Over the last few weeks the Blogger team have added a few great new features to Blogger.Included in these changes are a much improved preview feature, a new video player and a set of Share buttons you have below all your posts.These features are available to all bloggers and in this post i will show you how to use them on your blog.
New Blogger Video Player
As Google own both Blogger and YouTube it makes sense that they would make the YouTube style video player available on Blogger.The old Blogger video player was slower and didn’t have the option to skip to different parts of a video.The new player has the speed we are used to on YouTube and the time bar allowing you to skip.The old video was also missing the full screen option which is now available.
New Share Options Below Posts
The new Blogger share buttons are easy to add and offer readers the option to share your posts by Email, Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and Blogger.The buttons can be added by ticking the new section provided when you edit the post options on your Layout/Design page.The image below shows how to find them.
Manually add the share buttons
On some templates the Blogger share buttons may still not work even after checking the box.In this case you can add them manually.In your Blogger dashboard click Design > Edit Html > Tick the Expand Widget Templates box.Then find this code in your template – <div class=’post-footer’> – and paste this code directly below it and save your template :
<br/><div class=’post-share-buttons’>
<b:include data=’post’ name=’shareButtons’/>
</div><br/>
New Improved Blogger Post Previews
The old post previews were poor at best but the latest addition to Blogger allows you to see a preview of your post exactly as it will look when published.
Official Blogger Posts On New Features :
Official Blogger Buzz Post On Video Player And Previews
Official Blogger Buzz Post On New Share Icons
All great additions to Blogger i think you will agree.Hopefully they will now get to work on Improving the comment system which needs to be updated.
Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.
P.S. Some people were holding out on making the change to the new post editor because it did not have a spell check.You will be glad to know the Spell check has been added to the new post editor and it’s also been improved.
