the new & improved blogger

Having used the new Blogger beta now for a couple of weeks I have to say it is a huge improvement.

Fast
First and foremost it is a speedy little devil now. I get the feeling they completely rewrote everything. I hope it's not just a greater allocation of server resources and it bogs down when it comes out of beta. But I get the feeling that isn't the case. Posting is quick. There are no republishing or reindexing maneuvers needed. Just plain fast. Lovely.

Improved Design UI
Thankfully they've made the ability to add and change design elements a lot simpler. I was okay with getting into the code but I'd rather not. There aren't a ton of new elements to add but they now have a simple infrastructure to add features. Very cool.

Categories
I don't know why these are important. Does anyone use them? Regardless I wanted them. Nice shiny categories. Crack for the anal retentive freak in me.

[update] Spell Check
I forgot to mention that the spell check implementation is pure genius. Get the MS Word guys to photocopy this pronto.

There are of course some bugs and it doesn't work with Picasa to upload photos right now. But overall I'm very happy.