Blogger Gets Serious On Theming, Launches 4 New Themes in 20 Variants

Back in November last year Google had stated that they will be updating their blogging platform so that it's "faster, easier to use and more beautiful." We had predicted back then that Blogger is headed for a material makeover, since Google had done the same with the websites of their other products. Keeping to their word of enhancing Blogger's appeal to both the audience as well as the platform users, Google has unveiled four new material and responsive themes with each theme having five variants of it's own.

The four themes have a lot of features in common. We have talked about each one of them briefly below:

1. Post Summaries

Instead of showing short summaries of the blog posts, Blogger previously used to display the entire content of the articles on the homepage. The new themes now show post summaries instead of the entire article. This will help in decreasing both the page length as well as the page size, which in turn will help in decreasing the loading time of the webpage.

2. Thumbnails

 Blogger has finally defined appropriate sizes for thumbnails. The first image in the blog post is set as the thumbnail image for that post. The thumbnails generated will be of the size 128X128 and 256X256. The option for setting custom thumbnails for blog posts is still an awaited feature.

3. Sticky Header With Buttons

Each of the new themes support sticky headers. That means whenever a user is scrolling down through a blog page, the navigation bar will always be shown at the top. The search button and subscribe button are shown in the sticky bar along with the blog name. Moreover, when the search button is clicked, the search bar will expand to the entire width of the bar. The screenshot below shows the same:

4. Sliding Menu

When a user will click on the menu button in the sticky bar, a vertical menu will slide in from the left edge of the screen. The menu shows a summary of the author's profile along with the archived posts and labels. 

5. Sharing Widget

Blogger will now allow your users to share your posts with the help of the social sharing widget. The social sharing widget is present along each post on the homepage and also on the page of the blog post.

6. Commenting System

Prior to this update, Blogger allowed it's users to choose from either Blogger's own commenting system or Google+ comments. With the introduction of the new themes, Google has also overhauled the commenting system. Your blog readers can now comment using their Google, LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, AIM or OpenID profile. Although we do appreciate the changes Google has made to the commenting system, these changes could have been more effective had Google integrated support for Facebook and Twitter. Facebook provides users with it's own commenting system too.

7. Footer Section

Your blog posts will now show the post labels and a sharing widget at the end of the article. The footer section will show the top two trending posts of your blog.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Despite having a bunch of similarities, the themes have certain different features which appropriately show off their niche.

1. Contempo (click here for sample blog)

The theme's background is donned by a image in the header region, followed by a grey colored plain region till the footer. The card style layout might appeal to some material enthusiasts.

2. Soho (click here for sample blog)

Soho encompasses an image in it's header region which is spread across the entire width of the screen. The image is followed by a featured post and then by the other posts in chronological order placed in a vivid fashion. Soho is appropriate for those blogs which primarily focus on showcasing images. Google have stated the same in their description of Soho.

Soho is a gallery built to showcase your latest photos, designs or musings in their best light.

3. Emporio (click here for sample blog)

Emporio is a simple yet elegant template. Following the first post, the remaining posts are arranged in two columns in chronological order.

4. Notable (click here for sample blog)

Out of all the themes, Notable struck me the most with it's radiating beauty. The color scheme of turquoise, black and white made me fall for this elegant theme. There is a featured post at the top followed by an array of recent posts.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Each of the above themes comes in five different colors. You can choose your favorite theme variant through the 'Theme' section in the Blogger dashboard. Blogger has also renamed the 'Templates' tab to 'Theme'.

The advent of the four new themes is definitely a positive indicator of the direction Blogger is headed in. However, the lack of options of customization and plugin support restricts the ways in which Bloggers can develop their blog. If Google plans to turn Blogger into a robust platform, it will have to work upon attracting the attention of the theme developers to make Blogger even prettier. Whatever the future might hold, for now, it's great to see Google make progress in restoring the tarnished image of Blogger to that of it's utmost pride.

Krittin Kalra

Krittin Kalra is a 20 year old Android freak. Striving for passions, chasing down his dreams and living a life without regrets is his sole mantra. A bit moody, he also does custom ROM reviews for AndroGuider. Currently pursuing his B.Tech, he aspires to follow his heart.