We just added a new feature to Blogger in Draft, the Search Box page element:
It uses Google's Custom Search Engine to dynamically search over your blog's content, as well as anything you've linked to in your blog posts, and even your sidebar-based link lists and blogrolls. In other words, it's really nifty - you can find it in your blog's Template | Page Elements tab, in the "Add a Page Element" popup.
Many thanks to the CSE and Ajax Search API teams for their work on this feature. Comments are enabled for this post, so let us know how it works for you!
If you’re looking around wondering where video upload or the polls page element are, make sure that you’re using Blogger in draft, not regular Blogger. You’ll know that you’re using Blogger in draft if you see the blueprint logo in the upper left of the page:
Blogger in draft is available only on draft.blogger.com. You’ll need to type it in directly (or bookmark it!). If you go to www.blogger.com, you won’t see the features that are still in draft (as of this writing, those are video upload, enclosures, and polls). Remember that if you follow links from your blog, you’ll end up on www.blogger.com.
Enclosure links let you turn your blog into a podcast. If you’ve uploaded your audio or video to the web, you can link to it as an enclosure so that your readers can subscribe and download it using iTunes or another podcatcher. We’ve also gone ahead and added enclosure information for all videos uploaded directly in Blogger, making video podcasting crazy easy! Learn more about enclosure links.
Still in draft is video uploading. We’ve got one or two more things for it before we’re ready to publish it…
How’s Blogger in draft treating you? The comment form is open!
The Polls page element is one of the new features we’ve added to Blogger in draft today. With this new page element, you can add a poll to your blog’s sidebar that your readers can vote in. Add as many answer choices as you like, and even select a date that you’d like the poll to close on.
Here’s a quick video of putting the polls widget into action:
We’d greatly appreciate your feedback on this feature and the other features on Blogger in draft. Leave your thoughts in the comments!
All new features on Blogger in draft are works in progress. We’ve got some ideas on how to improve this widget — for example, we’re working on making its style integrate better with the rest of your sidebar — but we want to hear your opinions as well.
Technical notes:
You’ll need to be using one of Blogger’s new Layouts templates to add a poll. Still using a Classic template? Learn how to upgrade. (Caveat: it make take a bit of work if you’ve customized your template a lot.)
The other feature launched to Blogger in draft today is support for enclosure links. If you haven’t heard of “enclosures” before, they’re the bits of info in Atom and RSS feeds that make podcasting possible. With the new enclosure links UI, you can turn your blog into a podcast quite easily.
To turn on enclosure links, just go to Settings > Formatting and set the “Show Link fields” option to “Yes.” This will add the enclosure link fields to your post editor. From there, just paste in the URLs of your recorded media, and your blog will instantly become a podcast.
Here’s a quick video showing how to get the enclosure links to show up:
That’s all very well and good, but we’ve gone a step further by hooking enclosure support in to Blogger in draft’s flagship feature, video upload. Starting today, we’re automatically adding enclosure information for Blogger video uploads, so your blog with video has instantly become a video podcast. Your readers can watch your videos on your blog with the Flash player, or they can subscribe to your videos with their favorite podcatcher.
Videos are provided for download in MP4 format, so they’ll play great on an iPod (or iPhone, but we haven’t tested that quite… yet…), as well as tons of other places.
Watch how we can turn our favorite video upload example video into a video podcast in this video:
We’re not 100% versed in podcasting ourselves (thoseguysleft), so this is an area where we’re really listening to you for advice. Is there more metadata you’d like us to collect and provide in the feed? How’s the interface? Slick or merely functional? Podcasting pros: any tips for people just starting out? Where do you host your audio or video?
Speak your mind in the comments!
(Of course, since we’ve been uploading these demo videos with enclosure support, that means that this blog is now a video podcast. Perhaps you’d like to subscribe in iTunes?)
Some technical notes:
Blogger supports adding multiple enclosures to a post, but for maximum compatibility with popular podcatchers, you may only want to include one enclosure per post.
By default, Blogger feeds are in Atom format. If certain podcatchers require RSS 2.0 format, have them subscribe to http://yourblog.blogspot.com/rss.xml.
We auto-detect the MIME Type for common podcasting file extensions. You probably want to leave this alone unless you’re really sure what you’re doing. (Did we miss a file extension that you use? Tell us in the comments.)
If you don’t have the enclosure links visible (i.e. “Show Link fields” is set to “No”), we auto-add and auto-delete the enclosure links for your video uploads. If you do have the enclosure links visible, we’ll auto-add but not auto-delete.
Due propers to my hometown pals at Ambrosia Software for adding Intel support to Snapz Pro X, which was used to record the demo videos.
Thanks to all who commented about Blogger in draft’s video upload feature! It’s been almost a week now, so here are some responses:
Bugs: Autoplay on IE6, spaces in filenames We fixed the autoplay problem with Internet Explorer, so now videos will only play when your visitors click on them. We also fixed the error that occurs when you upload a video with spaces in the filename.
Unable to see the video upload icon Make sure that you’re logging in to http://draft.blogger.com/ and using either Firefox or Internet Explorer. Because video upload is tied to Blogger’s “Compose mode” rich text editor, it is not supported in Safari or Opera.
MP3 / Audio uploading Thanks for the inquiries about this, but it’s not in scope for the video uploading feature.
