recently updated plug-in allows the user to enable the old plug-in [which may still work perfectly] and then if it starts having issues, the user can click a button and report it not working- it’s a new MUST HAVE for me in Firefox.

The plug-in is the ‘Compatibility Reporter’.

It adds options to the add-ons page in Firefox.

So, from there, you can enable a plug-in or report it’s status.

In this example, I tested the Internet Explorer Tab plug-in in Firefox; it’s not working, but here’s what Firefox now says about it.

It’s disabled and shows compatibility issues, but I could still choose to enable it.

AND in the case of BLOG THIS for Firefox, you can enable it, and from my testing; it seems to work fine. Actually, I think it works better than fine; I no longer get double Windows Live Writer Windows when I press the BLOG THIS button in Firefox.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
LHenryJr.
www.lehsys.com