I'm testing the new blogger beta, and created a new site http://carlgalloway.blogspot.com to start the ball rolling. The first thing I noticed when I started the sign up process is that the beta version uses your Google account as your identity, which is awesome because my homepage is the customised Google page with all the feeds I subscribe to.
After playing with the site for a few minutes a couple of things occurred to me, the dashboard design looks somehow cleaner, perhaps a little less cluttered and more intuitive, the changes are small and all of the functionality that we've become used to is still there, but by changing the navigation colors slightly the whole design seems more pleasing. Also, that horrible publishing spinner that used to just sit there and haunt you while the site was being republished has gone. Yay!
If you've read the official announcement of the beta program at Blogger Buzz, or seen the virtual tour you'll know that labels are now available for blogger blogs, and I was really keen to try these out. Long time blogger users are going to love these, there's been a lot hype about this giving bloggers a category function similar to other blog engines such as Serendipity, but when you're creating or editing an entry they feel more like tags to me. I'd be very interested to see if Technorati actually picks them up. In fact I'll be running some tests on that over the next couple of weeks and report back when I know for sure.
Testing Blogger beta, I like it, its cleaner with more ...
Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else
Testing Blogger beta, I like it, its cleaner with more features
Friday, August 18. 2006
The next thing I'm particularly keen to test is the new template management tools. I suspect significant work is going to have to be done by existing template designers to upgrade their designs to work with the beta version. I'll start by saying that when you select a new template you are given the option of a primary design, and then underneath the screenshot are some radio boxes that allow you to select a subset. This functionailty lallows colorset and basic styling options to be configured by the template designer. I'm looking forward to seeing if template designers like myself will be able incorporate these into downloadable designs or whether this will only ever apply to the official designs.
After you've selected your design, you're given the option of adding page elements using drap and drop so new blogger users shouldn't have to get bogged down with html when all they really want to do is change a sidebar link, or add a counter or flicker feed. This function is going to revolutionize the blogger world. As soon as users get used tothis I think you'll start to see huge, bigger than Ben Hur blogs being created. So many users stick the basic design and don't add or edit anything because they don't know how. One wonders if Google are prepared for the massive increase in storage and bandwidth they're going to have to make available.
The next major enhancement to the template engine is the 'Fonts and Colors' tab. Now this is really nifty, simply select the element you want to restyle, for example I changed the sidebar title background. That funny yellow color that is the default in the denim template just rubs me the wrong way. Once you've made your changes, click save and its done.
So having test blogger beta, I think I can confidently say that the billions of people on this planet who have yet to get a blog of their own are going to find the new Blogger does a wonderful job of starting them off. Its a significant upgrade and one that I'm excited about. I just wish Google would give us more information about how to make sure custom templates work in this new environment. I also wish Blogger would have some sort of template repository where designs could be custom unofficial designs could be automagically installed from. After all they have this for their official designs.
After you've selected your design, you're given the option of adding page elements using drap and drop so new blogger users shouldn't have to get bogged down with html when all they really want to do is change a sidebar link, or add a counter or flicker feed. This function is going to revolutionize the blogger world. As soon as users get used tothis I think you'll start to see huge, bigger than Ben Hur blogs being created. So many users stick the basic design and don't add or edit anything because they don't know how. One wonders if Google are prepared for the massive increase in storage and bandwidth they're going to have to make available.
The next major enhancement to the template engine is the 'Fonts and Colors' tab. Now this is really nifty, simply select the element you want to restyle, for example I changed the sidebar title background. That funny yellow color that is the default in the denim template just rubs me the wrong way. Once you've made your changes, click save and its done.
So having test blogger beta, I think I can confidently say that the billions of people on this planet who have yet to get a blog of their own are going to find the new Blogger does a wonderful job of starting them off. Its a significant upgrade and one that I'm excited about. I just wish Google would give us more information about how to make sure custom templates work in this new environment. I also wish Blogger would have some sort of template repository where designs could be custom unofficial designs could be automagically installed from. After all they have this for their official designs.
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Robert said,
Friday, August 18. 2006 at 13:31 (Reply)
But have fun with the new tool.
carl said,
Friday, August 18. 2006 at 23:35 (Reply)
Robert said,
Saturday, August 19. 2006 at 03:43 (Reply)