Today’s Blogger release is a big one for Blogger in Draft. Let’s lead off with the quick stuff:
- Google Gadget integration continues to improve, with better editing of gadget preferences.
- The new look for the Dashboard has seen a handful of tweaks, including a new button style that we’re trying out and, by popular demand, the “show all blogs” toggle is now sticky.
- The subscribe page element has been published to WWW.
- We’ve added a “Make Blogger in Draft my default dashboard” to the Blogger in Draft dashboard, so now you don’t have to remember to type “draft.blogger.com” instead of “www.blogger.com.”
- So you can easily keep up with the news, we’ve added this blog as a tab on the Blogger in Draft Dashboard.
But that’s not what you came here for. You wanted this:
- Webmaster Tools Verification. Turn this on to automatically add and verify all your blogs on Google’s Webmaster Tools.
- Star ratings. Add a 0–5 star rating control to the bottom of your posts so that your readers can rate them.
- Import / export of blogs. Back up all of your posts and comments to one Atom XML file on your computer, and import your posts from one blog to another.
- Embedded comment form. By incredibly popular demand, we’ve brought the comment form to your blog’s post pages, with support for Google Account and OpenID authentication.
- New post editor. We’ve completely revised the post editor, bringing in drag-and-drop image placement and better HTML handling.
As always, these features are on Blogger in Draft because we’re not done with them and we’re looking for your feedback.
Please read the posts for each of the features before trying them so that you know what’s working and what isn’t. Make sure you leave comments! These are big features for us, so we want to get them right before we turn them on for everyone.
Posts
75 comments:
I would so much like you to make it easy to write some text with every picture you upload. Now you can of course fix it but it would be so nice to maybe have a text box in the image popup were you could also write the text that is supposed to describe the image.
when that is done I think Blogger is perfect:)
Sorry my English is not the best one but I hope you understand what I mean.
I've just read through all the detailed posts about these changes/fixes/additions and must say they're wonderful. I haven't tried everything yet, but I love the new link box and the cleaner look of the post editor. And I want to thank you for making the full blog list sticky on the dashboard. That makes things so much easier.
I hope to try out more of the new features soon. I just wanted to thank you for doing all this and for listening to us. You're all so responsive to feedback and it's much appreciated. :)
Does Andri Valur mean captions?
Excellent!! The embedded comment form was long over due. Should have been implemented a lot earlier. Still, better late then never.
I hope blogger brings "pages" too. It's really really needed.
Thank you, guys. But, when will you show us a new blogger profile (more like the Google maps and shared stuff profile, or even Orkut integration, and future mini-feed supposed to be soon on iGoogle).
And what about new templates!! Will love to see this things rolling out.
Great job!
Hallelujah Google! I was wondering what those "star" comments were doing in my blog's template. Thanks!
Yes!
I have been using draft feature. This one is great!!!
A text box to write an image caption(or alt tag) for an image at upload step would be the perfect feature.
Great going blogger team. Now only two long standing features left :P Showing only post snippet on main page and the full on item pages and post pagination on item pages.
Blogger is getting perfect!!
Excellent work, the in-line comments work beautifully. Though is it possible not to require an additional click for the captcha?
Other than that, great to see that things are in motion.
embedded comment form is so great. thanks.
The backup function is highly dissatisfactory.
a) It is interactive; this wastes time
b) I have 569 posts. When I invoked it, it showed me a page 1 of 2. If I had to take a backup I would have to first save page 1, then click on a link, then save page 2.
c) It gives me a single flat file. What would have been much nicer is to have a tarfile where posts are organised by month with the titles as names.
My design of a good backup solution would be this. I go to a URL. It asks for a name and password (which can be supplied to wget or curl thus supporting 100% automation) and a .tar.bz2 file appears on my disk. This could then be done without any human intervention, which (in my opinion) is of essence. We are all busy enough as it is - it's a waste of life to have to interact with a computer in order to take a backup.
Cool... blogger.com rocks... However as usual, i have a complain about blogger themes... why dont you guys working at blogger.com provide cool themes like wordpress.. Wordpress is in PHP which makes easy for developer to design their own themes and blogger.com use their own language which is difficult to learn and try.. so better if you guys can provide some control on theme like gadgets..so everyone can dance.
Excelent job!
Can we now request one more very important feature? Pingback!
Some great updates there and I got really excited when I was reading about the changes to the image posting method but ultimately I was dissapointed with what had changed.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can you make it so that I can select more than one image at a time for upload...... is the feature that is really missing from blogger and wastes a lot of time for those of us that post lots of images to our blog.
I photograph weddings and on the wedding day itself I try and get 40+ images posted to my blog so people have something to see straight after the wedding. I batch convert the images, I batch rename them, I batch border and resize them .... but then I have to select each one individually and upload in batches of 5 at most to post on my blog ;-( its very painful and time consuming doing this.
I know I can post slideshows and movies and other things to get my images up there but ultimately my clients love static images that they can look at.
Pleaseeeeeee fix this for us.
It would be great if you would consider adding trackback support. This is a major missing feature at blogger.
Thanks!
Good updates. I'd just like to be able to put labels on my posts when I send them from my mobile.
I'd like to second Andri's comment (comment #1); I've always wanted a quick title and alt-text editor for images that I upload on my blog. It's a pain to have to wade through the HTML tags and put in something.
embedded comment for doesn't work for me at all.
Well done with all the changes.
The template I use gives a (red) border around the picture, but this has disappeared for the post done with this latest version. Those posted under earlier versions, show the border.
Great options
Will these features be available in regular blogger as well?
embedded comment doesn't work, the problem is i couldn't click on comment, dont underestimate me, i am a geek, i kew all the tricks, but this function doesn't work
A giant step forward!
TELL SOMEBODY - QUICK - AND FIX IT -
THE "POLLS" DO NOT WORK using IE and have not worked since Wednesday.
This problem is ALL over Google (made the top 10 by yesterday) and Blogger. Everybody's talking about it - but nobody has said how to fix it.
Good job!
Hey I enjoy everything your doing, to keep us bloggers up to date. I'm looking forward to your release, and although I'm already using Draft, I'm looking forward to more from you guys!
Peace,
Matt
The embedded comments feature is nifty and I'm trying that out now - so will have to see how that works out.
But one thing I do not agree upon is the change to the post editor. I mostly edit/create posts in HTML view but the new post editor loses the toolbar buttons that assist in adding the common html tags. Although I know the tags, it was so much more convienient to click a button and have the tag pairs inserted. Couldn't the same toolbar from the Compose view be mirrored on the HTML view too?
The new features are great! They are really making Blogger look more attractive to serious bloggers. The new image dialog is good, but there's one feature i've been longing for.
Why can't we easily insert images from our Picasa Web Albums?! This one should be a no-brainer!
I'm not sure about the embedded comments feature. Using Firefox 3.0, the comments link brings up the new comment box... requiring you to scroll up to read the existing comments. Shouldn't this start at the existing comments, with a link to move down to enter your own comment?
Thanks for the new features. There's one thing I would like to use in Blogger: Classified labels. I have so many labels that it would be easier to readers if I could classify them.
I usually use the HTML editor when I type my blog, I miss the handy icons at the top, such as the insert link icon. I never seem to be able to remember how to do the a href one correctly.
Embedded post comment is great feature to make my blog more interactive with friends. Thanks Blogger. Great...
The improvements have certainly added to the professionalism of the blogger brand making it more seriously taken by the blogging community. Thank you for the effort.
One thing I see missing that I would like would be a restoration of the justify option along with right center left, and a link option for the photos inserted on the same tooltip as the sizes offered. That would be nice for me :)
Strange, why it's now implossible - with the new Editor - so mark a picture and combine it with a link?
I am glad to see that blogger is expanding, Its still my preferred blogging platform. Keep up to good work guys.
I think you should aim to develop a bit more of a multi-blogging experience, especially geared towards persons not so tech savvy. Many times a blogger might need to partner with other persons on a particular blogging project. This would be best seen in non-profit organisations or sports clubs.
Very disappointing! Since those changes come, my new post lost my addthis button. Formatting is made harder with more manual handling of html to make my text separate into paragraphs instead of just pressing enter. (I spend around half an hour to get my formatting like my old posts.)
Also, why there are always lack of good advices on how to get new features into non-blogger-made templates? I still can't get star rating to my blog.
Moreover, I can't see verification imagein Firefox.
I am using Firefox 3
my blog is ianicy.blogspot.com
I'm sorry but there's no way I'm adding the Blog List template. I don't have time to manually type in every single blog link. Can you please give us the option to "select all" without having to type in all our fave blogs? I'm sure some people have hundreds of sites.
Thanks!
These new features are all useful, and have already added the star ratings, found a broken link thanks to webmaster tools, and also used the new editor. If you still need ideas for new features - the only thing I still miss in blogger is geotagging postings, so the resulting GeoRSS could for example be displayed on a sidebar map.
I like the backup idea. Wordpress also can save an XML file, but the formats are not compatible. I was wondering if you could throw in some import support for the Wordpress export format. Or perhaps someone could whip up a converter.
Keep the new features coming, I love what I'm seeing!
This is a pretty nice feature. I have written some scripts sending trackbacks and pingbacks to other blog software. Are they affected if they use the quick edit icon?
hello, i started to use draft version from yesterday. And trid new feature 'comments embeded' which is nice, however somehow 'post a comments' usualy at the bottom of new post disappear which makes nobody can post a comment. Is there any replort for such??
I added my blogs but they are not automatically being verified for Webmaster Tools. What else do I need to do?
I get an error message everytime I try to add a footer gadget.
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Additional information
blogID: 6539704308856611389
host: draft.blogger.com
uri: /rearrange
Apart from such minor glitches, great work, folks! I've never regretted Blogger being my blogging platform of choice. :)
Best blogger news since the service was stabilized a year or so ago.
Now, please, please, please fix BlogThis!
It's so antiquated. No categories, for example.
I'd be delighted if all you did was add a new button to BlogThis! that did the following in one click:
1. Submit item as draft.
2. Open item in new editor.
muito bom mais eu não estou cosequido coloca no meu blogger
I agree that "pages" are really necessary in the long term development of Blogger. The post editor makes letters a bit smaller than they were in the last edition of Blogger (that's only my impression) and I would like the option of a 'streched' text possible again (there is only left, centre and right ine at the moment).
I hope that soon Blogger will make the options recommended by Bloggers available and we will be able to make even greater blogs:)
This is cool feature and I have just activated in my blog. But one thing I would like to ask is how to change the background color and color of the text since the default bg color is blue and the text color is black. This may not fit for many bloggers.
Ok, I've changed my mind.
Enhancing BlogThis! with the one-button "submit as draft and open in editor" feature is not my number one Blogger improvement request.
I want Blogger to enable true backlinks, where backlinks are created only to domains or root urls that I whitelist.
Here's why this my new #1 request:
http://tech.kateva.org/2008/07/my-new-number-one-blogger-request-fix.html
Please add support for importing a Wordpress export file!
I'd like to switch from my self-hosted Wordpress blog to Blogger.
Wordpress makes it easy to switch to them because they support importing from several other blog types. But Blogger does not. Seems making it easy for people to switch to Blogger would be a no-brainer for bumping to top priority. As it is now, it's too much hassle for me to manually copy over each post.
I really waiting for the "read more" feature. I Really want it. Just lake the "more" tag on wordpress, or maybe better. Not the blogger Hack read more.
And yes, Blogger really getting better.
Yes, please add a true 'read more' feature!! PLEASE!! :) that's why I was blogging at Livejournal in the first place so I could have a read more tag.
It's not really a bug in the new editor, but if I create something in the new and then try to edit it in the old editor, the line breaks get lost.
I set the dashboard to be draft.blogger.com, but this does the not change the edit button in the blog, which still goes to the original editor. Please synchronize these two links. Thanks!
When are we getting categories?
I'm using safari. the CAPTCHA image doesn't seem show up the first time round, only a question mark shows up. it only shows up if i've randomly typed something in and ended up reloading the page.
The new-post editor doesn't let you compose in rich-text if you're using Opera as your browser. You can only post in the edit-html format.
Also true... what Peter said - if I edit one of these posts I composed in the HTML editor, the rich-text edit window shows up and my line breaks are lost. This one is more than a little frustrating :p
are you going to have a feature that lets one edit a post and tags from its permalink location, rather than having to find it in the edit posts list. Also, it would be nice to be able to highlight portions, rather than just change the color of the print.
thanks.
rtyrtygfh
how do i add a border around my paragraph in my post . a single paragraph among many paragraphs. plz answer soon.
Why was my comment removed? I mentioned a bug with blogger in draft and it gets removed. Why?
exporting a blog worked beautifully...however, importing leads me to "page not found" :(
Two weeks and i can´t post a video im blog.
I try a lot of places...
Always the same message:
"Have a problem to upload your video, please, contact our suport and say this information":
Id do blog:46623821450591102
Id do vídeo:4829556087daff27
Can I import a blog from wordpress to Blogger??? I´ve tried but it doesn´t work!
Hi, some general (non-post editor) comments/requests if I may. Summary:
1. Better image management/Picasaweb integration incl. finding orphan images.
2. Comment spam - please show commenter URLs on moderation page/emails.
3. Backlink spam - a centralised way to manage?
4. Dashboard - way to display blogs in alphabetical order?
5. Adding code to head section of template - easier way for beginners?
Cheers
Imp.
For comment spam, please please please show the IP address of the poster so that we can block them.
the embedded comment form is definitely a very welcomed addition. But may I suggest for it to display our avatars as well?
And can we make the comments neater by having a line under each comments as well.
Please do consider these 2 suggestions. Thanks.
The new Blogger in Draft dashboard looks great, BUT…
Please could we have our blogs sorted in static Alphabetical order, not in the order of last posted?
I’d like my blogs to always be in the same position on the list.
Further to my previous post...
Just one more thing, please could you put back the number of Posts for each Blog on the Dashboard?
It serves as a useful indication of which blog needs some TLC.
Hi, I was able to verify but I don't see the link on my blogger in draft dashboard. How do I go about getting this resolved? Thanks!
I just want to be able to Password Protect select posts of mine. Thank you.
diak nian hau araska atu tama iha google
As a fan of google and blogger I've been pretty disappointed by the url/search/label/ function (especially since google is a search company). Displaying results with the whole post really limits its usability for blogs with longer posts or pictures. I hope there are plans to add the option of displaying results by post title or (even better) by expandable summaries. (/search/label/title) OR (/search/label/summary)? Hope to see this implemented.
Thanks for your continuing efforts to improve blogger. We're counting on you :)
Ryan
www.chicagopizzaclub.com
no anda con explorer y anda a medias con firefox
Hi there!
4 things, but meanwhile, thank you so much for working to improve blogger!
1.I concur with the fellow who bemoaned the lack of batch photo uploading and adding. You can do it in batches of 5 in the old Blogger, but not the new one; wha??
"PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can you make it so that I can select more than one image at a time for upload...... is the feature that is really missing from blogger and wastes a lot of time for those of us that post lots of images to our blog."
2. The "float" thing doesn't carry photos down into body text below the bottom of the editing window. Meaning, it won't scroll, so you have to cut and paste, then float the image precisely, thus adding steps.
3. My cursor no longer shows within the edit window -- for random stretches of time -- once I've added photos. Very frustrating.
4. the Ctrl-Z "undo" function no longer works!
BUT I absolutely adore the new schedule-in-advance feature! Thanks!
Today and yesterday i can't see this menu.Please Help ME
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