Kobi Pinhasov

This post will provide a detailed explanation of how to use the plug-in that I’ve recently created Snippets Manager for Windows Live Writer.

File | New

• New Root Category – Create a new category at root level.
• New Category – Create a new – sub category for a selected category
• New Snippet – Creates a new snippet

File | Open

Displays a File Open dialog window to select a snippets file to load. A snippets file is usually a file with .snippets extension

File | Save

Saves currently loaded data into file.

File | Save as

Displays a File Save dialog so user can specify a path to file where all the currently loaded data will be stored (ideal for backup/restore scenarios)

File | Save and Exit

Saves currently loaded data into file and exits the application. Especially useful when managing the snippets.

File | Exit

Exits the application. All the unsaved changed will not be saved !

Tools | Options

Allows you to change the background and foreground colors of the placeholders.

Placeholders

There are cases where you’ve got snippets that you use frequently but require a little bit modification from case to case (maybe changing some title or putting some text). In such cases you can selected the changing area of your text and click on the Mark Placeholder button. The selected area will have it’s own color so it can be altered later. Once you click on the "Send to Live Writer" tab you will have all the placeholders listed there. For each one you can specify the desired text and it will be automatically appended to the source text.

* Place holders can be marked using context menu that appears when right-clicking on the selected text

Example of placeholders usage:

Imagine you’ve got the following HTML code that you put in your posts very frequently.

<a href=’url to file’>Click to download the here comes the app name</a>

We’ve decided that the entire selected area above should be replaced with some custom code when added to any post. To simplify the task, when you click on the "Send to Live Writer" tab it will have field there with title "here comes the app name" and user can specify the text that can be inserted instead of the entire selected area.

Add to post

Saves currently loaded data into file and appends the result to the current post.

Preview output

Click on this link to see the text that will go back to Live Writer.

Compact before adding

This feature enables you to compact the output before sending it to Live Writer – to your post. It removes all the lines, unnecessary spaces between tags and thus reducing the size of the text dramatically. This is very important since your post will be of smaller size and thus decreasing the download time to the client. This way you can format the HTML of the snippet any way you wish so it can be readable for you (by formatting and indenting tags).