There's a lot to dislike, at this date, about the new editing window in The New Blogger. (I expect things to improve.)
But one development I am completely celebrating is the new table tool. It is visible (in TNB only) on the editing toolbar if your screen is wide enough, and also on the drop-down tool menu that is included for tablets and phones.
Tables have many uses: presenting tabular matter, for instance, or organizing images into a grid. But until now, the only way to add a table in Blogger has been by adding raw html to the post in html mode.
Here for instance is the code for the above table:
<table border="1" bordercolor="#888" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-color: rgb(136, 136, 136); border-width: 1px;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="width: 60px;"></td><td style="width: 60px;"></td><td style="width: 60px;"></td><td style="width: 60px;"></td></tr>
<tr><td style="width: 60px;"></td><td style="width: 60px;"></td><td style="width: 60px;"></td><td style="width: 60px;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Easy, right?
To be fair, the Blogger editor is adding some code that is not strictly necessary, but it is still very picky work to make even a simple table in html.
User-Friendly
That's why a user-friendly tool is so great.
Once you have inserted your table, a menu off of the table tool will let you make some basic changes.
You can add and delete columns and rows without messing about with code.
You must still dive into the code if you want to remove or modify the lines around the table cell grid, or change the column widths, or make any number of other useful changes.
This isn't really good enough, yet, but is very promising!
Let's Make This Really Good
The editing page on The New Blogger is clearly a work in progress.
Creating blog posts is pretty central to blogging, so please consider leaving feedback for the developers, as many of us have been doing for other parts of the project.
It is a real chance to help make the platform better. And eventually, we'll all have to live with the result.
Is the new editor rolling out? I'm using the New Blogger but I still have the old editor.
ReplyDeletePaulo, that is very curious! Right now I am seeing a new page editor that includes the table tool as described.
DeleteI do not think I would have published this post had I known that the new UI was not generally available. That is frustrating!
My only suggestions are to try the usual "kick the machine" tricks--you might revert to "classic" and then back to "new," for instance, or clear your browser cache.
The other thing to try is to do this at draft.blogger.com. However, I am seeing the new editing page at regular old blogger.com.
Please let me know the result of those experiments, if you have the time to try them!
Thanks Adam, kicking the machine didn't help. And I've been using draf.blogger.com exclusively since the new Blogger became available.
DeleteMaybe it's an A/B test?
Could be, Paulo! I am going to ask Google (though as you know, Google seldom answers).
DeleteGuess what? I've got the new post editor.
DeleteI love it but the old serif body text font is ugly, it sticks out like a sore thumb. It's completely out of place and clashes with the modern sans serif font of the rest of the user interface.
And the editing pane stretches to fill the window's width, which makes text lines too long on a wide screen.
Hi Paulo! I'm glad you can see it.
DeleteThe new UI does still feel very much like a work in progress. Please leave feedback for the developers!
Yes, I regularly send feedback as new features are released in Blogger in Draft.
DeleteWhen I add an image in the new editor, the image in the lightbox doesn't enlarge to the full size when clicked in the published post. Is this a know issue or limitation of the new editor?
ReplyDeleteHi Paulo,
DeleteI do not know what is known these days. Sounds like a bug to me! as the whole LIghtbox idea was to show off those photos.