Blog Updates

The cheeky people at Blogger have been updating their engine, temporarily breaking the beast which is Windows Live Writer. No matter, a quick journey to the writer home page, a seamless install and we're going again.

They do tell me that it's possible to blog from MS Word these days, though I'm quite happy with the writer so haven't really tried it out. I don't like editing anything other than documents with word because I like the "Print View" mode far too much. Messing around with web pages has an unfortunate habit of switching things to other views, which is incredibly annoying when I later come to edit a document.

The updates at Blogger are quite interesting. When developing applications or libraries it's usually reckoned that changing interfaces is a big no-no. You're free to modify the implementation of your system as much as you like, but it must talk to the outside world in the same way. Add new functionality if you must, but most importantly remain backwards compatible!

Blogger hasn't done this - they broke Windows Live Writer, and they also broke their own Word Toolbar, leaving just the simple message:

Note: Development on Blogger for Word has been discontinued, and is no longer available for download. We don't have plans to update it for the new version of Blogger. If you feel strongly about the loss of this feature, though, please let us know via our Feature Suggestions form. The following article applies only if you are still on the old version of Blogger and have previously downloaded Blogger for Word.

They won't have a problem, of course - they're offering a service people want for free. Who cares about the raft of applications which depend on the way it works? Is this just another big company trampling on the little guy(s)?

Of course keeping "the way it works" the same restricts the range of upgrades you can offer to your service. The choice to upgrade is difficult. Is it really necessary? What are the implications? I'm sure the guys at Blogger thought long and hard about this, and no doubt the upgrade will prove useful if I ever figure out what it offers...