"New Blogger": Google Replies

Since August 7, Marc Ridey from Google has been posting weekly reports on The New Blogger project in the Blogger Help Community.

These chatty and informative posts shine a light on what is going on behind the scenes with the Blogger developers.

Here are some highlights.

On August 7, Marc described the sheer size of the project and noted recent changes responding to feedback about labels and "infinite scroll." 

Also, "Bold, Italic, Strike and Blockquote options are back in the HTML editor." 

On August 14, he explains that some of Blogger's underlying technologies are being phased out by Google. "The legacy interface runs on very old technical infrastructure that is about to be turned off."

This isn’t a decision the Blogger team made, nor one we can reverse; hence, soon the legacy interface will go away.

This report is the most detailed description to date of why Blogger is revamping its back-end.

Changes for the week include fixes for publication date.

Marc's August 21 report details how the new interface is writing the HTML code that renders blog posts. Changes affect the paragraph styles and give access to 999 web fonts. (Do we need that many? Please don't use them all in one place!)

Also, the option of inserting media has been returned to HTML mode.

His August 28 report dives into what is going on with font sizes (it's complicated) and details a number of interface tweaks. 

For instance: "The Stats option that allows you to ignore pageviews when you visit your own blog is back on the Stats view."

Further changes noted to labeling, images, and HTML editing feel like lesser tweaks and not major rethinking.

✭ Update September 4: The big news is that legacy will go away at the end of the month. Will this stick, or will it slip again? 

✭ Update September 19: Legacy is gone (they warned us!) but Google is still working to fix things. This report includes a detailed plea for feedback that is specific and useful.

Each of Marc's reports concludes with a "hint of the week," usually, though not always, related to the changes.

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We don't have to like all of the changes—I don't—but it is helpful to know what is new and, at some level, why all of this is happening.