The Windows Live team had similar thoughts as they launched a new website for Windows Live plug-ins. Plug-ins are small extensions of Windows Live programs that add a new feature to one of the Windows Live applications.

The Windows Live Plug-ins website is currently listing plug-ins for Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Writer. The interesting part is that Microsoft welcomes developers to develop and submit plug-ins for Windows Live which could be offered on the official site eventually, if they pass some form of quality assessment.

A total of 191 plug-ins are currently offered at the Windows Live Plug-ins site, the majority of them (177) for Windows Live Writer. Lets take a closer look at the categories:

• Windows Live Photo Gallery: Plug-ins to publish photos (and videos) on image (video) hosting sites including Facebook, Youtube and Smug Mug.
• Windows Live Movie Maker: Only three plug-ins to upload to Youtube, Facebook or Smug Mug.
• Windows Live Writer: Many plug-ins for post publishing, formatting, content insertion or photos and videos.

Windows Live Writer users are most likely to find plug-ins that will improve their workflow.

It remains to be seen if Microsoft can entice developers to code plug-ins for Windows Live. Lets hope it does not end up similar to developing browser plug-ins for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (which is more or less non-existent).

Since I’m a nice helpful guy I decided to post the instructions and links in this article so that everyone who wants the portable version but does not have it right now can use it as a reference to install it. A user who wants to make Windows Live Writer portable needs to download two files. The first is Windows Live Writer itself if that is not already installed on the computer.

The second is a portable launcher for Windows Live Writer which has been created by Steve Fosset. The application dates back to last year but is working flawlessly.

The Windows Live Writer has to be installed on the system while the portable Windows Live Writer launcher obviously not. It can simply be unpacked to the system, either on a hard drive or USB device.

One last step is necessary before the portable Windows Live Writer can be started. The user needs to copy the files of the original Windows Live Writer installation into the folder of the portable application. The default folder of the Windows Live Writer installation is Program Files\Windows Live\Writer.

All the contents of the folder including the subdirectories have to be copied into the \App\WindowsLiveWriter folder of the portable version.

Once the files have been copied the portable version can be launched by double-clicking on WindowsLiveWriterPortable.exe. Windows Live Writer portable takes up roughly 11 Megabytes of space which should not be a problem for modern USB devices.

The new version fixes more than 20 bugs and security vulnerabilities. Some of the most important fixes include tagging support for Windows Live Writer, a login fix for blogs that have different WordPress and Blog addresses, faster taxonomy database queries, that emailed posts can now be assigned to the author if the email uses a hyphen and link importer fixes.

I had no troubles overwriting the files of my WordPress installation to speed up the process. A suggestion would be to backup your blog before you start the process.

Read More:

WordPress 2.31
WordPress Release Notes