Google Blogger Leaves Beta

VE3OGG writes "It would seem that Google's famed, award-winning blogging software, Blogger, has just left beta, ABC reports, and entered a growing (but still short) list of Google products to move out of beta. Of course, with this change is status also came a few crucial new features for Google's blogging agent, specifically Google account integration, "Web 2.0" code free updates, and tagging."

Excellent news...

...Just a few years in Gamma, couple in Delta, a nice amount of Epsilon testing and we might have it nailed!

Re:Excellent news...

"Google Blogger Leaves Beta"

Poor beta, think we should send her flowers?

New name too?

Does this mean it graduates to Clogger now?

First?

Is this the first Google product to actually make it out of Beta (aside from search, of course)? In a way it's kind of sad if it is.

The "beta" crap

Everyone complains about Google's products being permanently in beta, but at least in some cases, the term is largely justified. For instance: docs and spreadsheets is in beta. This is well deserved, the online word processor still can't handle enter presses adequately and screws up the formatting when trying to edit online. In my opinion, Google moves products out of beta when they are ready for general consumption. The only difference is that they aren't worried about having the whole of the audience for their products be beta testers, because, frankly, they only get money through ad traffic. In effect, it works well on both ends, because we can start to see which services Google will have finalized, used the products before they are really ready to be used and then have a final product eventually.

Why does Google sit on acquisitions?

The new Blogger beta is, quite frankly, a disappointment. Blogger was pretty amazing when it came out years ago, but since Google bought them the brand has languished far behind competitors (Wordpress, Typepad, etc). Now Google adds a couple extra features, removes the Beta tag, and expects great fanfare. They just get ho-hum from me.

Gmail

now if Gmail could just make it out of beta

Google's Beta Strategy

The genius of Google's strategy of keeping applications "in beta" forever is that they get two press events for each product launch.

What I don't get is, why do you people keep falling for it?

Google product?

...entered a growing (but still short) list of Google products to move out of beta...

Anyway, didn't they buy Blogger? And was it "beta" when they bought it, or do they actually move acquired products backwards in their lifecycle?

I just tried this out yesterday.

And of course, the Safari/Konqueror love was nonexistent. Works perfectly in Firefox, obviously, but you can't create new or edit existing blog posts in Safari/Konqueror with or without the WYSIWYG editor.

The main difference is, it works...

Finally, posting to blogger works in the browser of *my* choice.

A few months back, I noticed that it would take me up to the "preview post" stage, but when I tried to go any further (like, actually post it) I would get a blank page in my SeaMonkey browser.

Google's FAQ simply said "get firefox". I did, and it still didn't work (probably some residual settings), so I removed FF. I would have to go to a public computer terminal with FF to post. PITA!

Now, at least, I can post with SeaMonkey.

- RG>

Personal revenue from blogger?

I thought I heard that the new blogger was going to allow you to earn back some of the ad revenue from your blog, so that you weren't just generating income for the parent company off of your traffic. Can anyone confirm?

Still a Few Bugs in the System

It's still going to have bugs, like all SW (and everything else). Most of its users won't notice the difference with the qualitative version change, except maybe the usual new features magically appearing. So what's the difference between "Beta" and "release", when the Beta was a "public Beta release"?

I bet it's just some way to start charging money for access. Might as well drop the "Beta" designation, and just call "releases" the "money release".

FWIW (little, post-Netscape), "Alpha/Beta/Release" aren't subjective names. "Alpha" is a version tested (used) by people who also designed/implemented it. "Beta" is a version tested by people who didn't design/test it, unless perhaps the design/test team did get them to produce and/or review acceptance tests/criteria. And "Release" is the version that has been tested OK against release criteria.

To be complete, correct version numbering isn't very subjective, either. The format is >major<.>minor<.>patch< . Bugfixes (not new features) increment the "patch" number. Format changes, in API, transmission (eg. network) or storage (eg. files) still backwards compatible increment the minor number. Feature changes still using the same UI increment the minor number. Format changes not backwards compatible, feature changes which change the UI, or transformational bugfixes which change either formats or UI to break backwards compatibility all increment the major number. Incremental builds can extend the numbers with a dash (eg. "2.13b4.77-154", for the 154th build of the 77th bugfix of the 4th beta of version 2.13), but only in Alpha and Beta versions, not actual releases. A good project's bug reporting will list bugs by their reported ID in lists of which bugfix release fixes them. "Release Candidate" numbers are just nicknames for the last in the series of Betas. Much as the the b1 version is identical to the last Alpha version.

That's it. Each number change should have an Alpha/Beta/Release version, though Alphas can sometimes be skipped with tiny bugfixes. So there's no need for "odd/even" version numbering to reflect "development" versions. And numbers are sequential, except of course when a higher order number increments, resetting the smaller order number (eg. 2.13.77 -> 2.14.0 ->2.14.1). Version numbers have been hijacked by marketdroids, which just confuses the market they bamboozle, which is ultimately bad for sales, and even worse for costs of support. The version number should tell people whether to upgrade, and whether their old data, training and related activities will be noticeably impacted (with associated extra costs).

Netscape broke everything with it's "public Beta" release that defined Web SW distribution. Microsoft has made the curse ubiquitous with SW versions 1, 2, 3 standing in for Alpha, Beta, Release, but mixing it up with new features to substitute for bugfixes. And Service Pack versions that form an entire new chain, and ongoing patches, and every other unmanageable version numbering "scheme" possible. And Linux distros continue the damage with the odd/even numbering and arbitrary versioning, with major releases measured in minor numbers, requiring various extra versions, and version numbering of each release for each distro.

But the numbering schemes change monthly, quarterly. If developers just return to the simple discipline, we'll get back to numbers that actually mean something helpful to users and developers, not just marketdroids counting up to their next bonus.

What's the deal with blogspot?

What's going on with Blogspot. All of the blogs I occasionally checkup on have either disappeared or been hijacked by spammers. This all happend in the last couple months when Google was reorganizing things.

Feature complete?

Of course, with this change is status also came a few crucial new features

Seems kinda strange to add features when you are releasing software. Shouldn't new features be added to a new cycle? Isn't a beta meant to be feautre complete?

from a different perspective

Ironically, I just switched away from Blogger last week because the new templates, although great-looking, are not easily configured for right-to-left (RTL) languages. I'm not a CSS expert but I did give it a try over the weekend and eventually I gave up fighting it and reverted back to the old template which relied on my surrounding each entry and post title with a DIV DIR=RTL.

I searched around to see what other people had done with the new Blogger and to see if I could just use someone else's template, but all of the ones I saw were a mess. Some parts RTL, some not, some of the layout broken. So, I moved to a site with excellent RTL support, but difficult to use because it seems to have been built and tested solely for Internet Explorer, so Firefox1.5 and Safari and Opera on the Mac all choke on various (but different) aspects of the posting process.

If someone has had some success making a clean Blogger template using Arabic/Farsi/Hebrew/etc, please share.

Hopefully this means it works

Picasa2 is out of Beta and it is a horrible mess!

Finally

Maybe this means that now the third-party blogging client developers will be able to get their software working with Blogger accounts again.

Try Just Looking at the Front Page in Firefox 2.0

The JavaScript just KILLS Firefox 2.0. Just scrolling up and down the page is a nightmare - and it's a short page!

Opera scrolls the page much faster and more smoothly.

Firefox 2.0 has a LOT of work to do on it. Every day it irritates me more with its erratic performance, broken download function (on Kubuntu Linux, anyway), and occasional crashes and lockups due to JavaScript issues.

Note: I'm not complaining about Google Blogger - I haven't used it yet - - I'm just complaining about crap software in general.

Slightly inaccurate

There have been two versions of Blogger for a while now - "Blogger" and "Blogger in Beta". "Blogger in Beta" was the upgrade with new features, like the drag-and-drop element placement, the new template code, etc. "Blogger" is the original code. You had a choice between either of them, and each had a separate login area.

Saying that Blogger is just leaving Beta is inaccurate. The new version is just leaving Beta.