New mobile templates for reading on the go

Posted by Jiho Han, Software Engineer

We know many of you like to view blog posts on your smartphones. However, it can be difficult at times because of the small screen size. This is why we are excited to announce our first launch of mobile templates! Initially available as opt-in functionality on Blogger in Draft, mobile templates will re-format your blogs for smartphones to enhance your readers’ viewing experience. In order to activate mobile templates, simply go to Dashboard > Settings > Email & Mobile tab, enable the mobile template option and then save settings.

Feature highlights

• Preview: Get a glimpse of what your blog will look like by clicking on the Mobile Preview button. You can also see it on your smartphone by scanning the QR-code to the right of the options.
• Automatic redirection: All opted-in blogs will automatically be redirected to the mobile view when accessed from a smartphone*.
• Template support: We are initially supporting 6 variants of the Simple template and 6 variants of the Awesome template. If you have used one of these 12 templates through our Template Designer, your mobile view will be rendered in the same style as your desktop view (other template variants will be rendered as Simple). Some gadgets are also supported**.

• Mobile ads: Mobile AdSense ads will be displayed at the top of the post pages and at the bottom of the index page if the blog has an AdSense gadget or inline blog ads.

• Comments and videos: You will be able to make comments and watch videos.

We hope you enjoy the improved mobile experience. As always, we would love to hear from you so please feel free to tell us what you think through our feedback form.

*WebKit-based mobile browsers are supported for our initial launch.
**Supported gadgets/elements in this launch: Header, Blog, Profile, AdSense, Attribution.

Search and Insert YouTube Videos

Blogger supports drop-dead easy video-blogging -- if you have a video file, you can just upload it to Blogger. But when it comes to video-blogging, we know a lot of you also choose to embed YouTube videos to your post.

Currently, adding a YouTube video to your post is fairly easy, but it still requires several steps of work: If you don't have the embed code already, you'd have to open a new browser window or tab, go to YouTube.com, search the video, and play the video to make sure it's the right video. Once you copy the embed code, you come back to your Blogger post and manually insert the code in your post.

We’ve just added a new Blogger in Draft feature that makes this process a lot easier. You don't have to open another tab or window; from your post editor, just click the Insert a Video button in the toolbar. In addition to the already existing Upload tab, you'll now see two new tabs: From YouTube and My YouTube videos.

In the From YouTube tab, you can search, browse, and play back YouTube videos all within the interface. If you have your own videos on YouTube, My YouTube videos tab will show them as well.

Once you choose the video, click on Select to insert the video to the post. You’ll then see a thumbnail image for the video, which you can move around in the post by drag-and-drop.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, it’s as easy to add a video to your blog from YouTube as it is to add a YouTube video in Blogger. While you are watching a YouTube video, click “Share” button, and you will see Blogger as one of the places you can share the video to. Click on Blogger, and you’ll see the familiar BlogThis! mini post editor -- all you have to do is to select a blog (if you have more than one blog, that is), fill out some content, and then Publish the post. Enjoy video-blogging!