New feature: Reactions

With our new Reactions feature, you can get one-click feedback from your readers. Think of it as a mini-poll for each blog post, or a flexible version of star ratings because you customize what options are available. We hope this will help your blogs get feedback from people who read your posts but don’t have enough to say to for a full comment.

To enable Reactions, log in to http://draft.blogger.com/ and go to your Layouts page. From there, click the “Edit” link for the Blog Posts gadget and then check the “Reactions” checkbox. You can edit the Reactions buttons by clicking "Edit" or clicking the buttons themselves, as shown.

You can customize the location of the Reactions within the post by dragging the preview around in the “Arrange Items” box. We’ve found that it looks best when it’s on its own line, but your mileage may vary.

You can customize the options and their label to match the theme and style of your blog.

Additional Notes

• This is a Layouts-only feature. If you’re using a Classic template you’ll need to upgrade to Layouts to add Reactions.
• The buttons should blend seamlessly with most blog backgrounds. Button backgrounds are a mostly transparent grey which should, we hope, coordinate with everything. The text and button highlight colors for the ratings are taken from the following skin variables:
  
  • Foreground: textcolor, textColor, mainTextColor
    
  • Highlight: linkcolor, linkColor, mainLinkColor
    
• If you have customized your blog widget’s template you may not see the reactions. You will need to either reset your blog widget’s template or copy the Reactions code from a fresh template. Search for “reactions-buttons” to find the appropriate block of code.
• A known issue: if you choose short words/phrases, it’s possible to enter enough options that the line of buttons will wrap (and not look very good). If this happens to you, you'll need to shorten your options or reduce their number.
  

What do you think? Leave a comment, or just rate this post!

New toolbar, AJAX saving, and other fixes for the post editor

Today we’ve released a few enhancements to the new post editor, fixed some bugs, created a new one or two, and left a handful of things to fix later.

New Stuff

• AJAX save. We’re still not saving posts automatically, but now the “Save Now” button will keep the post editor open, and Ctrl-S works as a shortcut for saving. (Internet Explorer users: use Ctrl-Shift-S to save.)


• New toolbar. This toolbar looks better, loads more quickly, and has undo and redo buttons. By popular demand, the full justification button has returned. We’ve also added a strike through button and improved the color palettes.
  
  


• Vertical resizing. You can now change the height of the post editor by dragging the resize handle in the lower right (near the labels field). The size is saved in a per-user, per-blog preference.

Fixed Bugs

• <div>s in Edit HTML are now better-preserved in Compose mode. This should fix most post summary hacks. If your hack uses <span> tags, please switch to using <div>s.


• Lists created in Compose mode can now have new items added to them after switching to Edit HTML and back.


• Line breaking is no longer lost when editing a post in the old editor that was first written in the new editor.


• Nested block-level elements no longer create odd blank lines.


• Non-breaking spaces now consistently appear as &nbsp; in Edit HTML mode.

New Bugs (that we know about)

• The publish and save buttons wrap oddly on Mac browsers.

Major Remaining Bugs (that we know about)

• The Font Size menu has 4 sizes instead of 5, and “normal” looks small.


• Paragraph tags are lost when switching from Edit HTML to Compose.


• The Blockquote button still behaves oddly, especially in Internet Explorer.


• The URL an image links to cannot be changed without using Edit HTML mode.


• Images inserted with this editor do not pick up border styles from the blog template.


• Inserting a new link with the link dialog loses your place in the post. 

Find anything else? See: How to report HTML bugs with the new post editor



Things Left To Add

• Toolbar in Edit HTML mode


• Autosave


• Spellcheck


• Video upload


• FTP image upload


• Bi-directional text input and Indic transliteration 


• and a handful of smaller things too numerous to include here