Blogger in Draft - as it is called by Google is the next version of Blogger. At the first glance itself, I selected this as my currect default layout. Many functionalities have been added into Blogger which exist in other Google Products.
Dashboard is much cleaner. This was one drawback earlier.
Layout
- Gadget List for the sidebar have gone up from about 19 to thousands (similar to the Gadgets available for iGoogle). Some of them being BlogSearch, FeedLink, BloggerRoll, TechBlog, etc.
Posting
- The hyperlink edit functionality in Gmail (editing link in Compose mode) plus facility to test the link has been added in Compose mode of the post.
- Bigger icons in RTF help in easier and clearer access.
- One thing that was shocking was the unavailability of adding Videos within the post, which existed earlier. Though whenever I tried to use it then, it failed. Thought it might be failing because of the large size of the video file. But, removing this functionality was not expected.
- A preview of the post before publishing it; which I so badly wanted, has finally been added (relieved!).
Settings
- Number of mail ids for intimation on publishing a new post have been increased from one mail id to ten mail ids. I remember how we had found a round-about way to inform multiple people (which holds good even now because of restriction on number of mail ids to ten). - Created Google Group, - added interested members to this group, - gave google group mail id for intimation. This way all will get intimated though only one mail id was allowed in Blogger. To reduce the admin work of manually adding interested users to the group, added a javascript provided by google groups as a gadget in the sidebar of the blog, so that any individual can add him/her-self to this group. To avoid one adding another persons' mail id without his/hers' permission, confirmation of the group request was sent.
- Support to Import & Export Blog has been added like Wordpress. But this is limited to blogs on Blogger.com only unlike Wordpress which supports scores of other blogs like b2evolution, Blogger, Blosxom, Dotclear, Drupal, more...
- Now Blogger can be set to Custom Domain aswell. Need to work out details though.
Update-1: Just discovered Blogger has listed all these features in their Blog. Did not know it existed. (Am I feeling like I wasted time formulating above postulates?!?!). Yet glad that I got most their rolled-out features. Missed few things (rather learnt on going through this post) about Star Ratings and Embedded Comments. On trying to add Star Ratings, one can even change the post layout (restricted). So, Explore and Enjoy Blogging!
