Blogger’s Brand New Google+ Page

(Cross posted from the Blogger Buzz Blog) 

 Earlier this week, the Google+ team launched Pages, a new way for you to keep up-to-date with your interests and build relationships with the people who share them. Today, the Blogger team is launching our own Google+ Page, and we’d like to invite you to add us to one of your circles.

By adding Blogger's Page in one of your circles, you'll start seeing updates from the Blogger team in your Google+ stream. You’ll also have the opportunity to engage with other bloggers by writing comments on the posts. Here's a quick list of what to expect:

• Product news and announcements
• Video Hangouts with the Blogger team
• Spotlights on Blogger users and their blogs
• Pro tips from the Blogger team and other users

Lastly, be sure to mention +Blogger when you share your own tips -- if we come across something particularly helpful, we may reshare it. See you on Google+! Posted by Lisa Ding, Community Manager

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Use your Google+ profile with your Blogger blogs

(Cross-posted from Blogger Buzz)

In fewer than 4 months since its launch, more than 40 million people have joined Google+, making it a living, breathing space for social connections and sharing to thrive. Today we’re excited to announce the first way you will be able to leverage Google+ -- by making it possible to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.

In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you've shared the post.

Plus, bloggers who switch will automatically get access to the Google+ integrations we’ll be rolling out in the future. If you blog under a pseudonym and you don’t want to connect your common name with your blog, this integration may not work for you. That’s why we’ve made it completely optional to switch. 

This option is available for all users today in our testing ground, Blogger in Draft, and will be accessible from www.blogger.com in the coming weeks. If you have a Google+ account and would like to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile, log in to draft.blogger.com and click “Get started” on the promotion message, pictured below, or click here to get started right away.

If you don’t have a Google+ account, you can create one here first, and then head back to draft.blogger.com and look for the promotion message. To learn more, check out our FAQs or visit our Help Forum. Happy blogging!

Posted by Vardhman Jain, Software Engineer

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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!

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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!

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Customize Your Favicon

Posted by Dongil Seo, Software Engineer

For many bloggers, having a custom favicon (the tiny image displayed in your browser’s window or tab) is the finishing touch that ties together the design and identity of a great looking blog. Today, we're pleased to announce that Blogger in Draft users can now add a customized favicon to their blog.

You can add a custom favicon from the Design | Page Elements tab (or, from the Layout tab if you're using the new user interface), by clicking Edit on the new “Favicon” setting above the navbar element:




A new window will then open where you can select an image from your hard drive to replace the default favicon image. This initial launch only supports .ico files, but you can easily convert your JPEG, PNG, or other non-ico image file using your own image software. There are also many conversion tools online, and a quick Google Search brings up a handful of options such as http://www.icoconverter.com/.




Once you’ve selected the .ico file for your favicon, click Save. We'll automatically resize the image to the correct dimensions, and you’ll then see the Page Elements updated with your selected favicon image:




When you save your template changes, you’ll see your newly-added favicon image displayed in your browser window or tab. That’s it!

In the future, we’ll add support for more non-ico image formats, so stay tuned. In the meantime, please leave us a comment below and let us know what you think.

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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!

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