New Old Feature on Beta

Blogger in beta initially launched without a few features -- it's still a beta version after all -- and it turned out that one of the ones folks missed the most was having an Edit HTML view for their templates in the new Layouts system. I can sympathize with that myself. Complete template control was one of the things that originally made me choose Blogger over the other available options almost four years ago (and yes, that was before I worked here). That kind of personalization and customization is important to us here at Blogger, so I hope no one thought this feature was gone for good.

I love the fact that we've got such cool new ways to just drag 'n' drop parts of your template around, and change fonts and colors with the click of a mouse. And that "shuffle blog colors" option can keep me entertained for hours. But still, there are times when you really just want to muck around in the code and nothing else will do. So for those of you who feel that way, have at it! Edit HTML is now available for Layouts.

One quick warning before you all dive in, though: The new template language is completely different from the old one. So even if you're used to working with classic templates, you'll need to learn some new tricks to directly edit the new templates for Layouts-enabled blogs. We've got some starter documentation on it, with more to come later. Personally, I recommend making a test blog to experiment on while you learn how it all works.

Have fun!