Blogger in Draft

It seems like the new Blogger just got out of beta, and now Blogger is offering a new draft version where they try out new features before releasing them to the general public. You can try out the new Blogger in draft by going directly to http://draft.blogger.com/. If you want to read more about what the new draft Blogger is all about check out this post from the official Blogger in draft blog.

Once you login you will see your dashboard like you normally do with your blogs listed. You will notice that the header is different, and of course you will notice some changes on your individual blogs, mainly on the posting section at the moment. The two current features they seem to be testing is the option to add polls to blogs and the ability to add enclosures like a podcast of video to your blog. I took a brief look at the new features, but so far have either no use for them, since Polls will only work on Blogspot hosted blogs, and the video enclosures are for your own custom made videos in AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media formats. I thought it was odd that they did not offer an automatic link between a persons Google Video/YouTube videos. Here is a short video I made of Fort Carlton last year, it is nothing special, but the only video I had handy to test with. While it is nice to see Blogger continue to find new things to improve and add to the service, it would be really nice if Blogger would fix some of the problems with the service before adding more features into the mix that will simply need fixing. Some of the things that Blogger perhaps should look into fixing include:

• FTP Publishing of labels is using a %20 in the space creating all kinds of problems for FTP publishers like myself.
• Image uploads are constantly giving problems. If they can’t upload images properly how well will they be able to handle video and audio uploads?
• RSS feeds for comments are hard to find for FTP published blogs. I don’t think I have ever read any official documentation on the topic.
• Allow bloggers to remove the no-follow attribute on comments and backlinks.
• I am sure I will think of more…feel free to add yours as a comment.

Some features that I hope Blogger will get around to adding include:

• Better support for FTP publishers (ya right, soon we will be left high and dry!)
• Publish on a future date. This should be standard. Write a post, give it a future date and it publishes on the date and time. How hard can it be! Heck simple cron jobs can do stuff like this.
• Support. Need I say more. Ok I will anyways. Face it Blogger support SUCKS! Getting a hold of anyone at Blogger is impossible and the Blogger help groups, while full of well meaning people, often have no solutions. I suppose that is not really a feature is it. It would be nice to have it improved.
• Allow Javascript in posts. I can’t be the only one wanting this.
• Your list? Add a comment!

Well, you can maybe give draft Blogger a go. It is easy to try, not like the switch to the new Blogger was. If you are a podcaster you might find the new features an improvement. Of course if you are a serious podcaster, I doubt you use Blogger anyways.