Blogger Buzz: What’s New With Blogger

Blogger: Real Time Stats, Reliability Make Blogger Tops

See Blogger's video take on their new innovations, and read my opinion of the changes too. Be sure to subscribe to receive email updates on new Blogger tools and tips.Subscribe to Blogged Tips by Email to get new updates about innovations Blogger is rolling out.

Alexa ranks Blogger as the sixth largest website in the world and one of the largest blogging platforms. Blogger users published more than half a billion blog posts, in 50 languages, which were read by more than 400 million active readers across the globe. In 2010 Blogger introduced template designer, real-time stats, comments spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts, and more. To top it all off, they were dubbed the most reliable blogging service around.

New Blogger 2011 Innovations

New Post Editor

What I like about the new post editor unveiled.
Something I'm looking forward to in the new Blogger Post editor reveled at SXSW is the repositioning of the "Publish" button. Repositioning the "Publish" button will save time as we no longer will need to scroll down the page to access it. The "Labels" field has also been shifted up to the top. A new "Import" link is another innovation I see in the tool bar.Hmm.. I wonder what that is all about?

What I'm hoping will be included in the new post editor
I highly recommend using Windows Live Writer as a free blogging tool for any blogging platform, for its ease of use in inserting <alt> tags, scheduling posts to multiple blogs, and inserting tables. It would be nice if these features were available on Blogger as well.

Although I usually use Windows Live Writer to post to my blogs, I sometimes blog using Blogger in draft, so I can try out  new upcoming Blogger . I notice one of the tools I can currently access through "Blogger in Draft", is not included in the new post editor, so I hope it was just an oversight.The tool I'm referring to is a "define term" button.I haven't had a chance to click this link yet, so I hope it doesn't disappear.

New Blogger Post Editor

New Dashboard 
What I like about the new dashboard unveiled.



Hmm... What's that saying? Oh yes, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." The shift in the dashboard seems to be towards blog reading, rather than functionality and tools for creating or checking on your blogs. While Blogger has inserted a glimpse at stats, squeezing the actual tools I use to the right, in favour of expanding the blogs I have opted to follow, will probably result in people being pickier about which blogs they follow using Google friend connect. Being only able to view three blogs at a glance is not enough for me. I like being able to scroll down the page to view all the comments that need moderating. Being a prolific Blogger, I rarely have time to peruse the blogs I'm following. If a person is not following any blogs, what will be in this huge empty space? I'll pass on this update thanks. Here's where I say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Improvements I would like to see for the new dashboard
I could cheerfully live with this new dashboard , if there were the following: an option to close the reader, or at least choose which blogs to display;comments from all my blogs needing moderating lumped together as "Total comments needing moderating"; and reversing the order of my blogs displayed  to show the blogs which I haven't been written for quite a while first, acting as a gentle reminder to add a post .What do you like about the new dashboard? Subscribe to Blogged Tips by Email to get new updates about innovations Blogger is rolling out.

Resources:Blogger Buzz: What’s New With Blogger