Inklings of the new Blogger.com

If you use http://draft.blogger.com instead of blogger.com you will have experienced the new much-improved blogger.com dashboard design.

The improvements are a much nicer interface which is also much more usable and user friendly.

With the launch of Google Plus rumors spread that blogger.com will be far better integrated into the Google services and might even be renamed to Google Blogs. If this move adds new features and usability to Blogger we are all for it. And name-wise, please Google, do as you wish as long a this does not imply degrading functionality of blogger :-)

We can't wait.

BTW check out tickerTXT.org for invites to Google Plus.

More than 100 blogs per user

When invited by another user to a blog, Blogger.com doesn't invoke the 100 blog limit. Therefore:

1. Use a different Google ID or Google Apps ID to create a new blogger.com blog
2. Then invite the user ID which has hit the limit of blogs and make that user administrator once you have accepted the invitation 

Tip: best use different browsers so you won't have to switch the ID back and forth 

Why?

Blogger.com limits the number of blogs per user to 100. As many heavy blogger users, we create blogs for every project, many remain "private". We also create a lot of "blogs" as prototypes and we like to keep many prototypes as design archives and ideas for templates.

So hitting the ceiling of 100 blogs is not as crazy and rare as you might think. I hate wasting time to click through those archived blogs in order to delete some and make room for others. We try not to claim catchy blogspot URLs, we use cryptic ones like http://ttxt-design-02.blogspot.com/.

[I was recently asked by a blogger, if I still needed a particular old blogspot domain. Since that was not the case, I handed this over to him by first removing all old posts and then inviting him as administrator. Then we removed my name as admin "et voilà", the old defunct blogspot blog had a new owner.]

Blog Title & Description- Surprising Hidden Font Attributes

Did you know, that you can play with HTML tags to render part or the entire title and description of your blog in

• italic <i></i>
• bold <b></b>
• big <big></big>
• small <small></small>
• large <large></large>
• Line break <br>
• ...

Here is the example code for the titletags.blogspot.com :

TitleTitle &amp; Description <br><i>using</i> HTML <big>Tags</big>
DescriptionThis is <b>bold</b><br>
That's <i>italic</i><br>
All of the above <b><i>bolditalic</i></b><br>
This is <big>big</big><br>
That's <small>small</small><br>
Did you notice the line breaks :-)

You can add the tags either in Settings - Basic

Or in Design - Page Elements and edit the Header element:

Well, now you know. Have fun.
BTW, (at least using draft.blogger.com), you can now use a lot of new fonts in the template designer... Great stuff.

Blogger.com wishlist - common requests categorised and described

Blogger.com is an essential tool for us. Therefore I took the time to read all current 750 plus ideas and requests. And I found many recurring themes often using different words and ways to describe very similar functions or features. This post tries to filter and describe the most common requests and ideas.

The following list is not a thorough aggregation of topics. Some categories might better be embedded in others. The list is not "in order" or implies a ranking. The numbers are for reference only...

BTW if you like my Ideas for Blogger.com compilation please don't forget to vote here!

1. favicon - possibility to upload / create / link to different favicon (the tiny icon to the left of the URL address field in the browser. The favicon is also used for browser tabs and RSS readers)
2. Comment features 
1. threaded comments / reply to comment
2. integration with other "social" commenting services like Facebook, Twitter, Disqus
3. some would like a discreet comment function which allows readers to use the comment as contact form
4. Look and Feel - ability to place form above comments, ability to change the display format
5. Integration of Google Groups as a forum (and vice versa why not use blogger as the Google Groups front-end for appearance. Also why not syndicate posts as well, IE offer the possibility in a Google Thread to publish contents as a blog post)
6. rating of comments - similar to youtube?
7. avoid accidental duplication by commenter (happens to everyone, hitting submit twice :-))
8. allow editing of comments (maybe transparently to user/visitor with email notification for typos, links etc)
9. email notification for commenter when reply has been posted
3. My Profile
1. adapting it to blog content and purpose, for example personal and business or theme of blog.
2. Optionally combine the Blogger Profile with the Google Profile
4. Handling and Appearance of Photos
1. more size and placement options
2. incl shadow and border independantly of template scheme. 
3. Uploading and management of pics with less restrictions, better photo URLs and tighter integration with Picasa. 
4. Handling of links to zoom the image as well as link to related content (external URL)
5. some would like to disable downloading (we do not agree, at least this shouldn't be a priority, as photos in a blog are public, so workarounds of downloading prevention measures are easy to do)
5. Social Following / Linking 
1. Make it possible to add other service icons to the bottom of the blog
2. stats of links
3. Friend Connect and Followers
4. better integration with Feedburner and RSS tools, visible backlinks etc...
5. more visitor (social) participation -  for tags, thumbs up or down, grading and rating....
6. Post dashboard / post editor
1. dashboard for management of posts should be centralised / aggregated for all blogs of a user (and among blogger communities)
2. integration with Google Docs / Google Apps for contributors (who won't need the blogger dashboard) that would allow for photo handling, tables, word count, mathematical formulas, table of contents / anchor links within the post etc
3. some would like a Latex integration (more requests, than one would assume :-)) 
7. Sharing labels / tags
1. across blogs, twitter, Facebook, Google Docs / Apps (posting docs as blogger articles with labels)
2. Email labels, so that Mail2Blogger can include tags, myabe in the posterous way with double-brackets in the subject line ((tags: news, fun))
8. Additional Access Level - add authors to a post which would be similar to an additional generic "editor" access. 
9. Better blog syndication - many bloggers have more than one blog, many blogs have more than one author. Many bloggers would like easier and better handling
1. such as cross-posting - allow simultaneous posting to more than one blog with ONE post. That kind of cross-posting is frequent for official Google blogs. 
2. Optionally set one blog as the main post, the other posts are referring posts with link.
3. Commenting should be syndicated as well (see comments above). 
4. Very important - the cross-post should be editable as ONE post, no need to edit all posts individually.
5. Posting management -  central management incl integration with Google Apps / Doc would allow easier access for contributors who don't need . And of course it would be nice to include at least a generic editor level (per post as well as per blog, see above)
6. Style management for corporate blogs - again a case for a Google Apps integration
7. Syndication / forwarding with external services - Ping.fm functionality, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr posting, Apple Apps Store, Android appstore
8. Multi-lingual support for posts published in different languages (again Google Docs plus sticky label for each language used)
9. Google Wave-like features (again, best through Google Docs/ Apps integration)
10. Google Sites - integrate wiki functionality into Blogger (maybe Google Docs Wiki) , and Blogger into Google Sites regarding blog capabilities
11. PubSubHubbub feature
12. being able to mix private and public posts in a blog
10. more font options (editor, CSS)
11. CSS and template designer
1. make templates "savable" , so that additional 3rd party templates or the users customisations don't get lost
2. background image handling not just for upload images, including URL for external hosting
3. saving customisations without having to apply them to the blog
4. improve template header options for fonts and photos, size, position, width...
5. CSS options like transparency and colour options for ALL page elements
6. reusable color schemes for different templates, applying pre-configured color scheme to a template
7. possibility to add background images to share with others
8. possibility to share designs / layouts / templates
12. additional mobile templates
1. each template has a separate simpler mobile look
2. mobile CSS settings / handling
13. table handling
1. maybe button for adding tables, a table wizard (though a tighter integration with Google Docs / Apps would solve that issue)
14. Search Engine Optimisation SEO
1. maybe through META gadget
2. label integration as keywords
3. better page rank features (ironically a common remarkt is that Google's blogger is less SEO friendly than Wordpress.com, therefore Blogger.com blogs are less well indexed and ranked in searches)
15. Navbar features - Blogger's navbar (not the menu navigation for pages)
1. more options for themes of blogs regarding next blog etc
2. some would like to make it disappear (there are easy hacks, but...)
3. some would like to have a mouse-over slide in
16. Better backup
1. automated download
2. download posts in text format (not as xml)
17. Print, PDF, ebook features for visitors - most commonly requested are PDF / ebook feature as a button to either load the entire blog into PDF or ebook format, or the post.
18. Link management 
1. Open URL in new page - often asked and simple (though not on the list of my top requests)
2. Add direct link to posts / pages within the editor
3. Permalink option
4. Links from images
19. mobile blogger apps for iPhone, iPhone and Android (fewer requests for Blackberry)
20. Sticky post, featured article, recommended posts, my favorite posts, homepage and pages - we believe that this would be best provided using a gadget "selected posts" where the user can select pages and posts displayed in that gadget. Also page elements and gadgets should include a "display" condition (read this post)
1. manual selection
2. selection based on label
3. display options for number of posts, thumbnail, date, author, snippet length, full length of post...
4. slideshow option
5. conditional gadgets for page elements and within gadgets
21. Calendar gadget - there are a few, but usually pre-2010, undistinguishable (seemingly similar gadgets) and unusable
1. Google Calendar (allowing for Blogger adaption in theme colours, size etc)
2. Google Calendar to post (for example public calendar entries as event blog posts for example)
3. Use the Calendar layout for blog archive display option
22. Gadget handling
1. community rating (also to flag dodgy ones)
2. better selection interface
3. more options for photos, gallery (better selection options) and video gadgets (for example load playlist of youtube user) 
23. Google Maps Gadget for imrpoved mapping features within posts as well as page element
24. Navigation menu bar (see my additional post)
1. dropdown features
2. more customisation by combining link list and pages..)
25. Labels and categories
1. second level labels like wordpress categories
2. clustering of labels by theme
3. let visitors add tags (for example by aggregating backlink tags, or tagging from public bookmark shares)
4. adding stackoverflow.com type tag features / rating and weighting tags
26. Gadgets within posts/ pages
1. would allow for sitemap on a page, or pages with label clouds, 
2. maybe even mindmap like sitemap
3. Mostly useful for pages, but gallery, Google calendar (for events and bookings) and poll gadgets for posts are very useful as well.

A few notes on the new editor
Interestingly, the request section dedicated to the updated editor lists many requests which basically say, that the new editor is not as good as the old one. I disagree with those comments. My different experience is maybe due to the old editor's browser and OS dependence. I am using Ubuntu and mainly Chrome. Yes, the image options are a little less flexible, but I am sure that this will soon be fixed.

Other than the copy paste annoyance, the editor seems far more stable.

If you copy and paste within the post, the "past" includes a META tag which the editor doesn't like and complains about. Currently, the only way to fix that is to switch to the HTML mode and delete the meta tag(s). For longer texts, I use the "find and replace" of the browser.

My little bug fix wish is that default paste is parsed to plain text. Only as an option should "paste" include rich formatting.

Please check out all my idea contributions for blogger.com :-)

Blogger.com Wishlist - More Flexibility and Options for the Navigation Menu

The "Pages" and the "Link List" gadgets allow you to create a menu bar when you place those gadgets. That's a big improvement since the introduction of the new template designer, because from then on, those menu bars have been integrated into the templates. Therefore once these gadgets are "added" to your blog, you can change the look and feel of the bar itself, the "buttons" and the font.

In the context of using Blogger.com for more than "pure" blogging and to make the menu bar much more usable and flexible, here are our wishes:

1. combine the Pages and Link List options, so that the menu bar links can point to pages as well as  configurable URLs
2. although technically, once that combination is possible, one could include the URL with the Label Search, for most users it would be great to include pre-configured choices, like
• home (including the option to insert an image as logo on the menu bar)
• pages
• labels
• posts
• enter link URL
• search element (the search field is often nicely 
3. last but not least, drop-down menus would be great, 
• freely configurable or
• if the top link is selected as label, the sub-menu could include up to 7 (?) laets or selected posts and the last sub-link for "more".

The drop-down element could be included as an additional "menu" element, same functionality as the normal menu bar element, just nested in to the main menu bar...

Participate in improving Blogger.com!

Google's Product Ideas Team asks for ôur wishes and requests to improve Blogger.com. They did that last year as well and, wow, a couple of months later the hibernation status of Blogger.com suddenly ended. Of course, Blogger.com always improved over time, but since early 2010 things started to change rapidly and the improvements have been huge.

So now it's "Round 2". And my biggest three wishes are

1. more flexibility and options to customise the menu bar (more in this follow up post)
2. conditional page elements, which allow to set "if" options when certain elements should be displayed. Those settings could be done on the dashboard "Page Elements" for elements and gadgets as well as within the gadgets. Such conditional page elements allow to create custom pages (including the homepage / homeUrl) as well as contextual gadgets. I described that in more detail in a previous post.
3. A possibility to offer 3rd party tools and services for Blogger.com like an appstore, incl checkout and licensing (default is free and open source, services can use Google checkout). That includes the ability to offer "admin" gadgets which can be selected in the same way as normal gadgets. Therefore no need to manipulate the HTML code anymore for powerusers. Those "admin" gadgets allow for example 
1. to include code in the Head section as well as 
2. extend the CSS default options for 3rd parties to add options (such as a URL for the background rather then uploading the image)
3. allow the user to save and keep templates, his own customised templates as well as 3rd party ones...

I have a lot more wishes, but those are details compared to my top 3.

Blogger.com's still lacks conditional "widgets"

Google's Blogger team has been quite productive since last year (2009). First the new handling of widgets, aligning this feature with iGoogle gadgets. Then little but much needed features like the menu bar for pages (or alternatively the link gadget). And of course the "read more" feature, new and improved gadgets... The biggest and most significant upgrade has been the Blogger Template Designer. With one stroke, it made our previous design tweaks to templates out-dated. Which we appreciate :-)
As of autumn 2010, the designer is a great, though unpolished, diamond. Lot's of little things which we would love to see improved.

But most of all we would like to be able to use "display conditions" for widgets / gadgets. Only show selected posts or gadgets on the homepage. Please let us select when to display gadgets, they don't need to be on every page or post. This would also make it so much easier to display "featured posts or articles" on the homepage. Ie, it'll be great to indicate if a gadget should be shown:

• "only/not on homepage"
• "only/not for posts which have the label/tag/filter 'ABC'"
• "only/not on pages"
• "only/not on page 'XYZ'"

Additionally, those display conditions would be great to combine with layout areas of the "Page Elements". IE, "only display the right sidebar if..."

We have of course tried to include those conditions when creating our own gadgets. But Blogger seems to parse the code and ignore those <b> conditions within widgets / gadgets. 

Amanda Kennedy has posted a nice and relatively simple tweak on her BloggerBuster. Of course, one "problem remains". If you change your template in the new designer, you will loose all tweaks which are not "within" blogger elements such as those gadgets.