As I wrote on Sunday, as part of Blogger’s 10th birthday they are creating gifts for their users and plan on rolling out new features.  One such feature debuted today: new label options including the ability to organize labels into a cloud and to include/exclude certain labels.

Some readers of Bootcamp for GeneaBloggers may remember that a method of creating a label cloud was posted back in September 2008.  The result, as shown below, is very elegant but involves editing the template and working with html code.

Here is how you can access the new Labels gadget options in Blogger and how the end result appears:

• Sign in at Blogger.
• The Dashboard will appear.  Click Layout.  The Layout tab appears.

• Click Add a Gadget.  The Add a Gadget dialog appears.
• Use the scroll bar to scroll down and locate Labels.  Click Labels and the Configure Labels dialog appears.
• The new options now include the ability to only show select labels (Show: All Labels or Selected Labels) and to display the labels in a list or a cloud (Display: List or Cloud).  Select the options you want and click Save.
• Then click View Blog to see how your Labels gadget appears on your blog.  Below is how the new options appear.

While these are nice features, I somehow feel that my earlier Label cloud which required tampering with the template and using HTML code is a bit more elegant.  It has the flexibility of having different shades of color depending on how many or how few labels exist.  It also lets me set the point size for the font with a max and a min range.  But the new Google options offer some welcome flexibiity especially when you want to exclude certain labels.

UPDATE: it seems that the folks at Blogger Buster have posted a “how to” on customizing the Label Cloud feature which includes changing the font color and font size.

© 2009, copyright Thomas MacEntee