Google's Response To Our Post On Dynamic Views

Google-reply-to-dynamic-viewsLast year in September 2011, Blogger Team launched Dynamic views which offered seven different ways to share your blog with your readers. Few months later in December 2011 we pin pointed some of the flaws linked with these new graphical interfaces. We mentioned 10 reasons to avoid blogger dynamic views. The post highlighted both pros and cons of using these new themes and focused mainly on whether these new layouts are optimized enough and whether or not they can be monetized and customized. As a response Blogger software engineer, Antin Harasymiv, who announced the launch of these interactive new layouts commented on our post and shared some of the recent developments and major changes applied to these new non-traditional templates.
Based on strong reader feedback and suggestions we have decided to roll out series of tutorials on monetizing, optimizing and customizing these Dynamically controlled layouts which include FlipCard, Magazine, Sidebar, Snapshot, timeslide, Mosaic and Classic. The tutorials will share tips to solve most needed problems faced by a vast majority of bloggers who switch to these views just because they want to manage their templates in a more easy non-techy way. Lets look on what points we highlighted contradictory to Dynamic views and how Antin clarified several of those points.

Our 10 Reasons:

Following are the reasons we put forward:
  1. Does not support Adsense Integration  - Now supported
  2. No Widget Support - Slight widget support
  3. (3a) No Edit HTML Option- Point still valid
  4. (3b) Dynamic views are not SEO friendly - Luckily now spiders can crawl and index Ajax controlled and iframe controlled commenting systems. Robots can even index and crawl Facebook comments and Disqus and intense debate.
  5. Loss of Page views and Page impressions - No more now because now the entire page load upon refresh or page switching. Instead the recent updates have shoot up Pageviews thus skyrocketing Adsense revenue!
  6. Browser Compatibility issues - Works fine now on IE8+ and latest browsers
  7. Jump Break Does not work - Point valid but read Antin's reply to this for knowing why
  8. No Professional Touch - Point still valid if you are looking forward for attracting direct advertisers and long term blog promotion for commercial purpose.
  9. No SMO support - Though Facebook, Google+ and twitter plugins show below posts but support for other social media networking buttons is not yet present like the latest in market : Pinterest
  10. Can not add Custom drop down menu: Point still valid although you can display default list menu
  11. No Favicon support - Fortunately favicon can now be easily changed.

Blogger Reply To Above Points:

Following is a copy of the comprehensive comment left by blogger software engineer Antin Harasymiv who is actively involved in the development of Dynamic views. On a random search I found out a dynamic view template fully modified and customized by Antin that displays post in a style you might have never seen before.  It uses HTML5, AJAX and CSS3 latest web technologies to display posts in a unique style. You can visit it at life by Antin.
Hi. Thanks for taking the time to produce this list, and we've been working hard to address many, if not most of your concerns. In fact I think 1, 2, 3b (you had two 3s), 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 are all resolved.
However before I go through the list, let me first reassure everyone that the other templates are not going away. We will not force anyone to use a Dynamic View, and while we feel they have a lot to offer, we understand that they are not for everyone.
We will continue to improve and add to Dynamic Views, much as we continue to improve and add to the rest of Blogger. Pick whichever template you like the most, or customize one from scratch.

#1 No AdSense DV has AdSense support, and has had it from the start. If you have set up AdSense the various views will incorporate ads for you, generally two for each post.

#2 No Widget support We added widget support earlier in the year, and have continued to roll out more widgets:
http://buzz.blogger.com/2012/02/dynamic-views-update-3-gadgets.html

#3 No Edit HTML Unfortunately not with these templates. We're looking at ways to enable this, but for the moment they are a little more restrictive. As I say, the other templates are not going away so if this is important they are the best option for the moment.

#3 Not SEO Friendly It seems you had two points for 3... the good news is this is not, and has never been, an issue. We made sure that the DV works well for SEO, by implementing Google's recommendations for AJAX-crawling:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/
We have also carefully annotated the template with schema.org which will help with snippeting when sharing to social networks like Google+.

#4 Loss of Pageviews due to AJAX As you infinite scroll or click on posts we send beacons to both Google Analytics (if you have enabled it) as well as the Blogger Stats. Rest assured, all the impressions are being tracked for you, and perhaps even more accurately than before.

#5 Browser Compatability Dynamic Views is tested on the two most recent versions of each major Browser (eg both IE8 and IE9). It should behave correctly on all modern browsers, and we recommend using a mobile template for smartphones.
#6 Jump Break does not work Dynamic Views requires that your blog be set to enable "full feeds". It uses the feeds to get the post content. If you do not have full feeds enabled we cannot get the full post via AJAX, but if you do use jump breaks we try and respect them on views like Magazine and Timeslide that use snippets.

#7 No Professional Touch I like to feel that we have applied a professional touch for you, but I think what you are getting at is there is not a large amount of customization? Yes, that is undeniably true. You can tweak a lot of things through the Template Designer, both colors, but also with custom CSS.
As I say, DV is not for everyone, but a lot of people do not have the time, or inclination, to make a custom design, and we have tried to help by providing some interesting (and dare we say 'dynamic') ways to present your blog.

#8 Not SMO friendly (other social networks) We have supported the biggest social networks, and would love to extend to more as we continue to find ways for you to customize DV. In the interim however we did not want to overly clutter the blog.

#9 Cannot add Drop Down Menu
I do not really understand how this differs to the custom HTML complaint. Although you can add navigation through custom pages, or the various list widgets.

#10 No Favicon, No logo Again, DV has had this since launch. You can change the logos through the Template Designer (set a Header Image), and the Favicon through the settings:
http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/08/latest-updates-august-1st.html
We thank Antin for working so dedicatedly on DV project and we would love to hear his thoughts in future too.  We just hope the points mentioned above and the clear responses are self explanatory and answers most of your questions and doubts related to DV.

Shall you switch to Dynamic Views Now?

We mentioned it pretty clearly on all our posts that it depends on how you wish to blog. If you are a nature lover and love to gather all your memories in an online diary then of course Ads and blog ranking wont matter a lot for you because your readership would be selected and specific. But if you are looking to make a living out of your blog and take this hobby seriously by helping people or by promoting your brand or product then we would strongly recommend that you stick to Simple design which offers you several ways to customize and monetize your blog to reach a wider audience and blog sponsors. Design counts a lot after blog traffic stats and ranking in the eyes of advertisers, therefore to give a professional tongue your content you will have to dress up your content in standard blog themes. All remaining templates can be fully customized. At present blogger offers six different categories of templates which include:
  1. Simple
  2. Picture Window
  3. Awesome Inc.
  4. Watermark
  5. Ethereal
  6. Travel
You may choose any of them and later replace them with a magazine style template of your choice.
To view your blog in a dynamic view simply replace the URL below with yours and you may replace the word sidebar with any of 7 views available,
http://www.mybloggertricks.com/view/sidebar
Blogger team recently added a new search functionality to dynamic views which display search results based in relevancy unlike just in chronological order
Please let us know what would you like to see in our future tutorials on DV and which topics should be covered first. Mention any of the problems you may be facing so far and share your valuable suggestions to help us bring something worth trying and implementing. Do take good care of yourselves and your loved ones. Peace and blessings pals. :)

If you don't want to get yourself into Serious Technical Trouble while editing your Blog Template then just sit back and relax and let us do the Job for you at a fairly reasonable cost. Submit your order details by Clicking Here »

46 comments

PLEASE NOTE:
We have Zero Tolerance to Spam. Chessy Comments and Comments with 'Links' will be deleted immediately upon our review.
  1. I really the love blog of Atin. I have never seen such blogs based on DV. Thank you Antin for continuous quality work for Blogger giving us the awesome features. You guys always give something new in Blogger and I will always be waiting for something new and unexpected :)

    Blogger is the BEST!!!

    Thank You

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i think that people should properly research and state their points before writing because businesses works sooo hard so that people can choose what they have provided for someone to pin point disadvantages which is obviously incorrect.

      Delete
  2. Nice....Me too like to get other updates about Dynamic Views....I think DV are not for Tech related blogs...these are for personal blogs.
    Wiki For You

    ReplyDelete
  3. OMG, My Blogger Tricks zindabad.
    And a mistake: "Last year in September 2012", it should be 2012

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Pradeep
    Oh yea it went completely unnoticed.

    ReplyDelete
  5. @bhavesh
    I would agree to that. After viewing the demo blog, I am sure we have a lot new to see and try. There is much more left and blogger is trying every bit to win an applause always. :)


    @Gurjit Singh Khehra

    Well it depends on what your blogging strategy is. If you want to go ahead with Adsense alone then DV are not a bad option and I am sure they will open the widget adding functionality very soon, after which many people will switch to Dynamic views. :)
    @Pradeep

    Thanks for pointing it buddy, just corrected it. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Mohammad
    You still missed "Few months later in December 2012"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oops, it wasn't meant to be secret, but the new view on my blog isn't quite ready for release... We're still testing and tweaking a few things (and there is a nasty scroll bug in Chrome 19). That said, once ready we'll give it to everyone :)

    While DV doesn't suit everyone, and probably not particularly text heavy blogs - but for more personal ones, or picture heavy ones, I think having a little fun and presenting the media in different ways can be refreshing.

    Thanks for taking the time to post this update, we really appreciate the community involvement.

    ReplyDelete
  8. i was change my dynamic template...

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Antin

    Thats true. Infact the circular date display is not working either but I am sure once it is released it will give a whole new look to the way people use blogs.

    I would agree with you antin, Dynamic views is surely best for blogs that have a lot of graphics and less of text.

    Thanks for taking time and for sharing your valuable thoughts.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I feel that is one of the most vital info for me. And i’m happy studying your article. However want to statement on few normal things, The site style is wonderful, the articles is actually excellent : D. Good task, cheers

    ReplyDelete
  11. this is quite Informative and involving ofcourse.

    But mohmmad bro....would you please suggest me one thing ?? Actually i'm just 15 but a regular blogger.

    I want to change to a custom domain........which one would be best according to you bro ??

    .com /.net / ?? or something else ??

    please suggest broda !

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hi All,

    I would have to agree that DV is not ideal for monitized blogs. But they are best for hobbyist photo blogs.
    http://geektechblog.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  13. I love the Dynamic view of blogger. And I think it is pretty much helping me with SEO too. I am not sure, if it is the dynamic view or the Google+ profile integration.

    I reached this blog looking for one specific question about editing the CSS Style of dynamic view. I got the basic information as where to edit. But I have no clue about CSS. I have magazin style enabled in one blog (mycruisetravelpictures.com) Now I like the first 2 rows. And from third row, all the posts are wasting the space. I would like to make everything like the second row. Any clue on how to I do it? Is it possible at all.

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hi Mohammad, thanks for your blog on dynamic view. I just start my own blog. I am a journalist and columnist. Thus, I will use my blog professioanlly. I really like the classic style of DV. But did google now said professionals should use another layout than DV? On your DV preview of your blog, you were able to use the jump break. I want that for my blog too. I want to know which articles my readers read and I dont want that they must scroll like crazies. So, how did you do that?

    I really appreciate your help!
    Thanks a lot, all the best
    Helen

    ReplyDelete
  15. I am not a lover of dynamic views yet. I like to see an easy navigation bar and don't know where to click on dynamic views as I don't want to "miss" anything. I hope I can get use to it if this stays around.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Never found such informative articles
    Sam Adams

    ReplyDelete
  17. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  18. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Hi Mohammad thanks for your informative post. I am running a Photo blog in blogger and I am pretty much sure that adsense alone will not give us the required earning. So if in future i plan to add ad codes of other advertising networks and with html editing option not enabled in dynamic views i will not be able to put ads of other networks. So am i taking a big risk by working hard on a blog which views best in dynamic view?

    ReplyDelete
  20. @helen


    To add a readmore function just use post-split option avaiable in your post editor but in DV it wont work. Even in DV of our blog if your click the read more the post wont expand. So no luck in it :)

    @hrsht

    That is surely correct. DV as Antin himself said is only for people who are blogging as hobby and don't aim at monetizing their blogs. You can switch to DV anytime you wish but better stick with custom templates at this time before some major changes are introduced in DV. :)

    ReplyDelete
  21. Yes, dynamic views is good now, several features has beed added in Blogger, including permalink, meta description per post, adsense for dynamic view, etc.

    However, I think dynamic views is not good for web designer, there are no place to show up creativity in design CSS3 and HTML5, at least until today.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I am pretty much confused to which view shoul i apply in my blog. As a sports update blog Dynamic view suites my blog, but the main problem remains'widgets cannot be installed'. I'm confused. Kindly visit my blog sportsbongo.blogspot.com and suggest me.
    One more question: Can i rename my blog. I have submitted sitemaps and applied in technorati with my old blog name.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  23. I tried to ADD GADGET (pageview) as instructed @Layout but not displayed with DV. Other templates work well. Is this feature still a problem? TQ

    ReplyDelete
  24. I really like the DV look and feel but too bad couldnt add in the facebook comment plugin and facebook share button :/

    ReplyDelete
  25. Hi, I'm very much impressed with the blogger dynamic template, so started working on my blog through dynamic template only.

    Here i got stuck at permissions as i want to share my blog to a particular community at my colony. So when i opt option "Only these readers" instead of "Anybody" (Public)...., the home page or any page opening speed goes to zero, i mean the page open twice if attempted 10 times and that too after so long.

    Speed constraints if dynamic template chosen for few blog readers...,

    What to do...

    Ishrosh

    ReplyDelete
  26. Is this real? Did they really just entirely remove the possibility to modify the template directly? WHY?! This would mean that I'm basically stuck with what I have and can never make any changes whatsoever.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Check out this hack to support custom widgets in dynamic views: http://fruitfulbookmarks-en.blogspot.com/2012/09/hacking-blogger-dynamic-views-to.html. Experimental, for real dynamic views fans only :)

    ReplyDelete
  28. Is there any way to add google forms on to the DV. I mean, come on, both are from a parent company right..?

    ReplyDelete
  29. Just started to use the new blogger dynamic layouts, is it possible to have a facebook like pop up screen?

    thanks

    ReplyDelete
  30. Merhaba Muhammed;
    Dinamik blog arama kutusu çalışmıyor.
    Bu konu hakkında bir CSS kodunuz varmı.Veya bir öneri.
    Tesekkurler.

    ReplyDelete
  31. One more issue is that blogger dynamic views frequently fail to correctly load CSS styling so that the website looks grey, and without adsense! How does one lobby Blogger to fix this??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is very true. But it works very correct in IE which is widely used by many Internet users.
      I wish this problem is solved.

      http:steve-fynn.blogspot.com

      Delete
  32. I have found a way to integrate Disqus into Blogger Dynamic Views Template. See how to do that here : http://sag-3.blogspot.com/2013/07/disqus-in-blogger-dynamic-views-template.html

    ReplyDelete
  33. Hi Mohammed,
    Do you know that all other blogger templates except Dynamic View do not work on IE8 or below?
    Meanwhile most internet users use IE.
    I tried to solve that, but to no avail.
    I think you can check it out.

    Regards,
    http://steve-fynn.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  34. Just found your blog searching for dynamic views. I've been with blogger off and on since just before Google acquired it so have seen every change they've made. It actually went from being a personal blogger platform to including business minded bloggers. Cool. On the other hand, they had to keep up with trends and so it's understandable.

    I'd like to stay with blogger because I believe it is the best blogging platform out there in a general sense. It's mainstay has always been that it catered to creative types who like to tinker with the back end (HTML,CSS, etc)

    Now that has become a most frustrating exercise. Issues such as using the preview when making changes to CSS in your HTML. The preview does not reveals the changes but after saving the changes returning to your blog you find no changes at all so you go back and try it again and maybe it works, maybe not.

    Before I began using the template designer I could create my own navigation bar in the HTML. I could use the URL for DV (mosaic) and include it in my nav as an option. When I changed to template designer I have tried several times to access the DV URL and can't.

    Though I'm all for DV and can adapt to the Template Designer, I have to agree it does not lend itself to giving you a unique stamp as a blogger because they all look alike. As a photographer/artist that doesn't sit well with me. It is because of social media that you need more than ever before to stand out from the rest and you could in the past attempt to re-create your blog for this purpose. Now it is still possible to do this but with much more difficulty. That was blogger's one high note. Every blogger could potentially create a site that was unique to themselves. I think that edge is gone. The frustration level of making changes is too high.

    I truly commend Blogger for introducing the new Templates and designer. Change is never easy. But I do miss what I think were some of the most creative, interesting blogs on the Web before the new site design. Now they pretty much all look alike.

    As an amateur photographer/writer, but an artist all my life, the visuals are of primary importance. Not just my photos but how they're presented. If I change to a dynamic view such as Mosaic or flipcard, the text of my posts which are sometimes brief and sometimes long can be seen in magazine or classic I suppose but not looking forward to the tweaking involved to make things just right.

    I hope blogger keeps their "creative edge" in mind as they continue to develop. That was their reigning spot that set them apart from others like Wordpress.com (Not to be confused with Wordpress.org.). The publishers felt their commitment to that. Now it seems they are struggling to keep it, but in a cookie cutter type way.

    Nonetheless, I still think it is the best free blog platform on the Web.
    (Glad I found this site. Will bookmark it to read more )

    ReplyDelete
  35. Is it me or it is not possible to custom ads in Dinamic Views, e.g. to change colours?

    You can check out my Dynamic View here: http://handinhappy.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  36. That's a nice place of you; we have been polishing off there.Click To Aware

    ReplyDelete
  37. I prefer to use the simple template from Blogger. But for one of my photo blog (www.jimzubemophotos.com) is had used Dynamic Template. One thing I observed is that Google Adsense keeps refreshing itself and so while scrolling the page, it would go back to top.

    ReplyDelete
  38. I have been using simple view on my website since the day I started... I have been researching dynamic views as an option, but always felt it was not mature enough to switch to... This article is actually very informative for anyone who is planning to make that decision

    http://www.djsmobiles.com

    ReplyDelete
  39. are the improvements the blogger dude speaks about automatically implemented on old dynamic view blogs, as time goes by? Or do they only apply to new, to be created ones?

    ReplyDelete
  40. So, how does one switch out of the Dynamic View and choose a more traditional template. The DV is not working for me as a video blog. I don't see anywhere I can choose a different template to get rid of DV.

    ReplyDelete