This is going to be my second attempt at this blog. When I first started doing this blog I struggled with how to easily post well formatted code snippets. I tried for a while to find a good solution to this problem but eventually gave up. Recently I decided to revive the blog idea when I stumbled across this posting on Scott Hanselman’s Blog:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BestCodeSyntaxHighlighterForSnippetsInYourBlog.aspx

He talks about a couple of tools that make the process of posting code much easier.

Syntax Highlighter is a JavaScript based syntax highlighting tool. You simply put your code in a <pre> or <textarea> tag with the appropriate attributes and when the page is displayed the JavaScript will take care of the formatting. It particularly nice for use on Blogger since it runs entirely on the client.

The second tool if Windows Live Writer. I had heard of the tool but never used it. It’s a great tool for posting blog entries since it integrates directly with major blogging services including Blogger making it much easier to write and publish blog entries.

The third tool combines the first two. Its call PreCode and it’s a Syntax Highlighter plug-in for Live Writer.

Using these tools has made it much easier to do these blog entries.