Update On Windows Live Writer Bug Fixes
Posted by Kirk M on 10 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: BackWoods tech, Blogging
Just a quick update here of what I’ve found in pursuit of temporary fixes for the new Windows Live Writer problems.
First the dreaded “ArgumentOutOfRangeException” that presents itself when used with any Wordpress blog irregardless whether it’s hosted on Wordpress.com or your own install. The explanation is here at Andrew Grant Live. Here’s an exceprt:
After installing the second beta I found any attempt to open an existing post or draft from my Wordpress blog would fail with a cryptic error of ?ArgumentOutOfRangeException?. After a lot of trial and error I tracked the problem to several posts that used <pre></pre> tags to wrap pre-formatted text such as code snippets.
This was confirmed when I posted my findings on the Live Writer forum, though the problem isn?t just with <pre> tags. Any post containing multiple <script> or <style> tags within the body will also cause an ArgumentOutOfRangeException.
Fortunately for us Wordpress users, Andrew’s latest version of Keyword Tags for Wordpress plugin solves this problem and if you happen to use another tagging plugin as I do, then simply unchecking all the tagging options once Andrew’s plugin is installed will eliminate any possible incompatibility issues (I emailed him about this very thing and those were his instructions).
If you don’t use any preformatted text or code snippets within your posts (which I don’t) then you don’t have to worry about the above error. If you do and you find you can’t use the new WLW because of this bug in WLW then this plugin should solve your problem nicely until the next version of WLW hits the streets.
The second problem:
Update 06-16-07: The problem described below turned out to be caused by a Pmetrics tracking script that was placed in my footer which sends visitor data to my stats service. Luckily, I was able to replace this script with a Pmetrics plugin which performs the same functions as the tracking script did without interfering with WLW. Problem solved!
I’ve encountered and found a work around for is WLW’s funky coding for inserting tags such as Technorati tags. Ultimately convenient for the the person writing up a post but causing some interesting problems when uploading an edit. For an explanation of this see my previous review and scroll down to the “Stripped “div” tags section. Now this may only be a problem with the theme I use or Wordpress 2.2, I’m still not sure but if anyone is having the problem of a post that was written and posted by WLW and then edited again using WLW causing your theme to render incorrectly, I found a temporary fix that works for me.
Once my tags are inserted and I’m satisfied with them I strip out all the extra code that WLW wraps around the usual tag code (I’ll use Technorati for example) before I first publish the post. This is an example of how a single Technorati tag (same for multiple tags) should look once all the WLW code is removed. You end up with the same code used by any other editor.
This way I can edit to my heart’s content without “breaking my blog”. I may no longer have the WLW type convenience of editing my Technorati tags for that particular post but once I’m satisfied with the tags I’ve inserted, there’s no reason to edit them anyway.
Note: I’d really appreciate it if anyone who has seen a similar problem to leave a comment saying so. It would help tremendously if I knew if this was just an isolated incident.
That’s all I’ve found in addition to the work arounds I listed in the original review that really needs fixing in order to make the new Beta 2 version of WLW workable with Wordpress. In fact I’ve really enjoyed working with the new version despite it’s quirks. It’s really shaping up to be the best blog editor on the market.
Technorati tags: WLW beta 2 problems, windows Live Writer problems, Windows Live Writer, WLW freeze, Andrew Grant, WLW bug fixes
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2 Comments »
on 13 Jun 2007 at 3:24 am 1.Joe Cheng [MSFT] said …
Thanks as always for the feedback. The div thing really bugs me since I have no idea what might be causing it. If you could get a reliable repro scenario (even just on your own blog) that would be a *huge* help!
on 13 Jun 2007 at 9:22 am 2.KirkM said …
Hi Joe,
Sent you an email. I was wondering if you find this.
I’m still not sure if the mis-rendering is theme related or not. I’ll test it out tonight.