Blog this

The new Blogger came out finally, and it looks terrific. I've already heard some comments that it's too dumbed down, but I think it's perfect for a new audience while at the same time isn't insulting to seasoned users.

One of the many new features at Blogger is the ability to have comments, and when I followed Ev's comment link and ended up at the Comment Sign In, I started cracking up.

After a couple months of hand-wringing over Typekey, Blogger basically relaunched with a more restrictive version of Typekey (no anon comments?), but I doubt we'll hear bad things about it. Maybe Sixapart should have just launched Typekey without telling anyone about it first. :)

Other notable things include great new all-CSS designs (that make blogspot/google ads on top look kinda assy), single post archives, and the new archive URL scheme. It's almost like they optimized Blogger blogs for search engines, which is kind of weird since it's Google running the service.

I'm totally amazed that they got keystrokes to work on the mac (in firefox). I've been struggling with the javascript that a couple friends gave me for MetaFilter comment boxes. I got keystrokes to work in Moz and IE on windows, but could never figure out how to make them work on a Mac. I'll have to steal the js for my other sites.

Overall I think it's a great redo of the service and site. They took on some of the features of Movable Type, but not enough for power users (when they allow for unlimited template creation and editing, then more people will try them out for complex blogs), while at the same time making the service easy enough for the 99.9999% of the population that has never posted anything online in their lives. This new design may just be the thing that jumps the chasm for blogs, making them more mainstream than ever.