My blog has moved into Beta!



Please note that my blog has changed addresses! It's all new and improved. Hence this old friend of mine had to be left alone. You can visit me at The Last Word (beta). It's all warmed up for you! :)

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So, the previous post was done up with a lot of excitement, hence I didn't get to play around much. Many of the features have been listed out by the big blogs itself, so I am not going to dwell on them. However, being of the hacker vein, I went straight to where I saw my business. The template editor. Immediately I saw the difference. Some of them are listed here, and the updates with time are listed here :)

The template

There is a new template editor in the works, as I was greeted to it the moment I stepped in. Currently its not out, and you can revert back to the classic editor look. They are furthur tweaking the way we edit our templates! :) Going from old to new needs a change, and Blogger offers to back your template for you. Are we looking at a possible template backing system, a la Wordpress?

As far as the new features go, there have to be new tags with them too now, isn't it? So, I went looking for them! And I found them in plenty. You see, I noticed that when you're signed in to Blogger beta, and you'll looking at your blog, you'll see many small editing icons pop up, and your archives show in a different way too...

So, the template tags that I found new, had a curious I18N prepended to their name. [Update]: As pointed out by Anonymous commenter, the prefix is for internationalisation of certain text. These will change depending on the language selection of the viewer of the blog. Here they are:

Post Footer Tags

  • <$I18NPostedByAuthorNickname$>
  • <$I18NAtTimeWithPermalink$>
  • <$I18NLinksToThisPost$>

Comments/Backlinks Tags

  • <$I18NNumComments$>
  • <$I18NLinksToThisPost$>
  • <$I18NPostedByBacklinkAuthor$>
  • <$I18NHome$>

Sidebar Tags (seem like titles to each section in the sidebar)

  • <$I18NHome$>
  • <$I18NPreviousPosts$>
  • <$I18NArchives$>
  • <$BlogFeedsVertical$> - not working as of 16/08

The conclusion

Though I'll keep this post updated as more and more things keep showing up, what is bothering me is that most of the things that we spent learning and understanding might slowly get faded out as Blogger starts to adopt new naming (hopefully not) and new page structures. This could be a pain for people like me who've taken a few things for granted. Let's see what turns out. Blogger has officially not defined those tags, so if anyone out there knows (or thinks they know) what these tags do, don't hesitate to leave a comment with your thoughts, I'll update the post with them!

Regular Updates

(Updates Feed)
  • As many of us have been complaining about the lack of an HTML editor with the new Blogger, they have now posted their reply on their Buzz blog. The update is only days away, as they put it. Straight from the horses mouth:
    Fortunately, it's always been part of our plan to introduce a new Edit HTML system for Blogger in beta. This system will not only let folks have the degree of customizability they desire, but it will let you create templates that are customizable with the Layouts system. Right now we are finishing the first version of this system and will be introducing in the "days not weeks" timeframe.
    This is really getting exciting.
  • They have improved their spell check. It uses the same engine as the one GMail uses! Finally, deliverance for the post editor! :)
  • Venkataramani has made a post about small squiggles that Blogger has quietly added in. Do check them out, they'll surely make your hour! :)
  • Completely forgot to mention this. Blogger has upped their navbar search to now show results as proper posts in your main posts column. Discovered by Kirk, it sure does threaten to outrun my hack! But Arr! If its a fight ye want laddies, then its a fight yer gonna get! Yo ho ho!
  • I don't know how important this is, but the comments page is served over encrypted and secure pages! Check it out! Go to any comment page of a blog which has made the switch, and you'll see the all to familiar https:// in your address bar. I wonder how and why this is so!
  • Kirk (Phydeaux3) has noticed that the Blogger sign has undergone a slight change. We are still trying to figure out what its about, but if you have any theories, leave a comment at his post, or here! [-] It now seems like Blogger is celebrating its birthday.
  • [Exclusive Update]: It seems like post permalinks no longer change with the title. It stays constant at what it was when created initially. Hence, if your title was 'Crazy', then your permalink will remain 'blog/year/month/crazy.html', even if you change the title to 'Crazy Dog'. Thats cool! It'll let people change titles if they feel like doing so later on! Cool! :)
  • As Goldman points out, Blogger now allows removal of pictures from the servers. When you go to delete a post with pictures, Blogger will give you a list of the pictures uploaded in relation to that post, so that you can remove them! :)
- This post will not be furthur updated. I was away for too long, and have lost track. Please keep track of Freshblog and Bloggeratto for the latest updates -

10 Comments

Adi, I experimented with Blogger Beta as well. When I enable all 3 types of feeds, I see post feed in main page and per-post comment feed in post pages (at the bottom, there's a "Subscribe to" link). But I don't see the entire blog's comment feed anywhere. Did you manage to find it?

<$BlogFeedsVertical$> didn't seem to work as well when I placed it in sidebar.

-Ramani

Really waiting for 'em to enable the raw editing of template..
Can't live without hacks, can we? ;)

@Venkataramani: <$BlogFeedsVertical$> is supposed to be the smart tag which lists out the feeds on the main page of all your posts and/or all your comments, based on the settings you've selected. This info is from the help documentation.

However, I will confirm that I've seen nothing of whole blog comment feed. I will continue looking into and keep a look at this space for updates!

"I18N" is a prefix for "internationalization". These new tags display some English strings, as "POSTED BY" or "PREVIOUS POSTS". I suppose the aim is, when the internationalization feature is completed, to make these strings change depending on the language that we set; for example, the same tags will display in Spanish blogs "ESCRITO POR" or "ENTRADAS ANTERIORES".

But, in my opinion, this brings a lack of usability: We can't change the wording of these expressions, for example. I hope this will change, or I'll have to revert to the classic Blogger templates...

(comment caught by coComment, not by Blogger)
    Anonymous Anonymous, on Thu Aug 17, 08:49:00 AM  

Great catch! Thanks for the info! The post has been updated.
Keep 'em coming! :D

Adi, I have discovered some more easter eggs in Blogger Beta. Check this out:

http://hackosphere.blogspot.com/3006/08/blogger-beta-easter-eggs.html

"# I don't know how important this is, but the comments page is served over encrypted and secure pages! Check it out! Go to any comment page of a blog which has made the switch, and you'll see the all to familiar https:// in your address bar. I wonder how and why this is so!"

1.- it prevents the most rudimentary forms of automated spamming
2.-It allows for easier data recoledtion for google.
3.-in full force makes the database more stable.

Comments over https is to protect users' usernames and passwords when they log in. You'll notice that all login pages on the beta are served over https.

Ramani,

I can't see the whole blog comment feed either. What's up with that?

So why wait till the Beta to make things secure? What were they waiting for all this time?

I can understand the spam protection thing, and yes, this will help better than other methods around. But is it because of the Google Accounts transition only? As a side effect?

@John: The feed workaround has just one fundamental problem. It's not straight from Blogger. So if they change anything in the way the feed URLs are dished out, you might never realise until some time later.




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