Neverending Blogger.com changes

Those busy beavers at Blogger never rest! And, one is tempted to add, unfortunately.

This week's change involves the batch controls, with special implications for managing labels.

So, first of all, the batch controls have been hidden behind a "manage" link (not shown) at right above the list of posts on your dashboard.

Operating on multiple posts

What are batch controls? They allow you to perform operations on multiple posts: select, post, revert to draft, apply labels, and delete.

Previously these appeared in an orange bar across the top. They were activated by selecting multiple posts. 

Now, though, the post-selection check box is behind the "manage" link.

This is another extra click, but not such a big deal. However, the control to filter posts by labels is now also removed. 

Filtering is useful in managing labels and can also help to locate posts.

Managing labels

Good news: you can still filter by label. 

Update: Even better news. Blogger has added an old-style "filter by label" button next to the "manage" link. The search-field method, below, still works, but you no longer have to use it.

Bad news: You have to type "label:labelname" into the search field at the top of your posts page. More typing!

Note to the hand surgeons of the world: You can afford that yacht now.

Not sure how to reconcile the more-typing part with the blog-from-your phone part. Maybe a fix is in the works for that.

As before, "apply labels" also removes labels, if all the posts you have selected already have the label applied.

Mine is not to reason why. I hope this helps someone.

Update: This change originally made its debut in Blogger in Draft last February. It seems to have gone live in regular Blogger this week, so I have changed the publication date of this report accordingly and made minor revisions to reflect the current status.

Further update: There is now a "filter by label" button to the left of the "manage" control. This change is reflected in further edits to this report.