Blogger – A Week in Review (February 16, 2008)
Blogger has been busy over the course of the past week, rolling out a number of features that put it closer to the same level that WordPress is, minus the extra plugins for easily customizing your blog.
On February 12th, a number of bug fixes and updates were released.
Updates Included:
- Changing the OpenID provider became clearer with highlights/images from more popular services – displayed on the contact form.
- Five more languages were added.
- Posts with more than 200 have been split across multiple pages.
- The “Template” tab has been renamed “Layouts” for blogs using layouts.
Bug Fixes Included:
- Better translations for the Persian language, other BiDi layout fixes.
- Incorrect label counts bug was fixed.
- Now supports Safari 3 when using Layouts template editor pages.
- Post editor is optimized with a faster loading speed.
- More international support in the post editor’s date and time fields.
- Picasa’s BlogThis! button is now compatible.
However, despite these fixes and new updates, bloggers should be aware that Classic templates will not be able to use the comment pagination feature, and the “Shrink to Fit” only affects new photo uploads in the Header and Picture Page elements.
“Blogger in Draft” Additions
In order to use these features, you must sign in to Blogger in Draft and use it like any other beta service.
February 12th New Feature: Blog List
The Blog List feature allows you to feature a list of your favorite blogs, with an optional icon, but with Google Reader functionality. When using a blog with an Atom or RSS feed, the blog list can show the date of the blog’s last update or even the title and snippet of its most recent post.
Additional options of the widget include how many blogs to show in the list and whether they should be updated by time or alphabetically by blog title, the ability to import Google Reader subscriptions, and automatic searching for RSS/Atom feeds.
This feature is great for bloggers that would have had to style their blog rolls with their own images or build their own widget to include the same overall effect as this.
The Blog List writes all links out in HTML instead of JavaScript, so you pass PageRank goodness on to the blogs you link to. While this may be good for community-based blogs, larger blogs and those concerned about SEO may not find this as friendly. In addition, this is similar to the BlogRush widget that became popular over the past several months, yet different in other ways. Visitors may find other blogs in your Blog List more appealing than yours, losing a potential returning visitor.
Comments have suggested some problems related to adding feeds, renaming them, or simply adding the widget (and its position).
More features to Blogger blogs may be added in the future, indicated with the line:
Only the blog admin who added the Blog List may edit and configure it. Why is that? You’ll find out later…
February 15th New Feature: Scheduled Posts
A feature that many wanted added to the new Blogger after it was relaunched is the ability to write a post and then publish it in the future. The only way that this could be achieved before this update was if you placed a future date in the date field, then it would be displayed at the top of the page, which wasn’t very functional.
To publish a post in the future, simply reveal the date and time fields using the “Post Options” toggle link and enter a post date and time in the future. The post will automatically be published to your blog when the scheduled post date arrives.
There are currently some issues with the advanced posting feature, which have been better addressed on their blog such as problems with bloggers using FTP.
