When I first started blogging with the help of Windows Live Writer I immediately was interesting in writing plug-ins for the application. After all I am a developer and we like to write code. It’s as simple as that. The thing was that I had no meaningful idea at that time so it sort of got side tracked by all other projects I had in my head. That is until now.

I recently switched over to using the excellent URL shortening service cli.gs because it offered tracking, something that tinyurl doesn’t. So of course one thing I kept missing in Windows Live Writer was the possibility to directly insert cligs into my blog posts.

This is when I got the idea to write a plug-in for Windows Live Writer and take advantage of the web API which the cli.gs service make available.

Just to give you an idea here. I have never, ever, written a Windows Live Writer plug-in before, but with the help of the Windows Live Writer SDK I was, literally, able to write this first preview version in less than two hours.

I still have a couple of features and stuff I want to finish (I’ve even suggested a feature for version 2 of their API which is in the making as we speak) before making the plug-in available to the public, but when I do it will also release the full source code on my codeplex page.

Here are some initial screenshot of the plug-in in action.

Make sure to check back for more updates on this plug-in. Starting from tomorrow I have three weeks of from work so I should have some time to finish version 1 pretty soon.