The Blogger In Draft Blog Is Being Retired

In 2007, we introduced Blogger In Draft, a special version of Blogger where new features could reach users early and let people try new things. We also introduced the Blogger In Draft blog, and for the past five years, we’ve introduced new updates and options here, often before we told the rest of the world on our official blog, Buzz.

With the recent launch of our Google+ page, we have another great way to keep you updated on new features, both for everyone and those of you who love seeing things early. To simplify the many places you can get updates, we will be retiring the Blogger in Draft blog, with this being the final post. Going forward, we’d like to invite you to follow our official blog and our Google+ page to find out what’s new with Blogger.

This doesn’t mean the Blogger In Draft service is going anywhere, so don’t fret! You’ll still get all the shiny goodness as fast as we can bring it to you. But we’ll be talking about it somewhere else.

Introducing Google Scribe in Blogger

Posted by Kuntal Loya, Software Engineer



Hello Bloggers! Do you ever find yourself writing slowly, staring at a blinking cursor or looking for words to express yourself? Today we are happy to announce the availability of the text suggestions and autocomplete feature of Google Scribe, which is graduating from Google Labs and can now be found in Blogger in Draft.



Google Scribe helps you write more efficiently by suggesting common words and phrases as you type. Google Scribe supports Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. The language is automatically detected using the text in the post.



Enabling Google Scribe is easy. Simply click the pencil icon in the toolbar within the Post Editor.





After Google Scribe is turned on, suggestions will appear in gray as you type, and you can accept them by hitting the spacebar or by typing a punctuation mark, such as a comma, period or question mark.





If you would like to receive more than one suggestion at a time, select "Show Multiple Suggestions" from the drop-down menu next to the pencil icon. You will then be able to see several options in a drop-down menu as you type.







Here are some keyboard shortcuts you may find handy. If you use a Mac, you can use the shortcuts below by replacing Ctrl with Command key (or 'Apple' key)

• Ctrl-j to enable and disable Scribe
• Ctrl-Shift-j to select and deselect multiple suggestions
• ESC to temporarily remove a suggestion
• TAB to restore a suggestion

We hope you like this new feature. We would love to hear from you, so let us know your feedback on our Product Ideas page.



Happy blogging!

Blogger’s Updated Interface Now Available for All Draft Users

Posted by Jungshik Jang, Software Engineer

It's been an exciting couple of months seeing more and more users try out our new user interface since its debut back in April, and today we're happy to announce another major milestone in its development. As of right now, the new interface is available for all Blogger in Draft users. Again, there is no sign up or activation process required; Just visit Blogger in Draft, and you’ll find the revamped interface, all ready for your exploration!

Over the last couple of months, we’ve made significant improvements to our new user interface. First and foremost, we’ve incorporated your feedback and made numerous fixes based on that feedback. Also, we’ve updated the look and feel of our new design, inspired by Google’s newest design evolutions.

As you know, Blogger in Draft is Blogger’s equivalent to “Google Labs.” As Draft users, you get to experience our newest features, including the new design, earlier than other users. If you’re not yet on Blogger in Draft, simply go to draft.blogger.com, and check on the “Make Blogger in Draft my default” option on your dashboard.

We hope you’ll enjoy the new Blogger interface and send us your feedback by clicking on the “Send feedback” link from the navigation bar. Happy blogging!

Blogger, Redesigned

Posted by Jinwoo Lee, Blogger tech lead

As we shared before, our team has been hard at work on a brand new, next generation design for Blogger. After doing a sneak preview at the South by Southwest conference back in March, we received some great feedback from the media:

• Half A Billion Blog Posts Later, Google To Give Blogger A Revamp
• Google’s Blogger Is About to Get an Overhaul

Today, we're thrilled to announce the public launch of our redesign! But please wait a second before you go check out your Blogger dashboard, because we’re planning a gradual rollout that will start with a limited set of users who visit our new feature testing ground, Blogger in Draft. At the start, only some of you (lucky draws!) can see the new design on Blogger in Draft. Over the course of the next few days and weeks we’ll be ramping up to support all Draft users. There is no sign-up or activation process required from your side; just wait, and you’ll notice your dashboard has changed to the new design when you log in to Blogger in Draft. 

Although our team has been hard at work cranking out tons of new features over the last year or so, it’s been a while since our user interface has had a major update so we’re very excited about Blogger’s fresh new look. However, there’s much more to the redesign than shiny new graphics and pages—we’ve essentially rewritten the entire application from scratch, using the latest web technologies that will enable us to make future updates in more agile and flexible ways.

We decided to make the new UI available to our loyal Blogger users as quickly as possible. We realize there might be some ‘rough edges’ (see this page for the known issues) but fear not, we’ll be continually updating and improving the experience until it’s ready to graduate from Blogger in Draft. Our team is also very eager to hear your feedback, so please don’t hesitate to let us know of any bugs or suggestions by clicking on the “Send feedback” link in the navigation bar (or directly on this form).

This is only the beginning of many exciting updates that we’re planning for Blogger this year, so stay tuned!