Windows Metafile Preview on Windows 7

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Works on my machine!The visual preview of files in Windows Explorer is one of the great features of Windows when looking for a certain file. Unfortunately, with Windows Vista Microsoft disabled the preview for Windows Metafile Format (.WMF) and Enhanced Metafile Format (.EMF) files. As I needed t work a lot with EMF files during my latest book project with Springer, I was looking for some way to enable the preview of the file types mentioned above in Windows Explorer.

Windows 7 without EMF/WMF preview

Fortunately, there is a great plugin called emfplugin written by Daniel Gehringer to enable the preview. The plugin is available for x32 and x64 machines and should work on both, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Once installed (and rebooted) the Windows Explorer is capable of displaying EMF and WMF files.

Windows Explorer EMF and WMF thumbnail preview plug-in

The plugin is licensed under the MIT license, so its safe to go with it. At the very end this raises the question why Microsoft did actually disable the preview for two formats developed by Microsoft itself and whether they might work with Windows 8 again.

Formatting Source Code in Windows Live Writer

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Amer Gerzic created a great plug-in to format source code while writing a post in Windows Live Writer.

Insert Source Code...

You simply paste the code into the plug-in Window, specify the appearance of the code snippet.

Source Code Formatter

He supports a wide range of languages within this plug-in which makes it so interesting. Currently supported languages are ASPX, C, C#, C++, COBOL, Cold Fusion, CSS, Eiffel, Fortran, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, JScript, Mercury, MSIL, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, Visual Basic, Visual Basic Script, XML.

Crosspost WLW Plug-In

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Looking around for some cross-post plug-in for a while, I came along this plug-in for Windows Live Writer. Nice idea, but it actually does not load in WLW.

WLW Cross-Post Plugin

Right now, it is the only plug-in I found so far. I filed the bug and now I am waiting for any response. If nothing happens I have to have a look myself. Thanks for putting it under Ms-PL. If anybody get this plug-in working, let me know.

Social Bookmarking Tool for WLW

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Today, I installed the Social Bookmarking Tool for WLW by Rahul Soni. So I am just starting to add social bookmark links on my future blog entries.

After installing the tool you have to restart Windows Live Writer. Then you’ll see a additional option in the insert pane on the right side of WLW.

WLW with Social Bookmarkin Tool

After publishing your entry, you have to copy the link as well as the title of your blog entry and insert it into the Social Bookmarking Tool dialog. That’s all, just publish the tool again.

Social Bookmarking Tool for WLW

DSL-Tools v1 for Visual Studio 2005

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DSL-Tools v1 for Visual Studio 2005 are finally available.

“… Version 1 of Domain-Specific Language Tools lets you create a custom graphical designer that uses your own domain-specific diagrammatic notation. You can then create custom text templates that use models created in your designer to generate source code and other files. Domain-Specific Language Tools requires Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition or above. …”

Thanks to Damir for his post. Otherwise I would have missed it. Actually, I was looking for exactly such a tool for my research.