Back in February 2020, I published an article on this blog outlining how Google was finally beginning to update blogger.com to bring it up to speed with today’s standards. Crucially though for mobile device users, the actual editor itself remained stuck in 2011, something that I called out in my blog post back in February. Well, this week, as I was preparing my review of the Sonos Play:1 for publication, I got a bit of a surprise when I opened blogger.com to upload the draft I’d prepared in Word. Looks like the Blogger.com product team at Google finally got around to updating the Editor and bringing it up to modern standards.
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| Finally, editing a post on iPad is possible without a magnifying glass! |
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| All the functions are still there as well, easily accessible, even on mobile devices. |
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Adding captions can still be a bit finicky, but it’s a lot more comfortable than in the old editor.
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This also finally means a dynamic and responsive layout that adapts to the device it is being used on, meaning that quickly adding a line or two on your iPhone is finally possible again, and it is additionally finally possible to properly write and edit posts on an iPad, which is incidentally what this entire post is being written on. I personally believe that these changes are long overdue, and I really like the fresh new look this gives to most of the platform. That being said, there are no actual new functions integrated into the editor just yet, but even the fact that mobile blogging is now feasible again is a major step in the right direction. This means that blogger.com is now finally a viable alternative for new bloggers again, one that is equally powerful and easy to use. Looks like I may have to revisit that Blogger vs. Wordpress article I wrote a few years ago.
That being said, uploading images is pretty clunky on iPad, even with the new interface, as for some reason, bulk uploading of multiple images doesn’t work on iPad OS. There’s also still no built-in support for galleries, meaning that anyone who wants to run a photo blog is still basically stuck with Wordpress due to the limitations of blogger.com.
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| Blogging on your iPhone is finally possible thanks to the new layout! |
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| Unlike the old blogger.com app that was pulled years ago, the new web interface has the same functionality as the full desktop site. |
Of course, it remains to be seen whether Google, Alphabet or whatever will actually continue to invest in the platform, or whether it will go back into hibernation, similar to what happened after the 2011 update. The selection of skins or Themes for blogger.com is still very limited, with many of them being several years old. Documentation is piecemeal, and support for new bloggers is extremely limited. While Wordpress sends out a starter’s guide to the platform once you start your blog, which is followed up by regular newsletters and YouTube creators get regular email updates about how their channel is doing, there is not even that token level of creator support for blogger.com. And don’t even get me started on monetisation, which is just a major clusterfuck! So while the recent update is a major step in the right direction, it is just a simple step. It remains to be seen whether Google will back this up by providing additional content and resources to new creators, or whether things will just revert back to the level of apathy that was obvious over the last few years. I'll certainly keep you posted!
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