You know I'm pissed when I actually take action on something, even if that action is a simple e-mail. My guess is that it will come back to bite me in the ass somehow. Here's what I had to say to them:


Not thrilled with the new Blogger

Dear Blogger,

I've gotta tell you, I absolutely hate this new interface. Here's a list of why this new setup is just the worst thing ever:

- The previous interface had one nice window where I could do just about everything. I could create new posts, view and edit old posts, switch between 'blogs, etc., all from one tab. Now, I'm clicking all over the place and jumping between different screens to do all of these things. It'd be nice if there was some way to customize the post management section, or allow users to use the "old school" interface if they so desired.
- Publishing is definitely slower now. My guess is that the slowdown is due in part to the little animation that comes up during publishing. I know some people just eat this kind of stuff up, but for others it is a huge annoyance. Some kind of option for turning off some extra graphics or animations would be great.
- As kind of an extension of the previous two, it's really a pain that when publishing a completely new screen comes up to tell me the publishing status, forcing me to do more clicking so that I can get back to posting.
- The Dashboard has potential, but right now is also kind of obnoxious. One of the biggest annoyances is that the "Recently Updated Blogs" list gets pushed all the way down to the bottom on the left-hand side. Perhaps things could be re-organized on this page?
- I've also had issues with post creation and editing. In the text entry window, the text does not wrap when I hit the edge, and instead gives me a horizontal scrollbar. This may be browser dependent; I am seeing it with Netscape 7.0 but don't recall having seen this problem when using Mozilla 1.6.
- Integrating comments with Blogger is a great idea, except that lots of people have been using third-party commenting solutions for awhile now. As such, I'm sure there are plenty of comments that people would still like to have attached to their blogs, and this will keep them from using the new feature. Is there any way to import comments from another commenting system? I know that HaloScan has a "backup comments" feature which creates an XML file with all comments; could this somehow be utilized to migrate from HaloScan to Blogger comments?

I really liked the old interface. It was simple, integrated, and effective. The new one looks like it's trying way too hard to be pretty, all at the expense of usability. I know some of this may not seem like a huge deal, but it all can be rather annoying for losers like me who do a lot of posting. Hopefully the complaints and suggestions I've laid out here will be somewhat constructive.