As part of our roll-out of Google Gadget support, we’ve unified the gadgets and page elements directories on Blogger in draft. Just click on the “Layout” tab and then click an “Add Gadget” link to see the new look.How is it working for you? Does the new presentation, and the new icons, make adding stuff to your blog easier?
Let us know if you find good gadgets, or especially if you make some of your own.
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88 comments:
Hey Pete!
I'm glad you guys finally "beautified" the elements page for Blogger.
One suggestion I do have is to give users the option of moving popular elements (or ones that they use frequently) "up the food chain," or even perhaps giving us the ability to reorganize the order listing ourselves.
Example: I do not user the Google Adsense feature since I can not add channels (at least last time I checked I couldn't). So putting it at the bottom would help me save some blog time.
Oh yeah! One more thing!
Note: This is off-topic so feel free to delete it--you won't hurt my feelings. ;-)
Is there a way you could enable us iPhone users to upload images to our blogs?
We can log into the blogger interface, but we just can't upload any images (just type in text). Thanks!
unfortunately the blog list (1 gadget on page) is not working for me. In fact on the 30th it kicked me out of my blog (http://onediasozarks.blogspot.com) and could not load the page at all and could not edit the layout. I had to go to html and edit out the blog list .. then could load the blog but the blog list gadget does not work on any of my pages. It presents but does not list all my subscriptions and does not offer the option to put in the url.
I tried removing all blog lists on the onediasozarks page but that did not help.
I posted on the help group but have received not help there either. Any suggestions?
I'm pretty disappointed with the new 'gadgets'. They are presented well but alot of it is useless for older bloggers. They don't seem particularly advanced like Wordpress's plugins either. There should be more advanced features for people who purchase a domain with Blogger. Such as there own commenting service under the same domain etc.
I like it, but the "Subscribe To" gadget lists the Atom feed even if you have a custom (In my case, feedburner) feed listed in your settings.
When, oh when, can we get some new templates? That's the first thing you hear from others when they use a different system is their ability to change the background and great templates to choose from. It's been waaaay to long.
I'm glad to see you've finally announced this in the blog! As Darnellclayton.com suggested, it would be a nice touch if we could organize the most useful widgets to the top of the list (or to a separate section). There are so many to choose from! Still, the search function comes in pretty handy.
Will you be removing the API for widgets (as opposed to Google Gadgets) in the future? I really hope this will not be the case.
Thanks for these new features :)
This isn't really that useful in a blog unless it's about Google Docs or you use them a bunch, but I created a light-weight gadget to download files (docs, spreadsheets, or presentations) from Google Docs in a variety of supported formats.
http://www.google.com/ig/directory?url=home.windstream.net/josam2/docDloader.xml
I'd favour smaller pictures in the 'Add Gadget' menu; they don't really add information, and the menu overall is less space-efficient than current arrangements.
@darnell: Mail2Blogger, yo!
@leif: The redirect still works with the subscribe widget. Readers will be subscribed to your blog's feed URL, but when they fetch the feed they'll follow the redirect to FeedBurner.
@onedia: What's your URL?
@sujaco: I hear you!
@amanda: No, widgets (page elements) aren't going away by any means. We're adding Gadget support to bring more, cross-platform things into Blogger, but there will always be things that only native widgets can do.
I've looked and looked and I can't find a layout tab. Yes, I am logged into draft.blogger.com,. Does it matter that my blog is hosted on my own site? I am tired of looking for something that may not be there.
Que chido, ahora si que se ve muy bien.
Where's my "Restrict access only to specific posts/labels", sir?
Anyone wants this feature, feel free to vote for it at http://help.blogger.com/?page=wishlist
@ Pete: Dude, I so owe you one! You just made my day! :-)
Now I must tell all of the other iPhone users!
@ Mikey: If you want your own commenting system, I would recommend using either Intense Debate or Disqus.
@ Lynn: Are you using Blogger's Custom Domain or are you publishing via FTP?
@ Pete (again) and Sujaco: You can find custom skins just by searching via Google (and modifying them slightly to suit your needs...that's what I did to my blog).
Although I think what Google should do is have a competition by having users create skins for other bloggers to use. Winners could get a free T-Shirt (or extra image storage on their blogger accounts).
Anyways, as far as the new interface goes, I love it.
LONG LIVE BLOGGER!!!
PS
Now excuse me if I don't go and order some Blogger Gear!
pete, I posted these before but don't see them..here again
http://onediasozarks.blogspot.com
http://fieryheartdesigns.blogspot.com
http://bsbhabitat.blogspot.com
"Subscribe" is very nice, but does it work with Feedburner?
Lovin it! :D
I love the new changes, it's really helpful. I would like to request for a gadget which looks like MYBLOGLOG. for google/blogger users, of course. :)
interesting
Testing an open-ID, sorry for the inconvenience
Ok, I give up. How can I view a master menu of all the Blogger gadgets? Where do I go?
This is interesting.I have tried to test Blog list in my blog but link to all blogs displays in BOLD which I want to be in normal font. I haven't found any option to make it normal by the way.
@Pete: Thanks for clarifying that! I was wondering if I'd need to change the widgets I had already created for use with Blogger, so it's good to know these will still work in the future.
@Sujaco: If you're looking for new Blogger templates, I have posted a couple of resources over the past couple of weeks which may be useful to you including a resource of excellent free XML templates and a list of blog template providers/designers.
Hopefully this will save you some googling and help you find a template to better suit your needs :)
@Edoriver: It seems there are hundreds of gadgets to choose from, which would no doubt span many pages if these were to be viewed in a long list! The search function is really useful if you're looking for a particular type of gadget though.
Hey Guys. I like what you are doing, keep up the good work.
One small request is for you to add a strike through font. I love to make lists and then "mark them off" using strike through font.
It's on my wishlist. Thanks.
Also--thanks for the autosave feature--has saved me several times
Is there a way to add your blog's comment feed as a gidget?
So far so good! This new Blogger Draft is a great improvement on the original :)
Keep up the great work!
Please give us the ability to show comments below posts (not in an extra window).
I also think it's really about time to give us more (new) templates to choose from, including some with 3 columns.
test
Hi.
When I upgraded my template (which is "Son of Moto" in order to use the new layout feature, the upgrade cut off the right hand edge of all my YouTubes that I had posted. I previewed other templates and none of the others did this. But I really like Son of Moto for that particular blog (Meditation Matters.) Is there any way you can fix this?
Thanks.
Oh, I really like the ability to add to my blog list easily!
I guess if you have blogger in draft you may want to add more layout themes on board easier for us to manage designs too.
Uhhh.....in Blogger in Draft, I'm on the edit layout page, but don't see any 'add gadget'link.
Looking in the wrong place?
The email post to selected email address in settings doesn't seem t work with Scheduled Posts
Hi there! I was wondering if you could help me with a problem on my webpage. I am not sure if the problem relates to Blogger.com or my computer but ever since I added Blogger Draft elements and gadgets to my page, the sidebar has disappeared! (I added things in yesterday)
thank you
It would be amazing if I could simply port over some of the RSS feeds I have enabled on my iGoogle page over to my blog, is there any way we can do that?
Listen fellas, great and all that you're progressing & oving ahead, et al, but seriously, what is the whole point of this exercise if a)one's blog doesn't get 'picked up' by Google/search engines? I have been TRYING for the past month to get Google to pick up my new 'blogger' blog - but for WHATEVER obscure reason it's just not happening ... AND, b) it is extremely distressing/frustrating that there is no immediate live 'help' person to assist with the struggle to get up and active. One spends so much TIME fritzing around on the site trying to FIND what is RELEVANT, it gets tedious, boring, and more importantly, SUCKS up my TIME.... If you want to GENUINELY IMPROVE, get some 'staff' to stand by 9-5 at an easy to find access point, AND get your own products LISTED with Google, at the very least. Cheers, Canadadaphotography.blogspot.com
p.s. Any additional ideas/suggestions on HOW to get my blog 'seen' by Google would be appreciated, and NO I'm sick of roaming through the forums/helpgroups/blah-de-blahs....
My very congratulations because of the new features. I'm very happy with all the new things, including the wondering-idea of the gadgets. However, I would like to report a problem in searching gadgets in some of the categories. Also, some gadgets are not in the category they should. And when are We going to have new templates?. May be that's the most important thing to improve.
Greetings,
Luis Felipe.
I have not been able to get a full page elements on my site for months, nor a complete scroll bar. Is this because you are working on something else?
It is so frustrating.
I only have one gripe for the new gadgets: The news feed. I'd really like the ability to change the color of the text. Dark blue doesn't look to good on a black background.
It looks fine when I add it to the very bottom of my blog, because it's horizontal and the links are now a light blue. However, if I put it on the side bar(where I'd actually like it to be), the links turn to a dark blue.
Just my 2 cents.
Is there any way to add a "recent comments" element through Blogger like Wordpress has? There are a few third-party ones, but it doesn't appear that they work on private blogs, which is what I would need it for (a family blog where comments are often made on past posts and then nobody reads them!). Thanks!
@ Margaret Lindsay Holton: Since you are using a "blogger blog," you site should already have been indexed by Google, unless of course you turned your site feed (or RSS) off.
Also, you can always visit google.com/addurl/ to add your site.
Hi Pete!
There are a few problems i want you to help me with,firstly i am not able to search my Blogs on the net or blog search engine thinking the reason would be that i have become a member of feedburner, blogadda, & blog lines(all associated with adsense)could you please clarify my doubts.
Secondly i am searching for counters that appear on my URL blog post(No of people reaching my blog and reading them)for readers,add's clicked,total number of times the blog has been pinged before opening the page(24 hourly basis).
Thirdly how can i add a up/down scroll box to make my blog appear small and cute but could be read if required(like the one i am typing in right now).If possible make these available in "add page elements".
Lastly the most important thing "Thank you for your email reply".
I love the new face lift for Blogger. It'd be good if you do a face lift once in awhile. I get bored after using the same things after a long time. Blogger should have more features!
The image slideshow isn't working for me: I give it my flickr username and expect my flickr pictures to come up. Instead I get random weirdo pictures from someone else's flickr. I will try it again later, though.
But the blogroll feature is pretty awesome. It would be good though to have a 'recent comments' feature, so old posts that are being discussed can be located and revisited easily.
A big bog thank you for the scheduled posts and the new gadgets, Blogger is really usefull and great now! 1.000.000 thank you!!!
Looks good! Keep it up!
I added search box to my blog from Gadget list under draft.blogger.com to search an item from my blog but received 0 hits. Can you tell why?
Everything I have added, so far, works very well. I especially like the new blogroll feature (except that one of the blogs I have in the list for some reason doesn't show an excerpt from the most recent post).
REQUEST: along with many other people, top of my list is a way to display comments under each post without requiring an extra click.
Thanks!
Testing yahoo Open
I like the new slideshow feature, but I only want to post specific pictures from my flickr account. Is it possible to specify both a username and a keyword?
I am not able to get the Feed Subscription or Google Gadget for feed subscriptions to appear on my page, yet I logged into draft.blogger.com. Help?
Reading some of the postings here, I'll wait a bit more before using the Draft stuff.
Buuuut, I'll gladly join the request for a few more well-tested templates that can - in particular - put comments, or teasers if comments are too long, inline.
I have two suggestions, listed in what I consider my priorities.
1. Way for people to subscribe to the blog to receive an email whenever a new post is made. I know you can do this in the admin page, for up to 10 emails.
Not everyone uses feeds, and it is nice to be able to have the option to get an email when a new post is published.
2. Have a way to make a template into a three-column layout, so you can take advantage of the space.
google.com lets you have 4 columns.
3. Provide a way to search from the dashboard for other people's blogs. If there is this option, I guess I'm not smart enough to figure out where it is.
thanks,
shawn
@darnellclayton.
Thanks, did as you suggested re: trying to get GOOGLE to pick up my photoblog - http://canadadaPHOTOGRAPHY.blogspot.com, but, still 'nyet'. Not sure what else to do to get those spidy google bots to jump all over it, but hey, will keep TRYING. Thanks for the tip. Best, mlh
I've incorporated a few of the new features, including a blog list, subscribe, search and slideshow. Comments would be echoing what others have said -- I would have preferred to have an email subscribe option (ended up going with feedburner), would like to have comments and links visitible (at least snippets), would like an element that would list most recent comments, and please add in some new templates with 3 columns. 2 new requests: in the slideshow element, when linking to picasa albums, could you add in a random or play all feature? I'd like the slideshow to loop through multiple public albums and right now I have to pick 1. And last request, and my apologies is this is a silly question from a newbie, but is there a way to turn off the title of an element from showing on your blog (but still keeping the title listed for easier layout options)? Right now, I've got a handful of elements that are listed as HTML/javascript (no title listed) when I am looking at page layout and I end up having to click on "edit" each time to make sure I am moving the right thing around. Am I missing something? Thanks!
Thanks Blogger team for the improvements. I have hardly checked them all yet, but it is looking promising.
I have added the wonderful ‘How many days I have lived’ gadget to my blog page, without the title field, and would like to have the option to replace the ‘your’ with ‘my’ in the ‘Today is the 18,519th day of your life’ statement which comprises the first displayed line.
Any ideas please?
It will be great if you guys now concentrate on XML template uploading error.
I like labels and tags to be displayed as a cloud. Maybe this feature could be added to Labels.
I appreciate the efforts to add more flexibility to the gadgets. But please, please add more templates soon. The ones we have to choose from now have been there for too long, and are making our blogs look obsolete compared to those who use other services. For example, we really could use three-column templates right away. Any estimates on how long it'll take?
Hi, Pete
What would be handy (and I'm not too technical, so maybe there's something out there) is a simple means of knowing what traffic has happened on one's blog. Preferably not on a public page, but among the dashboard pages somewhere (with the option of putting it on the front page if you want). It could be a bit embarrassing to have three readers a day at the start and have to publicise the fact, so that's why I suggest something behind the scenes.
I've just thought of something else. Should have added it to the one I've just send. Duh! Anyway, I've blogged on Wordpress and you can see your post how it looks on the blog before you publish, so can straighten out any miggling little layout problems such as a stray para tag creating too large a space between two paras. This would be especially handy with the feature that lets you post-post, as it were: you could be confident that, when it publishes itself at some godforsaken hour of the night or while you're relaxing on the beach or whatever, it looks exactly as you intended. This feature is on Wordpress for both publishing now and publishing in delay.
Oh, and how do you get those Digg, Technorati etc. buttons to appear on each post? I hear they can generate traffic.
testing openid commenting. please delete.
Hello,
It would be really cool if you could implement a way to "quick comment" on a post. Instead of a pop-up, or going to the post page to comment, readers would click on the comment link and get a comment box embedded on the page, without any need to go to a different page.
I would also like to see a "with approval" option for multiple authors on one blog, allowing an administrator to review posts by their authors in advance instead of having to make changes right after it goes live.
Kudos to the continued improvement of an already excellent blogging service. :D
Oh! One thing I forgot- I think that Blogger needs an open-ended system for its layouts. One of the main arguments in Wordpress v Blogger is that there are many more Wordpress layouts than Blogger ones. However, after some hunting and searching through the internet, I have found a good variety of Blogger layouts. The real issue here that it can take a lot of time to find all of these different layouts. Why don't you just create a database which allows users to submit their layouts? I have seen many which rival Wordpress designs, and are often better. They're just hiding and need a way to come out.
thanks again.
Hey, I'm new but I'm learning so I'll try to do my best.
I'm at my blog
Umm can some1 pls help me find the "add gadget" button cos I don't see it :( [help appreciated]. ty :)
MC Cheese asks about the gadget button. On the layout section, whee you can move elements about, it says "add page element" in the main version, "add gadget" in the new one. Click on that and a small window opens with gadgets/page elements for you to choose from. Each behaves differently when you click to add it, depending on what it is and what its requirements are for populating/formatting. I'm a relative newbie, but I hope that's of some help.
hi! i have many suggestion for blog spot.
1)Posting - function like highlighting the words, crossing it out, and our own emotions will be very good.
2)Sidebar - Recent comments is good!, the list for my recent blog post is not that good, instead of sorting it out in month or date, can i just list the most recent one? Blog Cloud is good too.
3)PLEASE compare it with wordpress.. the layout and gadget.. and take our comments seriously. thx
pete or anyone,
I am having the same problem that onedia had. That is, I was using the bloglist gadget on draft.blogger but after I reached 30 on the list, when I saved the changes, I am suddenly unable toview my blog anymore. Instead, I get the error message "bX-9sravb".
My url is http://lonegreysquirrel.blogspot.com. Can anyone help me recover my blog please?
LGS
Hi! Would like to suggest some improvements for:
Custom search (Ajax)
Needs own User-CSS. The fixed colours are not useful for any blog. My blog has black background and the titles in Custom search results and link to domain are darkblue. People cannot read them.
Since I can't get my questions answered elsewhere, I thought I might throw these out here...
Feed Subscriptions does not work. You can add it, but it doesn't show up. The Blogroll list was working perfectly, but now the updates no longer work. It's as if it has rolled them all up and no longer displays the preview.
Since switching to Blogger In Draft, I can no longer display the "comments" section beneath each post.
I really like the new look. The blogroll element is nice to have out of the box.
It would be really nice to have support for posting source code rather than using db.syntaxhighlighter.
New templates. Be able to add an image to the background. Make the blog area wider. Move side items to either side of the blog area. Larger color choices. Ability to edit the individual blog entry title color/font/properties separately. Able to add/change type of/delete borders of header images w/o needing to know html.
Most of the standard elements appear as ?????? in Arabic.
I love the reorganized gadgets vs. default widgets in non-draft Blogger. But I've found a view issues with the Subscribe and the My Blog List gadgets - not sure if this is the appropriate area to comment:
Subscribe - this has seriously slowed down the display rate on my blog - saw an immediate drop in traffic once I installed it. I removed all gadgets and used the tried and true method of troubleshooting, adding gadgets back one at a time and testing the refresh rate. Subscribe seems to be the offender.
My Blog List - I rec'd an email from one of my genea-blogger co-horts who is not a technogeek like me. He said the owner of one of the blogs in his blog list was able to trace a massive spike in traffic and bandwidth to his site, all starting when the My Blog List gadget was installed. The blog owner, a technogeek herself, felt this was for two reasons: a) she didn't have an "icon" to provide and my friend has checked that option when he installed My Blog List; and b) she is probably hosting her own site and is worried about bandwidth traffic.
Otherwise I'm psyched about the new changes!
I have been looking for the directory of blog widget. Can you give me a link.
I love it! Google rocks!
Sorry... I'm just testing leaving a comment with openID...
Wow the new Gadget list is HUGE!! Amazing!
Good to have the Search option... And the Most Popular Category is very usefull!
Thanks a lot!!
RaSh
http://irrashonallyurs.blogspot.com/
In "edit post" mode, the only choices you are given are "publish post" or "save draft." I suggest adding a "delete post" button so you don't have to go another step if that's what you want to do.
Sorry this is testing comment with OpenID.
I think this is the better place for my comment qeustion
I added search box to my blog from Gadget list under draft.blogger.com to search an item from my blog but, now the blog is very slow to load..
What can i do..?
Thx Daddexter - aka The mixdiggerz
Note: This is off-topic so feel free to delete it--you won't hurt my feelings. ;-)
When is Blogger going to make Blog Pages available? I am a fanatic of Blogger, but competition has been offering this feature for over a million years now!
I wonder if there could be some way to weed out the gadgets that really wouldn't fit on a blog, so the one's that are really designed for blogs could float to the top.
Does that make sense? I mean, there's no need for a Google Talk gadget on my blog, but if there were one designed so anybody could IM me, that would fit better.
also noticed a slow down with loading after installing subscribe gadget.
Thanks for posting! This feature is published on the main site, so I'm closing off comments here.
New comments are not allowed.