This morning the Blogger engineering team in the Sydney office helped launch what we consider to be a major evolution in how people consume blogs -- Dynamic Views in Blogger. Here in Sydney we cracked open bottles of champagne to go with our avocado on toast.
This launch grew out of a 20% time project that was started earlier this year. I was relatively new to Google, and I didn’t really understand how 20% time was supposed to work -- as in, I didn’t realise that all I needed to get my manager’s OK for a 20% time project was a reasonably promising idea. So one day in February I went to my manager with a working prototype of a new way to view blog content, using the latest web technologies like AJAX, CSS3, and HTML5. Seven weeks later we launched five new “dynamic templates” as a preview for blog owners to try out...and now six months after that we’re pushing the button on a full launch of 7 new “Dynamic Views”.
This launch grew out of a 20% time project that was started earlier this year. I was relatively new to Google, and I didn’t really understand how 20% time was supposed to work -- as in, I didn’t realise that all I needed to get my manager’s OK for a 20% time project was a reasonably promising idea. So one day in February I went to my manager with a working prototype of a new way to view blog content, using the latest web technologies like AJAX, CSS3, and HTML5. Seven weeks later we launched five new “dynamic templates” as a preview for blog owners to try out...and now six months after that we’re pushing the button on a full launch of 7 new “Dynamic Views”.
Blogs were the darlings of the web world back in the early 2000s, but let’s be honest -- their sex appeal was overshadowed in the last few years by newer forms of content, like video and interactive apps. I thought this was a real shame. Why should powerful words and images get left behind, innocent victims of technology evolution and user preferences for more dynamic content? In short, I knew that blogs could be so much more.
We were also hearing that authors wanted their readers to be able to better engage with and “experience” their content. For example, clicking the “next” button to scan through additional pages of posts just isn’t conducive to casual browsing and discovery. Old posts, no matter how good, were often buried forever. And things were getting sloooow. I thought: we can do better.
And I think we have. With the designs released today, blogs load 40% faster and old blogs have become new again.
Posted by Antin Harasymiv, Software Engineer, Blogger.
