New and Improved? Unsung Features of The New Blogger

Let's be fair.

Blogger is hard to use, and it is not your fault.

Google could have done so much better when it revisited the "back end" of Blogger—the tools we bloggers use to create blogs and posts.

I've been critical (and, I hope, helpful) on this blog. 

But to be fair, I'd like to put the criticism aside and remind everyone of things that are new and improved. Of benefits from the change.

First and foremost: Blogger did not shut down. On August 14, a Google employee named Marc Ridey told us

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 is such a big deal that, paradoxically, it probably shouldn't count. Nonetheless, we are able to keep publishing blog posts today after a big transition behind the scenes.

Second, the new interface is responsive, which means you can blog from your phone. 

It will be interesting to see if anyone does this, and what those blogs are like. But yeah, new feature.

Aside from that, it's not a terribly impressive list. But it's not nothing either.

Count Your Blessings?

One of the changes I appreciate the most is the smallest. 

The active portion of the posts page on the dashboard—the place where all your posts are listed, available to view or edit—is closer to the optimal width and thus easier view and to use. It had been too wide.

There is a raft of new search options on the posts page. These can help manage the new infinite scroll.

Blogger stats is redesigned, and links to Google's webmaster tools.

Preview now gives the option of seeing how the post will look on phones and other devices.

Publish summons a dialog asking if you are sure you want to do that (publish).

Most of the other additions are on the toolbar for the post editor (and page editor).

The new "Add Fonts" command on the fonts menu will give you access to 999 webfonts. 

Don't use them all! It will look terrible and slow down your blog, since the fonts you add are loaded for each page whether you use them there or not.

It is also now possible to apply the right-to-left and left-to-right attributes to different blocks of text in a post. 

This barely qualifies, since the tools existed before, but what is new is that you no longer need to set your blog to a right-to-left language in order to see them. 

"Input Tools" gives you a new way to insert non-Latin characters (Ø) and diacritical märks, this time based on language. ¡Olé! 

You can still find these characters in other ways, including the "Insert special characters" tool. Included in Input, meanwhile, is the option to locate your character by drawing it.

The link tool now lets you specify nofollow and target attributes without editing HTML. (Target lets you tell browsers to open the link in a different window or tab.) 

On HTML toolbar, the "format HTML tool" is both new and extra handy given the other changes to HTML mode. 

Also in HTML is a super powerful search and replace function that accepts regular expressions (but does not require them). (Regular expressions are like wildcard searches on steroids.).

The media upload tools, though buggy, have been streamlined in good ways. (I don't think anyone will miss the option of inserting an image from their webcam.) 

Remembrance of Things Past

I am almost certainly missing some changes. There's no way to check the legacy interface to see how it used to be. I'm sure I've forgotten something.

So if there is something else to be grateful for, don't be shy! Remind us of them in the comments. Goodness knows we can use all the positive news we can get.