Donkblog

It is helpful to know what success is before you can accomplish it.

Last weekend I took a safety class to get my motorcycle license.  At the end of the class you must take a multiple choice test and a riding test.  The class instructors held back the bar of success in both tests even when asked by other students.  We went into both tests blind to what exactly we had to do to pass.  In the case of the multiple choice test there was 50 questions.  It wasn't until they were finished grading them that they told us you had to get at least 40 correct.  If you even half way paid attention during the class videos you would pass with flying colors and everyone in the class did. 

But in reality the multiple choice test was actually the least of our worries.  All weekend the class had been practicing curving and U-turns in a small box(as well as many other skills).  It was just a beginners class so these were hard tasks to accomplish.  When the time finally came to take the riding test we were told each of the tasks that we must accomplish.  We were told what we could do in each task to lose points, but we were never told how many points you could for each incorrect move, or even what kind of scale the points are judged on.  This made it really hard to figure out how good or bad you were actually doing during the test.  The whole way through students were clueless and afterwards they just told you if you passed or failed, which was a surprise to a lot of people.

Some students asked for more information about the point system and how it worked out but the instructors said it was for own benefit that they did not tell us, it would relieve us of stress.  In this specific case it wasn't a big deal to me to have the information withheld, I wasn't very worried about passing or failing.  Though on principle I think they were dead wrong in doing it.  Some students could have spent more time practicing things that were worth more points, or made different decisions in the tests.  For example, was it better to make a wider U-turn then instructed or was it better to put a foot down during the turn?  Both will cost you points, but no one could judge the actual value of the tradeoff in their mind.

The ability to always know exactly what I am being judged on is important to me at work. 

On a macro scale we have a set of commitments that are assigned to everyone depending on their level.  An example for me would be:

Hit all intra-milestone dates (plan complete, code complete, ZBB, RTO) or clearly adjusted expectations of the feature team and manager in a timely fashion.

Assigned features were test complete, with zero defects by the end of the milestone.

On a micro scale I am given a large task that I can break down into work items as needed.  At the end of each work item I say what will and will not be done.  Once everyone agrees on the schedule I just execute on it.  If things get shaky during the task I look at the overall goal and can adjust exactly what needs to happen.  I can make tradeoffs where needed. 

Without this vision of success, it is impossible to make an acceptable plan, you end up 'shipping when it is finished' or working hard in a direction that will not help you grow your career. 

Windows Live Writer Tip #11 – Insert Image from Web on Windows 7

During the very late stages of development for the last version of Windows Live Writer we found a bug on our 'Insert from Web Image' dialog.  Specifically there was a bug that prevented users from inserting images that that were part of libraries.   This forced us to make the decision to go back to the standard OpenFileDialog instead of using the hacked up open file dialog we with the tabs which was in all the previous versions of Windows Live Writer.

This of course resulted in no more user interface to allow people to insert images that are already on the internet somewhere.  At the time, Joe Cheng and I rationalized that this was fine, we thought that very few people knew where this dialog was anyways, and the power users that did know where it was could use the HTML source view to add in the image tag.  This turned out not to be true at all!  Shortly after we released Windows Live Writer 2009 we started seeing blogs, tweets, and forum posts asking where the tab on the open dialog had gone for insert an image from the web.

Well, I am here today to tell you there is a simple solution to your problem which should ease the pain until we are able to add the dialog back.

Simply copy the image from any browser:

Then paste it directly into the editor, Windows Live Writer will automatically convert it to the correct HTML for you, as seen below:

Windows Live Writer Tips #10 – Keyboard Shortcuts

Sometimes, you can be just in the groove when typing your blog entry, and the last thing you want to do is disrupt your flow by having to use your mouse to do something. Fortunately, Writer has a lot of keyboard shortcuts that make this really easy to avoid. Below is a list of some of the main keyboard shortcuts (I’m omitting formatting shortcuts like CTRL+B for turning on bold text, etc).

Views

Editing

Miscellaneous

Tip by Scott Lovegrove.

How to enable verbose logging in Windows Live Writer

Users can enable verbose logging in Windows Live Writer which will cause the application to log some extra things that it would normally not.  This is often an important step for debugging problems with blog services because it will log all the traffic Windows Live Writer sends to and gets back from the blog, and removes your password making sure it is safe to send to other people to help you debug problems.

To enable verbose logging do the following:

1. Open the 'start' menu
2. Right click the Windows Live Writer icon
3. Click properties in the context menu
4. Add " /verbose" to the end of the "target"
5. Click "Apply"
6. Click "Ok"
7. Start Windows Live Writer

Don't forget these steps to find your Windows Live Writer log file.

Windows Live Writer Tip #9 – Quickly Inserting Videos

So you’ve found a great video on YouTube (or SoapBox) and you want to share that video with your readers. We all know about the option that’s there in Live Writer under the insert section on the right hand side, which will give you the familiar screen:

You take your YouTube link, paste it in there and see your preview and then insert it into your blog. Well, there’s actually a quicker way of doing this. Much quicker. You have your YouTube link, so just go ahead and paste it straight into the Live Writer editor. This will automatically embed the video into your blog.

Don’t have the actual YouTube link, but have the embed code? Not a problem, same principle applies, just paste it into the editor.

Tip by Scott Lovegrove.

Windows Live Writer Tips #8 – Add Features to Live Writer Using Plug-ins

Like a lot of programs, there are always some things that Live Writer doesn’t do that you’d like it to do. However, Live Writer has it’s own way of allowing other developers to create those missing features and bits of functionality, and create plug-ins that you can install and then use from within Live Writer.

To browse some of the plug-ins that are available, click on on the bottom right of the Live Writer window, this will take you to http://gallery.live.com/default.aspx?pl=8:

From here there are a plethora of plug-ins you can download that will really enhance your Live Writer experience.

To find the most popular Windows Live Writer plugins go to: http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?bt=9&pl=8&st=5

Tip by Scott Lovegrove.

Windows Live Writer Tips #7 – Blog This

Sometimes you can be on a webpage and think, this is great, I’d like to blog about this. Well, if you’re using Internet Explorer then when Windows Live Writer is installed, a new button appears on the toolbar . Clicking this button will load up Live Writer, with some details already populated, including the post title and a link back to the page you were on. Or if there’s a particular part of the webpage you wanted to blog about, you can highlight that part and then press Blog This and your post in Writer will have that section quoted all ready for you to do your own additions to the post.

Now this feature isn’t just limited to Internet Explorer users. There is a FireFox extension that does the same thing, which can be got from the Windows Live Gallery. This has the same feature set as the Internet Explorer one.

Bonus Tip

You can customize how the Blog This feature works in Writer. Go to Tools | Options | Blog This

In the examples above (clicking Blog This alone, or highlighting a part of the webpage first), then the settings you would want to change for that are Link and HTML respectively. If we take the HTML one as an example, you can see how you change the behavior:

Tip by Scott Lovegrove.

The most successful shared components used internally at Microsoft.

Recently, I reflected on all the cross team components we depend on for Windows Live Writer.  Then I thought about the ones that have worked out well for us.  I didn't think about platforms Microsoft makes like .NET, GDI, DirectX, etc… Instead I thought strictly about things that our ISVs never(or rarely) see, but one team at Microsoft delivers it to another team(s). 

1) SQM - Software Quality Management

SQM is what almost all programs at Microsoft use to gather information about the way customers use applications when they have opt-ed into the CEIP.  It is never used to monitor individuals or to help Microsoft identify individuals.  It gives us a broad sense of how an application is being used by the masses.  For example mspaint might track what the most popular colors are.  If they find out the one of the most popular colors is a custom color not in the normal palette, the team might decide they want to add this color as one of the defaults. 

2) Glinks

Glinks is a system run by one of the web platform teams.  Teams simply provide a mapping file that map one URL(Microsoft controlled) to another URL.  You can think of this of a url shorten that is used client applications to prevent hard coded links in application from going bad.  For example, in Windows Live Writer we use a glink for the YouTube privacy policy link.  That way, a few months down the road, if YouTube changes the URL for privacy we can update the mapping file on the server and the problem is solved without updating the actual client.

3) Watson

Watson is an error logging component that will track when an application crashes and send back data to Microsoft if the user chooses to do so.  You know those “Would you like to send the report to Microsoft?” dialogs that come up and most users think go to a black hole in Bill Gate’s basement… that is exactly what I am talking about!  Those actually get picked up by product teams at some point so they can fix bugs.  Since the time I have been on the Windows Live Writer team, we have fixed a some serious bugs we wouldn't have found otherwise (so keep those reports coming!).

What do they hay all have in common?

These 3 components all have a few common traits.  First, they all just work, they rarely have problems and when they do they have very limited impact and are fixed quickly.  Second, while they might have originally been created for a specific team with specific requirements; this is no longer the case. These are one way relationships where one team makes something and another teams consume them.  This leaves no room for consumers to impose changes on the component that increase the chances other teams have problems using the component. Third, they have a low barrier of entry because the system is so easy for teams to setup.  If all internal projects were like this it would be great, but it turns out that over time systems grow and become harder and harder for other teams to use.

Windows Live Writer Tip #6 – Inserting Quotes

Today starts a mini series within the Windows Live Writer Tip series where the tips are written by Scott Lovegrove.  Scott is a Windows Live MVP as well as the creator of many plugins you can find on his blog.

As a blogger, you will sometimes find yourself wanting to quote someone, whether another blogger, or from another website. There are two very simple ways of doing this.

1. Type (or paste) your quote into your blog entry and press the block quote button
2. Type (or paste) your quote into your blog entry and press the TAB key on your keyboard. To undo a quote, press Shift+TAB. Using this method means you don’t even need to break your stride as you’re writing your blog post.

Windows Live Writer Tip #5 – Linking to old posts.

Its pretty common that bloggers want to link back to an old post. Instead of going to the browser and finding the link to the post, you can find it from inside of Windows Live Writer.

Click “Hyperlink…” from the sidebar to bring up the modal dialog.

Then click “Link to >” followed by the “Previous post…” choice to bring up the open dialog:

Then select the post you want and click “OK”, enter the text for the link and press enter… and you are done, you now have a link to an old post!

Windows Live Writer Tip #4 – © and ® Characters

From inside of Windows Live Writer you can easily add a copyright or registered symbol using typographic replacement. 

To insert a © type a (c) and then press space.

To insert a ® type a (r) and then press space.

If you actually want to type those exact characters you can hit backspace after it does the replacement and it will convert it back to parenthesis version.

This feature doesn't include the trademarked symbol unfortunately.

Update: You do not need to press space.  Thank you vasudev

Why doesn’t Windows Live Writer have ‘find and replace’?

One of the most requested features of Windows Live Writer is ‘find and replace’.  This is the ability to quickly change one string to another string in a document.  Its found in the most complex programs like Visual Studio and Microsoft Word as well as the most simple programs like Notepad(as seen below).

So why doesn't a fully functional blog editing client like Windows Live Writer have this feature?

Its all about trade offs.  Every feature takes a certain amount of time create and test before it can be included into a product.  And in the case of Windows Live Writer, which uses Internet Explorer to create the WYSIWYG editor, there was already a free  way to get find by itself.  Internet Explorer provides find functionality to applications that host mshtml through IDM_FIND.  So the decision came down to whether or not the team should replace the find functionality IE gives for free with our own version that does find and replace.  I wasn’t on the Windows Live Writer team when this decision came up, as I’m sure it was many moons ago, so I can’t speak about any details of that conversation.  However, I can tell you, that through Twitter, blog posts, and our forums we have heard a lot of customers tell us that we made the wrong decision; enough that we are going to revisit the decision for our future releases. 

Thank you to everyone that gave their feedback on this issue and others! It is greatly appreciated and gives us a greater idea of our users' needs.

Windows Live Writer Tip #3 – Turn on real time word count

Many users have found the word count feature until the “Tools” menu.  It is possible to turn on word count so it will continue to update in the status bar, just as it would in Microsoft Word:

This feature can be turned on though:

Tools > Options > Editing > Show real-time word count in status bar

Some history for those that care.  Real time word count was the first feature I worked on when I joined the Windows Live Writer team. :)

Windows Live Writer Tip #2 – Force Category Refresh

It is possible the categories on your blog can get out of sync with your blog.  This will most likely happen if you use a different blogging client then Windows Live Writer, WLW on a different computer, or post through the admin control panel.  In these cases, WLW might not pick up the new categories.  You can force it to sync the categories by clicking the ‘refresh’ button, in the category control.  It is the button with the two arrows.

Preview for content that doesn’t exist should be outlawed.

Michigan State, my alma mater, beat University of Connecticut to advance to the NCAA championship game earlier today.  GO GREEN!

Anyways, I was checking today's news on the Huffington Post and saw a new article which referenced the victory.  Here is a image of what the article looked like on the front page of the Huffington Post:

When I first saw, my initial thought was ‘Wow, that is an awesome picture.  I want to find the full size image so I can set it as my background!”.  So I proceeded to click the link which directed me the news article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/18/ncaa-results-march-madnes_n_176396.html

The image they used to preview the article is no where to be found in the article and I have no idea where I could to find it.  This leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, I almost feel as if I have been cheated.