Thursday, March 31, 2011

Fresh new perspectives for your blog

Today we’re previewing five new dynamic templates in Blogger that you’ll soon be able to customize and use for your blog. These new views use the latest in web technology, including AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3, to deliver a host of benefits to you and your readers:
  • Infinite scrolling: read more posts without having to reload or click to a second page
  • New layouts: different views suited to different types of blogs
  • Speed: download images as you view them, not all at once in advance
  • Interactivity: there are now more ways to experience and engage with blog content


Click on any of these links to take the new dynamic views for a spin on a few of our favorite blogs: Flipcard, Mosaic, Sidebar, Snapshot and Timeslide.

Flipcard

Snapshot

Mosaic
To try these views on your own blog, simply add “/view” to the end of the blog URL—for example, http://buzz.blogspot.com/view. These new views are available on all public Blogger blogs with feeds fully enabled—to learn more, including how to disable these views for your blog if you wish, please see our help center article.

We’re previewing these templates early on so we can incorporate your feedback for a wider launch soon. At that time you’ll be able to customize these templates and select one for your blog. Please let us know what you think!

Antin Harasymiv, Software Engineer, Blogger

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Spare two cents?

Published by Brett Wiltshire

We had a fantastic week in Austin during SXSW, and it was a pleasure getting to talk to so many of you who dropped by our booth and party. We always learn a lot when we get to speak with our users and it makes a big difference when we're thinking about the next exciting things to work on.

In that spirit, we thought we'd give those of you whom we weren't able to talk in person a chance to pass along your input on Blogger and the way you publish content online. So for those with a few thoughts to share and an extra few minutes lying around, please check out our quick survey.

Thanks, and we really do appreciate it!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Engage your audience with Follow by Email

Posted by Ben Eitzen, Software Engineer

Fresh content is the fuel that drives the blogosphere; it keeps readers coming back to your blog. Our team is always thinking of new ways to connect users with the freshest content across Blogger, and today we’re happy to offer a new, powerful way to do just that with Follow by Email.


The Follow by Email gadget provides blog authors a simple way for their readers to subscribe to the latest hot-off-the-press updates, which are delivered directly to the reader’s inbox. When new blog content is published, all subscribed readers will receive a daily email notification of the new published posts, which includes a copy of the new content as well as links back to the actual posts.

To enable Follow by Email, click the Add a Gadget link from the Design | Page Elements tab, and then select the Follow by Email gadget which should be at the top of the list. Once you add the gadget, readers visiting your blog can then just enter their email address and click Submit.


Taking advantage of Feedburner technology, Follow by Email will also track your subscription information, such as the number of subscribers and daily views. To view these stats, log into Feedburner.com, and select the appropriate blog feed from your list.