Blogger.com has recently launched a new version of Blogger in beta! This is a much awaited update.

You’ve been asking for ways to do more with your blog, and you can with this new release. With the beta you can:

• Categorize your posts with labels
• Control who can read your blog
• Change the appearance and content of your blog with your mouse instead of HTML

Some other changes are that now you can login either with your current blogger account or your Google account.Though only some of the current accounts are upgraded as of now but if you really want to test the features and don’t wish to wait any longer then you can create a new account.

Since none of my blogger blogs were upgraded so I am going to make a new one so as to test the new features.Now that they have the option to use my Google account so I won’t have to create a new account. I am using my old Gmail account for this test and have created a new blog at like2playblogger.blogspot.com. I was told that there are many new blog templates for the beta but I don’t see any new templates in the initial setup of my blog. Lets hope that I get to choose some AFTER I have done creating this new blog.

Creating a new blog from existing Gmail account was very easy. I have also posted my first post on my new blog.While creating my post I noticed this small box called “Labels for this post: e.g. scooters, vacation, fall”. I believe its what other call “categories”. I entered “blogger chat” in there and clicked on the “PUBLISH” button.

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My new blog doesn’t look much different from old blogger blogs but there are some small but significant changes. There is ” Labels: blogger chat” telling us that the post is published under “Blogger Chat” category or Label (as the Blogger would like to call it). Just below it we have “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)” link clicking on which would subscribe you to the blog feed. Now this is on very good feature because many new bloggers don’t even know what the feeds are for and those who know finds it very difficult to add the feed to their blogs.

On the right column the Blog Archives is displayed nicely. I am going to publish one more post just to see how this feature works. Image uploading feature was exactly the same as older blogger. On the bottom right corner of the post I noticed something new. Just next to the Label box now we have “Show all” button clicking on which would display all the Labels you have previously created for your blog. I labeled this second post as “blogger play” by clicking on the label below and I have also applied second label called “pranks” by entering new label in the box.

There is a “Post Options” drop down menu on the bottom left of the page. Here you can set the permission so as to restrict readers from posting comments. Here you can also set Post time and date. I am trying to play a little prank on Blogger Beta by entering invalid date and time (14/14/99 and 20:46 PM). Lets see how it goes on clicking the Publish button.

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The second post published without any error(I was expecting it to tell me to correct the date and time). But on checking my blog for the new post I was little disappointed, the second post was published without any change in dates as if I didn’t use that option at all. Maybe the new feature doesn’t work at all (after all its beta) or maybe it works only for valid dates. Let me check that with valid dates. Cool, the third post(which appears to be the first one with title ‘dates valid dates”) published perfectly with the old date of 12th August 2006 even though the blog itself is created on 14th.

Now going to publish one last post to see how it works for the tomorrow’s date . On publishing a new post with coming date and time the post WOULD be published but with the date and time you entered. If you publish a post before this date and time comes then your new post would be inserted before the future post keeping the date/time order in mind. I would have preferred to keep the post unpublished unless the date/time of the post occurs.

One cool feature that I just noticed here on the beta is “Newer Post” and “Older Post” just below the comment section. I would rank this among most wanted features among bloggers.

Anyway now that the publishing the posts are out of way lets see the template features of the new Blogger Beta. From this menu you can add new page elements with a click of the button. As of now you are choose to add List, Link List, Pictures, Text, HTML/JavaScript, Feed, Labels, Logo, Profile, Blog Archive and Page Header page elements.

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On trying to add Google Adsense’s ads to Blogger Beta with its HTML/JavaScript we only got blank box even though the adsense code is there in the source of the page. Blogger might want to look into this matter before going out of beta

Second in the Template menu is “Font and Colors” where you can change color of all the possible blog elements like background, text, header, link etc. If you scroll down, at the bottom you would find option to change font size, style and family too.

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At the time of writing this post Blogger beta doesn’t have the option to edit blog template’s html code, it simple says “Raw template editing functionality coming soon” on clicking Edit Html menu. I am little disappointed to see this option disabled since this is where most of the first time bloggers starts to learn html.

Next comes the Setting menu. One nice thing I found on checking out the setting menu is that now you don’t have to publish your blog every time you make some changes to your blog settings. This not only saves lot of time but also is the right way to do it and its already implemented in Wordpress. You can also choose to show Quick Editing on your Blog, which when enabled would let you edit your posts from your blog with one click when you’re logged in to Blogger.

Finally you can set the restriction on who can read your blog. You can choose from three option: Anybody, Only people I choose and Only blog authors.