New Blogger navbar
Google recently launched another new feature for hosted-blogs that further improves the design and experience for Blogger’s users and all of their readers. In a bold move that meets a long-standing request by many of its users, Google recently removed the awkward ads on Blogspot-hosted blogs. In the ad’s place, a new, much slimmer navigation bar gets tucked into the top of the browser window, adding functionality to each blog.
While stationed in Washington, D.C., enjoying Adaptive Path’s User Experience Week, I’ll point out another project in which Stopdesign played a small role. Google recently launched another new feature for hosted-blogs that further improves the design and experience for Blogger’s users and all of their readers. In a bold move that meets a long-standing request by many of its users, Google recently removed the awkward ads on Blogspot-hosted blogs. In the ad’s place, a new, much slimmer navigation bar gets tucked into the top of the browser window, adding functionality to each blog:
- Search: Ability to easily search that blog using Google’s Site Search.
- BlogThis!: A bookmarklet-type link that allows other Blogger users easy access to blog the page they’re currently viewing.
- Next Blog: A nice way to surf or discover new blogs. Will randomly take you to another recently-updated blog.
The idea and initiative for the new navbar belongs entirely to the team at Google. Stopdesign helped Google with the navbar’s visual design and the basic code. We decided to offer a choice of four different navbar color schemes to allow it to sit as comfortably as possible within any template design:
The new navbar takes up much less space than the ads that free Blogspot blogs have been topped with for several years now. The navbar also adds more utility to each blog, and begins to draw connections to other blogs, even if only random ones right now. Blogger has more information on a help page about the new navbar. You can even see the navbar in action by starting at Ev’s or Biz’s blog, and clicking NEXT BLOG to start hitting random blogs.
Hats off to Google for continuing to innovate and improve the overall experience for Blogger’s user base.