Blogger Dynamic View Templates Pros and Cons

Blogger finally rolled out templates with Dynamic views. It is built with all the latest technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and AJAX. Blogger adds that “Dynamic Views is a unique browsing experience that will inspire your readers to explore your blog in new ways”.

To find out, you can setup a test blog (it’s better to test things out before applying it for your main blog) and apply the new dynamic templates from Blogger’s Dashboard > Template tab. You will find that there are 7 templates to choose from, namely, Classic, Flipcard, Magazine, Mosaic, Sidebar, Snapshot and Timeslide.

Blogger Dynamic View
Image by Blogger Buzz. Click to enlarge.

I applied it to one of my test blog and found out some positive and negative sides of these templates. Let’s see what these are.

Pros:

  • Needless to say it’s fast and Blogger says that it’s 40% faster.
  • Using HTML5, CSS3 and AJAX, Blogger gave some beautiful effects increasing the viewing experience.
  • Say goodbye to “Older Posts” link. All the posts will appear in a single view.
  • Readers viewing your blog can change to their own dynamic view from view chooser found on top left corner.
  • Sharing buttons like Tweet button, plus one button and Like button are included.

Cons:

  • No “Edit HTML” option which ensures that you cannot customize the template.
  • No sidebars to add your own widgets.
  • Include only 3 sharing buttons. You cannot have more than these, like, Digg or Delicious or StumbleUpon buttons.
  • If you have applied for AdSense ads, only Leaderboard (728 x 90) and Wide Skyscraper (160x600) ads will be viewable. You cannot show other ad formats.
  • You and your blog readers will not be able to see your blog if the JavaScript option is turned off or your browser (like some mobile browsers) don’t have it.
  • You can customize the look only by selecting the type of view and changing the background image. No other options are available (for now).
  • Lastly, if I can find another one, I will add it here. If you think I missed out something, leave a reply.

The main thing that it’s missing is the “Edit HTML” option because without this option we cannot view and edit the HTML of the template to make it more customizable. I will leave this negative point to priority 1 as this deprives us to do more and make our template more customized.

For example, the Like button on these templates are iframe ones and I would prefer to have XFBML or HTML5 Like buttons so that readers who liked my post can also leave a comment from the popup box. This will ensure that the story that has been Liked also appears on Facebook’s homepage so that my friends can also see it. Next is the Facebook’s Timeline which requires to have more advanced Open Graph Protocol which is required to add it to our blogs manually.

Another example is that Blogger says that it’s 40% fast but normal templates can also be fast too if you remove all the extra fancy widgets you think you could live without. Also uploading smaller sized background images (less than 100KB) and using it wisely can bring down the load time too.

There can be so many examples. Have a look at one of my demo blog.

Conclusion

I admit that I am bad at witting conclusions and I will try to write my best.

If you ask me, though it’s irresistible but for now, I will try to avoid the new dynamic templates until I find that Blogger let me customize my template (or this is what the future of web and other top CMS are).

But if you have a personal blog and you know your readers very well, you can opt for it. Or if you are a big organization who’s brand name is recognized by everyone and every corner of the world (like Google blogs) and want to setup a blog on free hosted and trustable CMS to keep everyone updated (like Twitter blog) you can also opt for it. Or if you think you find it very tempting and cannot resist your temptation, you can apply it.

Remember
You will lose any previous customizations done to your template.

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