Dynamic Views for Readers

Blogger currently offers five dynamic views for its public blogs. These views are only accessible if allowed for by the blog author.

• Flipcard: available at [blogURL]/view/flipcard
• Mosaic: available at [blogURL]/view/mosaic
• Sidebar: available at [blogURL]/view/sidebar
• Snapshot: available at [blogURL]/view/snapshot
• Timeslide: available at [blogURL]/view/timeslide

As an example, the URL for accessing the Sidebar view for Blogger Buzz would be http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/sidebar.
These views require modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome or Safari. Many elements of these views will not work should you have an older browser.

In all views, search is available in the upper right hand corner. Clicking on the ">" arrow in the very top left of the header bar will slide the header bar across and allow you to choose different views for the current blog as well as type in a new blog URL.

Flipcard

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/flipcard

• Mouse over any of the cards to see the post title and comment count. As you scroll down, additional posts will continue to load.
• Click on a card to see the post in full view. You can navigate through the posts using J (older post) and K (newer post) or the arrow keys. Hit Escape or click Back to all posts to return to the Flipcard view.
• In the upper left, click to sort by Date, Author and Category.

Mosaic

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/mosaic

• Clicking on an individual tile will expand that post to the full width of the view, and clicking again will collapse the post back into its original position.
• The exact position of the tiles is randomly determined each time the blog loads, but they will appear chronologically from top left to bottom right.
• Once a tile is expanded, you can page down by using the "up" and "down" arrow keys as well as J and K.
• This view is optimized for the tablet viewing, and supports screen rotation.

Sidebar

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/sidebar

• Optimized for quick reading and browsing.
• Left sidebar is list of chronological posts, with comment counts and thumbnails for individual posts.
• J and K arrow keys will navigate through the posts, and comments can be displayed on the same page by clicking the Show link.

Snapshot

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/snapshot

• This view will display only the posts which have images.
• Clicking through any photo will display the full post page, with naviagtion links at the bottom for Newer and Older posts
• Mousing over any photo will display a post snippet

Timeslide

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/timeslide

This view breaks the blog content down into three different areas:
• Left column: Enlarged picture with a post snippet, title, and snipppet displayed in chronological order
• Middle column: Displays just the post title and snippet
• Right column: Displays just the individual post titles
When searching for posts in this view, the results will be highlighted.

Dynamic Views for Blogger blog

Today Blogger's previewing five new dynamic templates in Blogger that you’ll soon be able to customize and use for your blog. These new views use the latest in web technology, including AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3, to deliver a host of benefits to you and your readers:

• Infinite scrolling: read more posts without having to reload or click to a second page
• New layouts: different views suited to different types of blogs
• Speed: download images as you view them, not all at once in advance
• Interactivity: there are now more ways to experience and engage with blog content

To try these views on your own blog, simply add “/view” to the end of the blog URL—for example, http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view. These new views are available on all public Blogger blogs with feeds fully enabled.

These dynamic views will work on your blog if all of the following are true:

• Your blog is public. Your readers don’t need to sign in to view your blog.
• Your blog has feeds fully enabled. In the Settings | Site feed tab, you have enabled either Full or Jump Break for your Post Feed.
• You have not disabled dynamic views. In the Setting | Formatting tab, the option for Enable Dynamic Views is set to Yes.

If any of the above conditions are not true, users who attempt to access dynamic views for your blog will instead be taken to a landing page and redirected to your original blog in a few seconds.

Free Blogspot Templates: Bright Photoblog Template

Preview: http://photoblog-freetemplate.blogspot.com/

• From your Blogger dashboard, go to Design | Edit HTML
• Make sure to back up your old template before install this new one by click on the "Download full template"
• Check on the "Expand Widget Templates"
• Now copy/paste this code to replace all the code in the HTML code section
• Click Save Template button and you're done.

Adding a Drop-Down menu to your Blogger blog

One of the most convenient way to display huge lists of links, like BlogRoll or favorite sites etc. is using a drop down menu. The tool is very useful for webmasters and bloggers, and equally simple is the coding required to put it on your blog/web site.

Follow these simple steps, to add a Drop-Down menu to your blog:

From your Dashboard, go to "Design" section, then click on "Add a Gadget", and select it as "HTML/JavaScript"
Now put this code in to it:

<form><select name="menu" onchange="window.open(this.options[this.selectedIndex].value,'_blank')"
size=1 name=menu>

<option>- Your Title - </option>

<!-- change the links with your own -->
<option value="http://yourlink#1.com">Title One</option>
<option value="http://yourlink#2.com">Title Second</option>
<option value="http://yourlink#3.com">Title Third</option>
</select></form>

Replace the titles in blue and the links in red with your owns then click Save and you're done.

Enjoy!

Putting AdSense on Your Blog

First of all, choose the blog that you want to put AdSense on, and go to the Monetize tab. You can get there by clicking the Monetize link of the blog you want on the dashboard.

Once you're there, choose one of the three options to display your ads: in your sidebar and posts, just in your sidebar, or just below your posts. Or just enable AdSense reporting if you already manually enabled ads on your blog (choose this option to start seeing AdSense reports on the Monetize tab).

The next page asks you to either sign up for a new AdSense account or use an existing one. Once you've signed in or created or account, you'll get a confirmation screen. If for any reason you need to switch to using a different AdSense account, click the switch AdSense accounts link on this page.

Blogger provides a simple way for you to make money with your blog. AdSense is Google's content-targeted advertising program. This means that you don't select keywords or categories for your ads. Instead, Google's servers determine what your posts are about and display the most relevant ads to your readers. So, if you blog about baseball, there might be ads for Major League Baseball memorabilia next to your post. If you blog about painting, there might be ads for art supplies.

Blogger requests access to your AdSense account in order to allow us to create and place ad code on your page through our layouts and template tools. As part of this process, you may notice that Blogger is receiving "0%" of your AdSense earnings - this means that you will receive the same amount for clicks or impressions as you would creating the ad code from your AdSense account. To view any partners that have requested access to your AdSense account, and their associated revenue shares, please log in to your AdSense account, click the "My Account" tab, and choose the "Account Access" sub-tab. If you see a "grant access" link next to blogger.com, you must click this link in order to create ads with Blogger tools.

Make it easy for readers to follow your blog by email

Fresh content is the fuel that drives the blogosphere; it keeps readers coming back to your blog. And today Blogger realesed a new, powerful way to do just that with Follow by Email, depending on your blog feed.

The Follow by Email gadget provides blog authors a simple way for their readers to subscribe to the latest hot-off-the-press updates, which are delivered directly to the reader’s inbox. When new blog content is published, all subscribed readers will receive a daily email notification of the new published posts, which includes a copy of the new content as well as links back to the actual posts.

To enable Follow by Email, click the Add a Gadget link from the Design | Page Elements tab, and then select the Follow by Email gadget which should be at the top of the list. Once you add the gadget, readers visiting your blog can then just enter their email address and click Submit.

Taking advantage of Feedburner technology, Follow by Email will also track your subscription information, such as the number of subscribers and daily views. To view these stats, log into Feedburner.com, and select the appropriate blog feed from your list.

[via Blogger Buzz]

Blogger Features in 2011

2010 was a big year for Blogger with template designer, real-time stats, comments spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts, and more... And as Google promised with their users on Blogger Buzz yesterday, 2011 will be another exciting year with some features look like below:

And here's the video:

More storage, more photos hosting by Picasa Web Albums

With Picasa Web Albums, you automatically get one gigabyte of free storage. As some of you may have noticed that Picasa Web Albums' storage counter shows that you have more free space than a couple of days ago.

In the past, each image and video you uploaded counted toward your free 1GB. Now, uploaded images that are 800 pixels or smaller and videos that are 15 minutes or less in length no longer count against your free storage limit. This means you can upload and store unlimited photos and videos at the above sizes -- for free!

The new feature encourages users to upload smaller images. If you use Picasa to upload your photos, there's a setting that lets you pick the dimensions of the photos that are uploaded. The "small" option is recommended "for publishing images on blogs and webpages". Blogger users who resize their photos before uploading them will no longer have to buy extra storage if they're prolific.

Adding Google Translate gadget to your blog

Google Translate is a free translation service that provides instant translations between 57 different languages. It can translate words, sentences and web pages between any combination of our supported languages. By adding Google Translate gadget to your blog, you have a chance to increase your traffic with the readers who don't use your language but still interested with your contents.

• Go to Google Translate gadget page
• Choose your blog language in Step 2
• Setting your gadget display, specific languages or choosing another advanced settings in Step 3
• Go to Step 4 on Google Translate gadget page to copy and paste the snippet of code into HTML/JavaScript of your blog by going Dashboard | Design | Add a Gadget

Enjoy!