14 DAY TRIAL // Blogger has recently released the new Template Designer to everyone. At the same time, it has also introduced a couple of new features that it is now highlighting. One very useful tool now available to the millions of Blogger users is the “accurate post preview,” which, very much like the name implies, enables users to preview a post before publishing it. Blogger’s video offering has also gotten an update with the introduction of a new video player based on the current YouTube one.
“You might have already noticed that in addition to the Blogger Template Designer, we added some other new features in our recent release. First, the accurate post preview, a feature that’s been available on Blogger in Draft, is now available to everyone,” Blogger announced.
“We also introduced a new video player that’s based on the YouTube player. The new Blogger video player allows full-screen viewing -- now visitors can watch videos that you published on your blog in full-screen mode.”
Blogger already allowed users to preview a post before publication, but the preview itself was only useful to see the general layout of the text, images and other elements in the post. But it was just a plain, white page, inside the Blogger post editor. Now, users will be able to see what a post will really look like on their blog using their current theme.
Also new is the YouTube-based video player, which replaces the rather ancient one Blogger used. The new player completely trumps the old one in terms of features and usability. One major improvement is the possibility to go full screen while watching a video. Anyone familiar with YouTube will quickly recognize the updated UI.
Interestingly, this would be the first time the new YouTube player is used on a site other than YouTube itself. While it has been available for a couple of months now, embedded videos still feature the old YouTube player. However, any video uploaded to Blogger will only be available through your blog and not on YouTube.
