Google's Broken Lists

Google has newly redesigned the advanced search page and removed two options that weren't used very frequently: finding pages that are similar to a page and pages that link to a page. You can use the similar: and link: operators and "similar pages" and still obtainable in the Instant Preview pane, so the features haven't been detached.

What's disconcerting is that Google made drop-down lists a lot more difficult to use in the new border. Until now, you could use the tab key to select a list, but this no longer works. After clicking a list, you could use the up/down arrows or Page Up / Page Down to move among the options, but you can no longer do that. It was much faster to type the first letters from the name of the language or the country to rapidly find an item, but this is another feature that no longer works. Basically, the only way to use the new lists is to scroll up or down waiting you find the item you were looking for.

You can check the old superior search page at the Way back Machine or the advanced image search page, which still uses the old interface.

Another service that makes drop-downs more hard to use is Blogger. If you have a long list of labels, you can no longer find a label by typing the first letters.

Google Reader's new interface lets you use arrows to move among the items from a list, but you can no longer type some letters from a subscription's name in the "All items" drop-down. This was a non-standard featured extra back in 2007, when Google Reader added a search engine.

Hopefully, Google will address these issues and will no longer take away basic features that are taken for granted by many users.

Dynamic Views: seven new ways to distribute your blog with the world

As we said a few weeks ago when we launched a totally rebuilt, streamlined authoring and editing experience, we’re in the process of bringing you a much enhanced and modernized Blogger. The next phase of these updates starts today with seven new ways to display your blog, called Dynamic Views.

Built with the newest in web technology (AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3), Dynamic Views is a exclusive browsing experience that will inspire your readers to discover your blog in new ways. The interactive layouts make it easier for readers to enjoy and find out your posts, loading 40 percent faster than conventional templates and bringing older entries to the exterior so they seem fresh again.

Dynamic Views is a lot more than just new templates. With just a couple clicks, you’ll get endless scrolling (say goodbye to the “Older posts” link), images that load as you browse, integrated search, sorting by date, label and author, light box-style posts for easy viewing, keyboard shortcuts for rapidly flipping through posts, and one-click sharing to Google+ and other social sites on each post.

No two blogs are the same, so you can decide from seven different views that display text and photos differently. For pattern, if you have lots of photos on your blog, you may prefer Flip card or Snapshot. If your blog is more text-heavy, then Classic, Sidebar (what you’re seeing now on Blogger Buzz) or Time slide may be preferable. Here’s a quick report of each of the new views, along with links to some of our favorite blogs where you can check each of them out in action.

• Mosaic (Crosby’s Kitchen) - A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
• Sidebar (Blogger Buzz Blog) - An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
• Snapshot (Canelle et Vanille) - An interactive pinboard of your posts 
• Timeslide (The Bleary-Eyed Father) - A horizontal view of your posts by time period

If you want to insert your own touch to any of these new views, you can upload a header image and customize the background colors. We’ll be adding up more ways to modify Dynamic Views in the coming weeks.

We hope you enjoy the newest update to Blogger, and that, as always, you tell us what you think by completing this short review.

Try Blogger's New Interface

Google promised a new Blogger interface back in March and started a imperfect test in April. "The new design is not only cleaner and more modern, but it also uses Google Web Toolkit, delivering the newest in web technology."

The new interface is now obtainable in Blogger in Draft, but it looks quite different. "Over the last couple of months, we've made important improvements to our new user interface. First and foremost, we've incorporated your feedback and made many fixes based on that feedback. Also, we've rationalized the look and feel of our new design, inspired by Google's newest design evolutions," explains Google. Blogger uses Ajax, so all the pages load a lot faster, including the post editor. Unfortunately, Blogger is still very slow when you carry out a search and try to display posts or comments.

Blogger's new UI is cleaner and it offers added information about your posts: the number of page views. Tabs have been replaced by a upright menu and the list of labels is now a drop-down. The post editor is much better, particularly if you use the default view. Blogger's new editor takes up most of the page and post settings are now incorporated in a sidebar.

There's a lot of white space in the new border, buttons aren't big enough to be legible and Blogger includes too much information that's not very useful: the total number of published comments and the total number of page views. The new interface is a mixed bag: it's modern, clean, faster and more powerful, but there are many belongings that need to be changed before replacing the accessible interface.

You can try the new UI at draft.blogger.com and you also have the alternative to make it the default interface.

Blogger Views

Blogger extra five dynamic templates that transform blogs into interactive apps. Just add /view to the URL of a blog that offers full feeds (for example: googlesystem.blogspot.com/view) and you'll be clever to try the new views: flipcard, mosaic, sidebar, snapshot and timeline. Blogger's templates present features like infinite scrolling, progressive image loading, smart search, filtering posts by date, author or label. "These new views use the newest in web technology, including AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3," explains Google.

In the close to future, bloggers will be able to modify the templates and use them without having to alter the URL.