Windows Experience Blog : The Windows Blog

Easier Navigation on The Windows Blog with New Menu

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:22:34 GMT

This morning we deployed a brand new menu system to The Windows Blog. This new menu system is designed to make it easier to navigate the family of Windows blogs that live on the site. When clicking new “Blogs” button, a drop down menu for blogs appears which displays a categorized list of blogs. Blogs with long titles are also no longer cut off.

Overall, the menu improves navigating the site quite a bit. And as we grow the site, it no longer made sense to keep a list of blogs on the left hand side as we had been doing before.

This is just the first of several more updates we’re hoping to make to the site before the end of the year!

State of the Blog – A Little Update on Where We Are Today

Brandon LeBlanc — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:03:59 GMT

We are in an exciting time for Windows. We’re about to launch our best version of Windows yet – Windows 7. In between all the Windows 7 awesomeness, I wanted to take a moment to talk about The Windows Blog and where we are today with the site.

We’ve come a long way since 2006 when we launched as the Windows Vista Team Blog. This last fall we re-launched the site as The Windows Blog. When we re-launched, the focus of the site was to be the ultimate resource for Windows through the use of blogging – and to grow.

In the site’s design, we put an emphasis of multiple blogs existing under The Windows Blog “umbrella” that would cater to different audiences. Our original blog, Windows Vista Team Blog, became one of several blogs under that “umbrella” and we also launched the Windows 7 Team Blog which is where you will find all the latest Windows 7 news and announcements. Also in the fall, we launched the Windows Security Blog featuring blog posts focusing on Windows security from Paul Cooke. Paul blogged live from RSA earlier this year.

And in the last few months, we’ve grown quite a bit to cover a broader array of audiences with several other new blogs joining our site:

Windows for your Business Blog: Launched in February by Gavriella Schuster, this blog focuses on our commercial customers for Windows. Most recently, Rich Reynolds who is a GM on the Windows Commercial Marketing Team posted a blog about how our business customers provided early feedback for Windows 7.

Windows 7 for Developers Blog: At the end of March, we launched the Windows 7 for Developers. This blog is run by Yochay Kiriaty from the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) Team here at Microsoft. Yochay blogs about all the really cool things developers can do with their applications to take advantage of Windows 7 features like the new Windows Taskbar. If you’re a developer – this blog is a must read.

Springboard Series Blog: This blog launched in early June and is run by Senior Community Manager Stephen Rose. The Springboard Series is a TechNet portal and is the ultimate Windows resource for IT Professionals. The Springboard Series Blog focuses on calling out those resources for IT Pros. Just recently, a Virtual Roundtable (VRT) discussion was help with Mark Russinovich on Application Compatibility – check it out here!

Soon, my friends over on Windows Mobile will be blogging on The Windows Blog too! Their blog can be found here.

And of course I continue to focus on my Windows experiences on the Windows Experience Blog as well.

What’s great about growing the blogs under The Windows Blog “umbrella” is that we have blog posts talking about a variety of Windows topics relevant to a broad set of audiences.

However what if some of the content being blogged about isn’t relevant to me?

All blog posts from all blogs automatically appear in our main RSS feed. Some people want to see and read everything. This is likely how they are doing so or going to our frontpage. But if you only care about content from a specific blog, you can subscribe to the individual RSS feed for that blog. Here are the RSS feeds for each of the blogs here on The Windows Blog:

Tags we use for blog posts also have their own RSS feeds. If all you care about is our announcements, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the Announcements tag.

If RSS isn’t your thing, you can also follow The Windows Blog on Twitter and get all our latest blog posts too.

So what’s coming up for The Windows Blog? Well – lots more awesome Windows 7 blog posts of course. We’re also going to be introducing a new menu system in the coming weeks and introducing more new blogs – including some localized blogs in a variety of different languages.

I’m very proud of the community of Windows blogs we’ve built up here on The Windows Blog. Thank you to the millions of visitors who read our posts each month and continue to be excited for Windows!

Find The Windows Blog on Facebook!

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:02:01 GMT

You can now find The Windows Blog on Facebook and become a fan! Just click on the button below to go to our Facebook Page.

Remember, you can also follow The Windows Blog on Twitter as well.

Testing Out the Microsoft Translator Widget

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:51:10 GMT

Back during MIX09 in March, the Microsoft Translator Widget for websites was announced. People with websites or blogs can embed the Microsoft Translator Widget (powered by Microsoft Translator) into their site. Visitors of websites and blogs that have the Microsoft Translator Widget embedded can translate the content on the website without having to leave the site at all – which is awesome.

I’ve added the Microsoft Translator Widget to the Windows Experience Blog. It’s not yet deployed to all our blogs here on The Windows Blog just yet as I’d like to test it out first. The Microsoft Translator Widget will show up in the sidebar of the Windows Experience Blog where you can choose a specific language to translate the content to without leaving our site. The widget looks like this:

I would love to get some feedback on how well the Microsoft Translator Widget translates my blog posts. If you are fluent in any of the languages the Microsoft Translator Widget can translate to, translate my blog posts and let me know in the comments below how well it’s translating the blog posts.

You feedback will be much appreciated!

Please note: I am looking for feedback on how well the Microsoft Translator Widget translates content here – not feedback on the widget specifically. If you have specific feedback regarding the Microsoft Translator Widget, how it works, issues with it on your site, etc – I suggest leaving that feedback on this blog post for the Microsoft Translator Team.

If you are a website owner and wish to add the Microsoft Translator Widget to your website or blog – you can register here for a invite code.

Follow us on Twitter

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:47:51 GMT

This is just another quick reminder that for those of you who are on Twitter and want to stay on top of all the latest happenings with Windows through our blog posts here on The Windows Blog – you can follow The Windows Blog on Twitter. Each time we post a blog post here, it automatically gets “tweeted” to Twitter. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed as well. And of course I’m on Twitter too – feel free to follow me as well. When I’m not busy posting blog posts here, I’m tweeting about Windows and Windows Live or reading what others are saying.

For other Microsoft products and services on Twitter, Adam Kinney has a pretty nice list going here for you to also follow.

How are we doing? Give us your feedback!

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:49:04 GMT

I would like to take this opportunity to gather feedback directly from you the readers of our blog. There are some key questions I would like to ask you:

How are we doing?
What types of blog posts do you like the most?
Which ones do you like the least?

We’re coming up on the Windows 7 Beta – what aspects of Windows 7 are you most interested in? Are you interested in the visual changes we’re introducing such as the new Windows Taskbar? Performance improvements? Are you interested in some of the digital media improvements with Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center? And of course we’re going to continue to talk about Windows Vista as well. What in regards to Windows Vista do you want to hear more about?

We’re in the process of planning some pretty interesting (and exciting) content for you but I’d like to be sure that we’re planning the right content based on what you would like to see from us here on The Windows Blog.

So let us know what you think! I look forward to reading everyone’s feedback.

P.S. Keep it constructive ;-)

Follow The Windows Blog on Twitter!

Brandon LeBlanc — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 02:48:37 GMT

You can now follow us here on The Windows Blog on Twitter. Essentially any post that hits our main RSS feed will get pushed to Twitter. If you’re someone who lives in Twitter this can be very useful in staying on top of all the latest Windows happenings.

Follow The Windows Blog