Somebody at Blogger didn't like the title of my post Google Messes Up Blogger and has surreptitiously renamed it "message-from-google-which-owns-blogger" (CLICK). I suppose one should be thankful for small mercies. Blogger could have wiped out that post completely. But why censor valuable feedback from someone who has used Blogger for over six years, since before Google bought it? Faced with an unreadable Compose page, I ignored Blogger's advice to try Google Chrome and removed Blogger from IE8's Compatibility View. This unscrambled the Compose page and allowed me to see it properly. And it is a pig's ear. Not only is the new Compose page unattractive, but also it resizes any picture you upload and places it centrally, giving you a box to drag the graphic about. As I cut my graphics to size in XnView before posting them, I don't want to fiddle about with one of these soppy boxes, and it creates larger, more complex code in HTML. Text is forced under the picture. It took me over an hour of trial and error to get my text alongside the picture, previously a five-minute job (CLICK). That's when I very nearly gave up. ALT="" has also been removed. As modern browsers don't bother with ALT="", I've been renaming it TITLE="" for years. The link on a post title has also gone. And Preview is hopeless. The good news is that you can ignore Compose, go straight into HTML mode and upload graphics in the normal way. This allows you to choose small, medium or large and produces simpler code. TITLE="Pretty Piccie" can be added after the Blogger link to your JPG or GIF. Bold text and links can also be added in HTML mode. There are still minor irritations, but London Art News isn't dead yet.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Blogger Mess Update
Somebody at Blogger didn't like the title of my post Google Messes Up Blogger and has surreptitiously renamed it "message-from-google-which-owns-blogger" (CLICK). I suppose one should be thankful for small mercies. Blogger could have wiped out that post completely. But why censor valuable feedback from someone who has used Blogger for over six years, since before Google bought it? Faced with an unreadable Compose page, I ignored Blogger's advice to try Google Chrome and removed Blogger from IE8's Compatibility View. This unscrambled the Compose page and allowed me to see it properly. And it is a pig's ear. Not only is the new Compose page unattractive, but also it resizes any picture you upload and places it centrally, giving you a box to drag the graphic about. As I cut my graphics to size in XnView before posting them, I don't want to fiddle about with one of these soppy boxes, and it creates larger, more complex code in HTML. Text is forced under the picture. It took me over an hour of trial and error to get my text alongside the picture, previously a five-minute job (CLICK). That's when I very nearly gave up. ALT="" has also been removed. As modern browsers don't bother with ALT="", I've been renaming it TITLE="" for years. The link on a post title has also gone. And Preview is hopeless. The good news is that you can ignore Compose, go straight into HTML mode and upload graphics in the normal way. This allows you to choose small, medium or large and produces simpler code. TITLE="Pretty Piccie" can be added after the Blogger link to your JPG or GIF. Bold text and links can also be added in HTML mode. There are still minor irritations, but London Art News isn't dead yet.
