An Introduction to Blogger's New Template Editor

Blogger has now introduced some major improvements and embellishments to facilitate and enhance its customer experience. These changes are mainly directed towards making the template building/editing process easy and handy. Blogger has taken these steps so that the HTML and CSS of a blog template can be modified more easily than ever before.

The major changes that can be spotted are the introduction of line number, auto-indentation of source code, easy access to and highlighting of specific widgets' codes, folding option instead of the classical Expand widget templates option, template formatting to facilitate finding a specific piece of code, revert changes option to undo erratic HTML and CSS coding, and an awesome Preview template button.

Blogger's New Template Editor

Below is a brief introduction of the new features:

New Line Numbering Feature:

Numbering of lines throughout the source code has been introduced by Blogger in the new template editor. It is particularly helpful when you are instructed by some source code analyzer to improve the coding. The analyzers usually give you a line and column number to be changed. This reference was very hard to find out in the older version of the editor. Now you can easily reach your destination by following the reference line number.

New Auto Indentation Feature:

Auto indentation of the HTML and CSS code has also been introduced for making the code recognition and editing easy. The code is easily recognizable this way and the chances of mistaking something are minimized.

Syntax Highlighting Feature:

Syntax highlighting is another great new feature which also makes the recognition of different categories of HTML and CSS easier. Different elements like class, id, style, etc are assigned different colors so that the possibility of any mistaken editing is minimized and one can make the desired improvements with accuracy and precision.

Jump to Widget and Code Folding Feature:

This is one of the most consequential and important updates to the template editor. Blogger has introduced a new button labelled Jump to widget through which you can skip the whole code to a particular widget's coding. Finding a particular widget's source code was a very hard and tricky thing in the older version of the editor, but now you can do it in just one click. The code of the widgets is folded by default for a clean interface, but the ► sign is shown wherever you might need to expand and edit it. This is a good replacement of the old Expand widgets option and can be utilized more cleanly by viewing only the desired widget code which you need rather than expanding all at once.

Template Formatting Feature:

If you want to find a specific piece of HTML or CSS coding in the new template editor, it can't be done right away. But Blogger has added a separate button on the left labelled Format template which makes the task easier for you. So if you have to search the code and edit it, just click the button and do whatever you want. Blogger has also pointed out some shortcut keys on Blogger Buzz which facilitate the editing process. The shortcuts are as follows:

• Ctrl+F to find the code
• Ctrl+Shift+F to find and replace text occurrences one by one
• Ctrl+R to find and replace text occurrences all at once

Revert Changes Feature:

This feature helps you undo any changes which you made in the template code by mistake or which do not serve your purpose.

Preview Template Feature:

In the older versions of Blogger's template editor, you'd have to preview the changes in a new tab or window with a specific token for the changes. But in its latest form, the template editor has a preview pane inside its frame where you don't have to open a new window at all.

All these improvements, as I can see them, are aimed at making the template code editing process more neat, clean and tidy by avoiding unnecessary complications. Although these changes may take some time to get digested by the novices, or may be veterans as well, but they should definitely be appreciated as a step forward to making the Google services better and improving customer experience!

More tutorials and guides about Blogger's template editing will be continually posted. So, stay tuned!