Monday, January 10, 2005

Blogger: Wanted -- a better BlogThis!

Blogger: Dashboard

My enthusiasm for Blogger is derived from the extraordinary easy of creating blog entries. My appreciation was strained over the past few months as their performance and reliability went down the drain and as Google failed to index blog entries (not just mine, I think they were holding off to avoid straining Blogger's laboring servers). Recently however, Blogger has become reliable again and Yahoo is doing a great job indexing blogs (better than Google, so I use Yahoo's search on my blogs).

Blogger has also made a great leap forwards in their web-client editing environment. Firefox 1.0 users have a "Compose" tool that's an excellent wysiwyg editor -- the best I've seen. Web clients are now making a serious challenge to desktop apps.

BlogThis!, however, has not kept up. This bookmarklet is fundamental to Blogger's ease of use, but it could do with some rework. I've sent Blogger feedback requesting the following:

1. A new BlogThis! button that says "Post Draft and Edit".

When one clicks on this button this is what should happen:

1. Blogger saves the post as a draft.
2. Blogger logs the user in (ask for un/pw if no cookie) and opens the just posted item in Compose mode.

The workflow is:

1. Go to web site. Select text of interest.
2. Click "Post Draft and Edit" button.
3. Edit the blog post in Compose.

A related change is that "Compose" needs a "Save" button that saves one's work without exiting the editing screen.

If you agree, send feedback to Blogger.

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