New features for Google’s Blogger
In March, Google announced that their blog platform, Blogger.com, would be getting a major makeover, potentially bringing it out of the shadows of ugly duckling phase and help the platform compete with the Tumblrs and Posterouses of the world. In April, the company unveiled “Dynamic Views” as seen in the video above, which allows seven views for consumers to switch between when viewing a Blogger site.
Now, Google has launched the new look and seven themes built with AJAX, HTML5 and CSS, releasing the option for site owners to control which view people see when they first land, whereas the past few months has simply been up to the viewer to know what dynamic views were and flip between them.
Dynamic Views are a major benefit to Blogger, as competitors don’t have the ability for users to interact with a theme in this way, other than to change basic colors, and with infinite scrolling (never having to click “next post”), the tablet market will likely respond well to the new features. Site owners can currently only change the header image and background colors, but customization features should be coming in the next few weeks.
Examples of dynamic view types on blogs:
- Classic (Gmail): A modern twist on a traditional template, with infinite scrolling and images that load as you go
- Flipcard (M loves M) – Your photos are tiled across the page and flip to reveal the post title
- Magazine (Advanced Style) – A clean, elegant editorial style layout
- Mosaic (Crosby’s Kitchen) – A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
- Sidebar (Blogger Buzz Blog) – An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
- Snapshot (Canelle et Vanille) – An interactive pinboard of your posts
- Timeslide (The Bleary-Eyed Father) – A horizontal view of your posts by time period
