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Steven HarmanSteven Harman is a passionate developer who believes that writing great software isn't just a job, its a craft.

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Windows Live Writer and XHTML, Friends at Last?

Windows Live Writer has been out of beta for a while now with all of the normal buzz and blogging that we’ve come to expect from the community of users following this sweet little application. However, I’ve not seen read anything about one of nicest new features - the markup generated by WLW is now XHTML compliant!

Enabling XHTML compliance

Weblog Settings dialogAs far as I can tell, WLW won’t just magically start building XHTML markup... you need to tell it to do so. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to do.

Open the Weblog Settings dialog via Weblog -> Edit Weblog Settings, and then click the Advanced Options. Then you just need to select XHTML from the Markup Type section, Click OK, and you’re ready to roll.

What about older content?

One other nice thing about the XHTML compliance is that WLW will automatically convert any old/existing posts to use XHTML markup as soon as you open them in the application. So if you’re really OCD, like me, then you can actually go back through all of your old posts and pull them into compliance.

If you don’t want to go back through all of your old content I’d recommend grabbing Phil’s excellent WLW-Crap-Cleaner-Upper-HttpModule.

What others are saying.

# re: Windows Live Writer and XHTML, Friends at Last?
Gravatar Charles Teague
Nov 15, 2007
Thanks for writing about the Xhtml feature of Writer. This was an incredibly requested feature that we were glad to get in before we went final! I just wanted to note that Writer does attempt to automatically configure itself to publish Xhtml by inspecting the DocType of your weblog's homepage when configuring the weblog for the first time (or updating the configuration of an existing weblog).

Best,

Charles (MSFT)
# re: Windows Live Writer and XHTML, Friends at Last?
Gravatar Steven Harman
Nov 15, 2007
@Charles, Thank you, sir, for listening to us and for putting out a great product.

Now if only there was Search + Replace... bonus points for add RegExps! ;)
# re: Windows Live Writer and XHTML, Friends at Last?
Gravatar Waldek Mastykarz
Dec 19, 2007
There is actually a Search+Replace for Live Writer just since yesterday - and including Regex. I've made it myself. I have posted the extra functionality as a plugin to the live gallery so it should become available any moment. In the meanwhile you can download it from my blog: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/tmt/archive/2007/12/18/windows-live-writer-plugin-imtech-find-amp-replace.aspx
Comments have been closed on this topic.