Beck's Microsoft Blog: Writer

Windows Live Writer Beta 3

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 23:34:10 GMT

Today, the Windows Live Writer team released Beta 3.

While Beta 2 was more about adding functionality to Writer and putting in "juicy" features, Beta 3 is more about rounding out the quality of the product. Joe (one of our developers) does a really good job describing our Beta 3 work in more detail.

This is the last of our beta releases before shipping the "final" 1.0 (or 2.0) version, so now is the time to tell us what you think.

Meet Windows Live Writer Beta 2

Thu, 31 May 2007 00:38:48 GMT

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 is now available for download. You can get all the details on our team blog.

This was a long release cycle for our team where we took the opportunity to invest in foundational pieces that make blogging easy and accessible for even more people. This includes work we did to make Writer available in 6 languages:

English
German
French
Japanese
Chinese
Spanish

This also includes accessibility support for keyboards and screen readers.

We also got a lot of feedback on our newsgroups, and by reading your blogs, and think you'll find that much of that has been addressed with features like: table authoring, in-line spell checking and better plug-in integration.

What's next for Writer?

There IS a next release of Writer - that I can say for sure.
We're already plowing ahead on that and will be listening to the feedback we get from this release. We'd love to hear about your experience: good or bad. Here are the different ways you can share your thoughts:

Customer Forums - this is our discussion form where you can talk with other Writer customers and the Writer team
Feedback - praise or punish us; this is anonymous and we can't reply to you
Support - if you have a technical issue you can email our support center for help
Developers - a whole community site with links to dev documentation and a discussion forum for developers

On a personal note, I thought the first release of Writer was exciting and I'm even more excited this time.
I'll be watching the feedback closely.

Now on to the next release...

Windows Live Writer gets a new URL

Tue, 08 May 2007 16:30:15 GMT

Today, when you visit http://get.live.com/betas/ Windows Live Writer is the featured application (which means we get more space at the top):

Now you can also directly navigate to the Writer product page directly at: http://writer.live.com/. It features links to the Writer Team Blog and the Writer feedback forum.

This is a great improvement for the Writer team because we have not had a good product page to reference since the first release in August 2006. As a result, most people have linked their blog posts either to the Writer Team Blog or directly the Writer MSI. This has bumped the Writer MSI to the top of the search results generated for "Windows Live Writer" and "Live Writer", which could be a unexpected or jarring experience for those searching the Internet for Writer and the first link they click on starts installing the application. Now that it is possible to directly reference http://writer.live.com/ the hope is that that becomes the URL of choice when linking to Writer on the web.

Shipping Windows Live Writer

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 19:16:47 GMT

It's amazing how products make it out into the world these days. I've been shipping products now for over 8 years and, for the most part, it feels like "the same stuff, different day"; every case-study on project management repeat themselves in recognizable ways within each release cycle. And yet, each product release never seems to be predictable or go as planned no matter how strictly any team follows the teachings and philosophies of "Project Management". And Windows Live Writer is no exception.

The most interesting part is that Writer is the only product I've worked on where the release-date actually got MOVED IN! That's right, moved in. You always hear about products "slipping out" their dates as they struggle to get out the door - trying to balance the right choices for the customer with product quality and business demands (ahem, Vista). But rarely, at least in my experience, do you hear about product dates "slipping in" their dates. That's what happened with Writer. Admittedly, we did "slip out" our release date early in the project when we revised what was going to be released in our first Beta. After that initial adjustment, we stuck to that date and were on track. So on track that when we had to adjust our dates in to accommodate an internal dependency - we did. And then when Writer was leaked and we needed to announce even earlier - we did. In all, the release date was moved in by nearly 4 days. And in the world of web-releases, that seemed like a lot.

Like every product release, there is a huge sense of accomplishment now that Writer has finally walked out the front door. Not every effort sees the light of day - so I feel honored to have worked on another project that actually shipped and one that I believe in so strongly. I'm insatiable in my need to see all of the reviews and comments that are already out there and can't wait to see more. Please keep the feedback (good and bad) coming in!

And, like every product release, we're already planning our next steps. I already have a long list of items that we want to attack in the next version of Writer and, as we continue to get feedback, that list is only going to grow. Now is when I have to contain my excitement and get back to work.

Happy Blogging,

Rebecca Levine
Windows Live Writer, Program Manager