In the near future, bloggers will be able to customize the templates and use them without having to change the URL.
Showing posts with label Blogger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogger. Show all posts
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Blogger Views
Blogger added five dynamic templates that transform blogs into interactive apps. Just add /view to the URL of a blog that offers full feeds (for example: googlesystem.blogspot.com/view) and you'll be able to try the new views: flipcard, mosaic, sidebar, snapshot and timeline. Blogger's templates offer features like infinite scrolling, progressive image loading, smart search, filtering posts by date, author or label. "These new views use the latest in web technology, including AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3," explains Google.
In the near future, bloggers will be able to customize the templates and use them without having to change the URL.
In the near future, bloggers will be able to customize the templates and use them without having to change the URL.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Upcoming Blogger Features
Google rarely preannounces new features, so I was really surprised to see a video that highlights some upcoming Blogger features. Google's video does a great job at enumerating the latest Blogger improvements, while asking people: "Have you looked at Blogger lately?".
Google plans to unveil a completely new Blogger interface, mobile templates for blogs (which are already available at Blogger in Draft) and a feature that lets you find related posts and videos.
Here's the video:
Google plans to unveil a completely new Blogger interface, mobile templates for blogs (which are already available at Blogger in Draft) and a feature that lets you find related posts and videos.
Here's the video:
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Blogger's Android App
Blogger is catching up with the times: Android users can finally post timely updates to their blogs using a native app. You can always use Blogger's site or even write your posts in a mail client, but a mobile app is more user friendly.
Blogger's Android app is really basic and doesn't offer too many features. It's mostly useful if you want to write a new post, since you can't edit the existing posts. The editor only lets you enter text and include one or more photos. You can add some labels and geotag your posts, taking advantage of your phone's GPS. If you haven't finished a post, you can always save it as a draft, but you won't be able to publish it from a computer because it's only saved locally.
Blogger's blog mentions that Blogger is a new sharing option, so you can easily share a photo from the Gallery or a web page. "By switching to the List View, you can view all your drafts and published posts that you wrote using the app." Unfortunately, you can't edit existing posts.
All in all, Blogger's Android app offers very few features and I would only use it to write short posts or to share photos from a trip. Maybe Blogger's team should also develop a mobile web app which could be updated faster.
Android Market link: Blogger's app.
Blogger's Android app is really basic and doesn't offer too many features. It's mostly useful if you want to write a new post, since you can't edit the existing posts. The editor only lets you enter text and include one or more photos. You can add some labels and geotag your posts, taking advantage of your phone's GPS. If you haven't finished a post, you can always save it as a draft, but you won't be able to publish it from a computer because it's only saved locally.
Blogger's blog mentions that Blogger is a new sharing option, so you can easily share a photo from the Gallery or a web page. "By switching to the List View, you can view all your drafts and published posts that you wrote using the app." Unfortunately, you can't edit existing posts.
All in all, Blogger's Android app offers very few features and I would only use it to write short posts or to share photos from a trip. Maybe Blogger's team should also develop a mobile web app which could be updated faster.
Android Market link: Blogger's app.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Mobile Blogger Templates
This year, Blogger's team added so many new features that it's difficult to count them: dynamic templates, comment spam filtering, a new way to manage comments, real-time stats, better post preview, static pages and so much more. Blogger is one the few Google products that have improved dramatically this year, after many years when it was neglected.
Since a lot of people use phones to browse the Web, it makes a lot of sense to add a mobile interface for Blogger and to create mobile versions for Blogger's templates. There's no mobile Blogger yet, but all Blogger blogs have a mobile version optimized for WebKit browsers. Just add ?m=1 to the URL of any Blogger blog, and you'll get a simplified version that works well on an iPhone, Android phone and probably other phones that use a browser based on WebKit. Here's an example: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/?m=1.
Bloggers can enable the mobile version of their blogs, so that visitors are automatically redirected to this version when they're using a supported mobile browser. This option is only available if you go to Blogger in Draft, click on "Settings", switch to "Email & Mobile" and enable "Yes, On mobile devices, show the mobile version of my template." This didn't work for me, so you'll still see the regular mobile version of this blog that uses a custom stylesheet.
Google says that the new feature only supports 12 existing templates (6 variants of the Simple template and 6 variants of the Awesome template) and that all the other templates will be rendered as the Simple template. The mobile version drops the sidebars and most of the gadgets, shows small excerpts from the posts on the homepage, hides the comment form (but you can still post comments), resizes images and videos, adjusts fonts and converts AdSense ads into mobile ads. Unfortunately, you can't customize mobile templates, at least not yet.
Since a lot of people use phones to browse the Web, it makes a lot of sense to add a mobile interface for Blogger and to create mobile versions for Blogger's templates. There's no mobile Blogger yet, but all Blogger blogs have a mobile version optimized for WebKit browsers. Just add ?m=1 to the URL of any Blogger blog, and you'll get a simplified version that works well on an iPhone, Android phone and probably other phones that use a browser based on WebKit. Here's an example: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/?m=1.
Bloggers can enable the mobile version of their blogs, so that visitors are automatically redirected to this version when they're using a supported mobile browser. This option is only available if you go to Blogger in Draft, click on "Settings", switch to "Email & Mobile" and enable "Yes, On mobile devices, show the mobile version of my template." This didn't work for me, so you'll still see the regular mobile version of this blog that uses a custom stylesheet.
Google says that the new feature only supports 12 existing templates (6 variants of the Simple template and 6 variants of the Awesome template) and that all the other templates will be rendered as the Simple template. The mobile version drops the sidebars and most of the gadgets, shows small excerpts from the posts on the homepage, hides the comment form (but you can still post comments), resizes images and videos, adjusts fonts and converts AdSense ads into mobile ads. Unfortunately, you can't customize mobile templates, at least not yet.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Blogger Adds Spam Filter for Comments
Blogger's commenting system still needs a lot of work. Even though you can now display the comment box below the post, you can subscribe to comments by email and sign in using OpenID, the authentication procedure is still clunky, you can't reply to a message, read other comments from the same user or edit a comment after posting it.
The good news is that Google finally solved two big problems for Blogger authors: comment spam and managing comments. If Gmail has a great spam filter, why Blogger can't use a similar technology to detect spam comments?
"Blogger now filters comments that are likely spam comments to a Spam Inbox, much like the spam folder in your email. When someone leaves a comment on your blog, it will be reviewed against our spam detector, and comments that are identified as possible spam will be sent to your blog's Spam Inbox, found at Comments | Spam," explains Blogger's help center.
Blogger's spam filter works well and you can improve it by clicking on "Not spam" next to a false positive or mark as spam a message that hasn't been filtered.
Now it's easier to manage the comments from your blog even after they're published. The new Comments tab lists all the published comments and lets you delete them or mark them as spam. You no longer have to visit each blog post and manually remove spam comments.
Blogger's help center says that the Comments tab should be displayed even if you don't enable comment moderation. Unfortunately, the tab disappears when you disable comment moderation. As Blogger's blog admits, comment moderation can be annoying. "To fight spam, some of you enabled moderation of all comments or required word verification or login. While somewhat effective, these checks limit real-time conversations around your blog."
For now, I've enabled comment moderation for posts that are older than 30 days. Hopefully, you'll no longer see spam comments.
The good news is that Google finally solved two big problems for Blogger authors: comment spam and managing comments. If Gmail has a great spam filter, why Blogger can't use a similar technology to detect spam comments?
"Blogger now filters comments that are likely spam comments to a Spam Inbox, much like the spam folder in your email. When someone leaves a comment on your blog, it will be reviewed against our spam detector, and comments that are identified as possible spam will be sent to your blog's Spam Inbox, found at Comments | Spam," explains Blogger's help center.
Blogger's spam filter works well and you can improve it by clicking on "Not spam" next to a false positive or mark as spam a message that hasn't been filtered.
Now it's easier to manage the comments from your blog even after they're published. The new Comments tab lists all the published comments and lets you delete them or mark them as spam. You no longer have to visit each blog post and manually remove spam comments.
Blogger's help center says that the Comments tab should be displayed even if you don't enable comment moderation. Unfortunately, the tab disappears when you disable comment moderation. As Blogger's blog admits, comment moderation can be annoying. "To fight spam, some of you enabled moderation of all comments or required word verification or login. While somewhat effective, these checks limit real-time conversations around your blog."
For now, I've enabled comment moderation for posts that are older than 30 days. Hopefully, you'll no longer see spam comments.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Blogger Stats
Two years ago, Google started to test an analytics service for blogs. MeasureMap, the service acquired by Google to improve the interface of Google Analytics, was still available and MeasureMap users were invited to convert their accounts to Google Analytics. At that time, Google Analytics experimented with integrating MeasureMap features like showing information about comments, blog posts, links from other sites. For Blogger blogs, Google also added a "stats" tab on the dashboard.
It's not clear if the Google Analytics experiment is still available, but Google released Blogger Stats, a Blogger feature that lets you see real-time data about a blog: the most popular posts, the number of pageviews for each post, the total number of pageviews, a list of traffic sources and search keywords, a breakdown of pageviews by country, browser and operating system. Blogger Stats is only available if you use Blogger in Draft, a playground where Blogger tests many new features.
"The coolest thing about the new Blogger Stats is that it monitors and analyzes your visitor traffic in near-real-time. You can see which posts are getting the most visits and which sites are sending traffic to your blog right now," says Google. Blogger Stats doesn't use Google Analytics, which offers more complex reports, but they are updated every hour and sometimes even less often.
It's not clear if the Google Analytics experiment is still available, but Google released Blogger Stats, a Blogger feature that lets you see real-time data about a blog: the most popular posts, the number of pageviews for each post, the total number of pageviews, a list of traffic sources and search keywords, a breakdown of pageviews by country, browser and operating system. Blogger Stats is only available if you use Blogger in Draft, a playground where Blogger tests many new features.
"The coolest thing about the new Blogger Stats is that it monitors and analyzes your visitor traffic in near-real-time. You can see which posts are getting the most visits and which sites are sending traffic to your blog right now," says Google. Blogger Stats doesn't use Google Analytics, which offers more complex reports, but they are updated every hour and sometimes even less often.
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