Microsoft has released a new version in beta of Windows Live Writer, the offline blogging editor of choice for many bloggers with Windows PCs (I’m one of those bloggers).

The new version – described as Windows Live Writer 2009: Release Candidate – sports a brand new icon and some nice improvements to the overall interface. Plus it’s a tad ahead of its time: look at the copyright year.

There is significant substance, though, to the new version with a load of new features and functionality that add much to what is already an outstanding editor for managing your blog content.

Of particular appeal are new features like more effective content searching through published and draft posts, inserting multiple photos, much better support for adding tags, and bi-drectional language support.

Lots of new plug-ins are available including one that will automatically generate a TinyURL and send a tweet about your post after you publish it from WLW.

I’ve installed the new version (I’m using it to write this post as I did my previous one), and I’m pleased to note that it works perfectly with the latest version 2.7 of WordPress as well as with WordPress.com hosted blogs. WLW actually supports a wide range of blog platforms including WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, Blogger and, of course, Windows Live Spaces.

If you install it and use it, let the Writer team know what you think of it. It is beta, after all, so feedback will help them.

I’ve always wondered why Microsoft hasn’t made more of this excellent application, and why they didn’t bundle it with Office 2007: a perfect opportunity to introduce a built-in blogging tool as part of the most-used office applications suite in businesses. Word 2007 includes the means to write and publish to a blog but, frankly, I don’t like it at all and in fact I know of no business blogger who uses this.

Anyway, if you haven’t tried writing and publishing to your blog with a tool that makes it so easy, now’s a good time to give it a try.