Just a quick post to let folks know we are working on our next update. Some of the fixes are targeted at just the blog writers but we wanted to address some of the immediate feedback we got after doing the upgrade to the blog platform as well.

This is not the complete list, just a few things that come to mind:

  • Search within a Blog will be online.
  • Link color change for read posts in the rolling blog post list.
  • The Microsoft Translation Widget should be available in many more blogs. So for folks who want to translate content, this should be useful.
  • Paging numbers for comments and the rolling blog post list will be made bigger and more finger friendly for mobile viewers.
  • Changing the font size CSS away from a fixed size on the default themes.
  • Changing “Home” in the breadcrumbs to something less confusing (since there are 3 Homes displayed at times, also we’ll be highlighting the blogs tab so you know where you are…)
  • Adding back a few more redirects to RSS and ATOM feeds that got lost. (actually, this is now fixed)
  • Search handling extended characters (actually, this is now fixed)

Here’s a few items of that I’m hearing over and over that we’ll look at addressing in the future:

  • Language selection and filtering for blogs, blog posts and the rolling blog post list.
  • More options and larger page sizes for the rolling blog post list.
  • Default RSS feed on a blog leads to nowhere (we actually hope to have that fixed in the next update…)
  • Extended characters not always rendering correctly in emails.
  • Performance of the blogs. We are always going to be looking at scenarios where we can improve performance.
  • HTML rendering. We’ll keep looking for places we need to fix and fix them over time.

Look for the update by the end of the month things going to plan. Hopefully in July I’ll be able to share more of the FY11 plans for the blogs and be able to get your feedback on our directions.

In the mean time be sure to check out the announcements and releases from Microsoft on Kinect for Xbox 360 and Office 2010 this week!

Thanks,
Sean