So I've been working on incorporating Windows Live Writer blogging software into my web site.  This has some nice advantages including the ability to post pictures, manage the site and a bunch of other stuff directly from the Windows Client.  Of course, the challenge has been getting it to work.

So we have had posting and editing of messages working for a while.  I decided it was time to revisit the picture uploading of files.  Why?  Because this opens up the world to many different possibilities when it comes to posting all sorts of information to the web site.  Although I have believed the future was the web and posting on the web I've never found a good way to effectively post all of my content to the web through something like FCKEditor.  Well, now you don't have to anymore!

So this is just a sample picture taken from Windows 7.  All I had to do was select it and up it went with the post.  So what is left to figure out for Windows Live Writer? Deleting posts, gathering all posts already on a site, categories and themes (for preview purposes).  So I'm now onto one of those items in addition to the many other things I'm working on all the time.

Update #2: Deleting Posts is done!  Working on categories now.

Update #3 - 6/15: Categories are all working now.  Onto gathering all posts next.

Update #4 - 6/15: Get all posts now works also.  I'm not sure themes will ever work but we will see what happens.

So I've been quiet on the blog front for the past two weeks.  Some might wonder what is up - did he give up on the regular blog posting again - but no, I am just busy and trying to make the blog work for me.  So as some know I run a little business on the side called GCM Total Solutions.  We make web applications - this web site is an example of one.

So for the past couple of weeks I've been putting the final touches on an updated version of our membership management tool.  It looks really great and does all sorts of neat new features.  So I'm really excited.  So the next step was to start looking at the management of the web sites and if we wanted to rewrite those, change completely, etc, etc.  There are some things I really like about this current web site and others that I do not.  There has been a push recently to maybe move to DotNetNuke - seems like a 800 pound hammer to me.

But what wanted to comment on is Microsoft's new LiveWriter software.  For those who are not familiar you can head over to Microsoft's web page and check it out.  But basically it is an offline blog writing software.  Pretty fancy stuff.

So I wondered, can I make this work with my web site.  So I started digging into it and found the LiveWriter API's on the CodePlex page.  Long story short, I made them work with my site and now we can blog news items directly to the web site.  Some things are missing, I still need to add auto upload of images and a few other items - but all and all this is some really killer technology at my fingertips.

So I'm guessing we will stay with what we have.  Unless I find an amazing way to import all of the data from my web site, message boards, etc, etc into a new system I think I'm pretty much stuck where we are.

So now I'm just going to try a few things to see if they work.so everything below this line is simply testing:

Insert Virtual Earth Maps - New Twins Ball Park

(removed - need to get picture posting working.sigh.)

Code Plug-in

   1:  public void getinfo()

   2:  {

   3:     string sString = "This is pretty cool!";

   4:  }

And that is just a start.  More blog posts coming now that I can do them offline.

So I've been poking around with IE 8 now for months during the beta and rc process and been noting some changes out in how IE8 on a deeper level for some of my applications.  There are a few worth noting:

• ASP.NET
  • So Microsoft has broken some items in the .NET framework and AJAX through the IE process.  The first and most notable thing that is broken is the ASP.NET menu system.  If you use IE8 with a menu you will notice that the menu will appear as a white box instead of the normal box.  This is due to some changes in CSS and the zIndex not working correctly.  You can this by checking out this post:
    
    http://blogs.msdn.com/giorgio/archive/2009/02/01/asp-net-menu-and-ie8-rendering-white-issue.aspx
• Concurrent Open Windows
  • This has been a tough cookie to crack in IE 6/7 with windows opening pop-up windows with update/panels.  The two current download/concurrent processes in IE 6/7 causes your browser to hang while the process in the background closes.  In IE8 that has changed from 2 to 6 so the problem still exists just not as badly.

More to come as I find more of the problems.