Windows Live Writer Plugins

Text Template

Posted by Cynthia September 06, 2006

Text template is a Windows Live Writer plugin to enable the reuse of text, HTML and snippets of each.

Imagine you often write “Blogging with Windows Live Writer is a lot of fun”. Instead of typing that text over and over and over again you store it as a text template. When the time comes you hit Insert Text Template, select the appropriate template and off you go. I like to use a little icon (from Yahoo Messenger) as a hat tip. Instead of writing out the full HTML each time I can store that HTML snippet and reuse it. As the author says, you can even use it as a quick and dirty “moods” type of plugin. Or for emoticons. Or for… <insert your brainwave>

When you’ve just installed this WLW plugin and you hit the insert button there are no snippets available yet. Instead you click the Add button in the window that came up. Enter a title/name for your text template. In the body you put either plain text, HTML or a combination of both.

Now you can select your template of choice. Hit the Insert Text Template option in the insert menu dropdown and/or on the sidebar. A window with a list of your available templates comes up. Select one, click OK — and Bob’s your uncle. (Who’s Bob?)

The Windows Live Writer plugin Text Template stores its snippets as XML files and by default does so in your My Documents folder\Windows Live Writer\Text Templates. Under Tools Preferences Plugins you can select the Text Template plugin and via its options change this path. Currently this seems to have no effect though. The plugin still stores the snippets in its original location; it keeps reverting back to it.

At the time of writing you also cannot edit the snippets via the plugin. To edit them you have to open the XML file in Notepad or another text editor.

I use programs like ActiveWords and Perfect Keyboard to deal with repetitive texts and actions normally — but for them to insert the right HTML in Windows Live Writer they need to be set to change the view to the HTML code one (hit F12) or they would insert gibberish.

Insert Text Template is a great timesaver for all those things you do over and over again (like those little arrows I inserted just before). On the whole this plugin can only get better.

How? Well, a button that would let you insert a template but after insertion the list with templates would stay visible so you can immediately insert another. Or how about placeholders, a bit like variables?

Download page for Insert Text Template plugin for Windows Live Writer.

tags: windows live writer, windows live writer plugin, plugin, wlw, blogging