Blogger “Improved” Editor

Blogger recently updated their online blog post editor so I thought I’d give it a try. The things that I didn’t like in the previous editor, and which resulted in me moving to using Windows Live Writer, were:

• you could only add up to five images at a time
• when you added multiple images they would appear in reverse order of selection
• if you dragged and dropped a picture to move it in the blog then you were no longer able click on the picture to view a larger copy – there was a workaround: using cut and paste in the html editor to move pictures.

This meant that adding lots of pictures to a blog was a tedious and frustrating experience.

The new post editor gives you, according to Blogger Post Editor overview “Improved image handling” with the following features:

• “When you upload an image to the new post editor it will appear as a thumbnail in the image dialog box. That way, you can upload several images at once, and then add them into your post at your convenience.”
  
  Not quite true – you have to upload the images one at a time and then they have to be added one at a time to the actual blog post – slower and more tedious than before! 
  
  
• “When you add an image from the dialog into your post it will be placed at the insertion point instead of at the top of the post.”
  
  True – this is a definite improvement
  
  
• “If you don’t like where an image is in your post, you can drag it around to another spot. … Unlike in the current editor, dragging in the new editor preserves the link to the full-size version of the image.”
  
  True – this is a definite improvement

But they have also:

• removed the option to post videos
• changed the preview view so that it no longer shows you what the post will look like in the actual webpage
• stopped you easily adding blank lines between pictures to improve how the post appears on the webpage

All of these three are supported in Windows Live Writer and so, not surprisingly I’ll be sticking with the Microsoft tool for now!