Google recently upgraded Blogger. A quick review of its
new features shows just how far SixApart's TypePad moved the bar when it launched last year. Blogger has finally caught up in several key areas: comments, single-post archives and support for mobile blogging.
When I first started blogging in 2000, I used Userland Manila. I completely fell in love with its "Edit This Page" buttons. I tried Blogger, but never found it quite as powerful. I also found its server to be really flaky in those early days (no hard feelings, Ev, I know it was a shoestring operation back then). I know some people who have been fiercely loyal to Blogger (even paying for the short-lived Blogger Pro offering). For me, I was content with Manila.
Then along came Moveable Type. It had all of these new, really cool features, but required a lot of heavy lifting. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, just that I didn't really want to. So I waited until Ben and Mena launched TypePad, which was basically a hosted MT with some new features. I beta tested it last summer, liked what I saw and finally made the switch full time on December 1. Later that month, PC Magazine named TypePad an Editor's Choice.
Since then, the team at SixApart has continued to roll out significant new features, refine the offering, enhance its reliability and take it global. It's not perfect (single biggest feature omission: WYSIWYG editing enviroment - which Blogger, Userland, et al all have had for a long time...) but it's good enough that I don't mind paying for it. It keeps me sane.
And Blogger? I just logged into my old account to check out the new features. They're not bad, but not sufficiently revolutionary to tempt me to switch authoring environments again. I'll be very interested to see who introduces the next big thing in authoring tools. Based on this update, it's not Google.
