Goodness gracious, when I heard about a month ago that there'd be a new version of Windows Live Writer, my favorite blogging tool, I couldn't hold my breath anymore — history shows the Writer Zone blog was last updated in Nov. '06. And here I am, almost 2 weeks later after the fact that it's released!

I promptly downloaded the works and am using it right now to write. I must say the inline spell checkker checker is nice, but appears to be unintentionally and subtly changing the boldness of some text marked as incorrect.

I already found my first bug: looks like post titles in the WYSIWYG display can't be selected — it shows a slashed circle icon. Not a big deal, but still.

WLW Beta 2 looks a lot more glossy, complete with a Vista-friendly splash screen. I can't say the dark blue menu bar (which reminds me of a gummi shark) looks very appropriate with the rest of my chosen XP Silver interface, but I'll live.

Most of the stuff's in the same place, but the consolidated category + post date bar makes more sense to me than the previous iteration.

Anyway, here goes my first post in this new version… publish!