Blogger's updated interface

Blogger, Google's most neglected child of all acquisitions it has made, is gathering some attention now. In continuation with the metamorphosis in Google's look and feel that started May this year and gained momentum after the launch of Google+ end of June, Blogger has been redesigned to look entirely different from the original Pyra Labs UI and match its other brethren.

The clumsy, cluttered old interface

The smarter, cleaner, new interface

Not only the looks, the functionality has been improved too, with a full-page editor that comes with more formatting tools, and a lightbox to quickly look up definitions or translate text using the other Google tools. I suspect the editor uses the Google Docs code under the covers; there is a striking similarity.

There is, however, a small bug that escaped the developers/testers: the compose area is very small. It uses an iFrame (Where are we? 20th Century?) that is unable to occupy the area occupied by the wrapper. The HTML tab uses the simpler textarea that does the trick

The shy compose area

Like Plus, the new blogger look is still in the field user's trial, though they don't call this so. Not yet. As with everything else, Google lets you send feedback on the new look by means of a menu item on your navigation bar. The new interface is not available by default, nor is there a way to find out the changes, unless you've heard of it elsewhere. You need to go to draft.blogger.com to experience it.

Is this a beginning of an attempt to compete with Wordpress, on the same lines as Google Plus against Facebook?