Dumb Blogger

So, I'm still waiting for HTML editor that was promised in a time frame of "days, not weeks" almost two weeks ago. And I'm still waiting for my Google AdSense ads to appear, and the DiggIt links, and so on, and so on. But while I'm waiting I've discovered yet another bizarre glitch.

A few days ago I clicked on a referring link from my logs. I could see it was to somebody's Blogger dashboard, but I was curious if it was simply a "Next Blog" hit or if there was some other link on the page. It turns out, the particular dashboard page was on the Korean blogger site, or at least I think it was Korean. I think, fine, whatever, and log in. Since then, every time I go the dashboard on my home computer, the site is in Korean. Every single time. At right is a partial screenshot.

How stupid is the programming that it thinks one visit means I want to work in the Korean version of blogger.

Technorati tags: Blogger | Blogger Beta

Time According To Blogger

The other day I wrote about some of the troubles I had with the new blogger, primarily that I could not edit the new template's HTML. The official Blogger Buzz wrote that this functionality would be coming in "days not weeks." That was 8 days ago, and thus we are now in the time frame of weeks not days.

Even though I tend to be loyal, I'm getting a little peeved. This layout is nice, but it isn't me, and it has some serious flaws compared to what I had before. Most importantly, I can't place the "I Stand With Israel" javascript in the upper right, a circumstance about which I'm not happy at all, seeing as how I do stand with Israel. I also can't display any of the Google ads I signed up for now that I'm using the beta version of Google's own blogging system, a strange problem given it's all the same company.

So I wait, impatiently.

Technorati tags: Blogger | Blogger Beta

Blogger Beta Bummer

I am both loyal and lazy, and those qualities combined mean I tend to stay with a mediocre product, service, or, for that matter, job long past the point that most people would give up and look for something better. That holds for the free service of Blogger.

They just released the beta version of Blogger and I thought, "what the hell, how different can it be," and reconfigured my account. Posts in the new version load much faster than before, and the spell check is enormously improved. After a few days I decided to see if I could make some changes to my highly customized template, only to find that I had to allow Blogger to totally reconfigure the template to the new version. I made a backup and let blogger do its job, figuring I could always paste in my old HTML if I had to.

Well, guess what: Blogger hasn't got an HTML template editor in the new version! They say it's coming, but I would have liked to have known that it no longer existed at all before making the switch. So I had to cut and paste my old blog roll into separate parts in the new "page elements" feature, hardly a satisfactory compromise for me. I also had to find a new template I could live with until I had a chance to redo my customizations. The changes you see on the page are the best I could do.

I can't say I'm real happy with the "new" design. Not only is it not as unique as my old design, but I've lost some of the changes I really liked, like a reduced size for the items in the post footer and full control over the sidebar elements. I've also lost the ability to have Digg It and del.icio.us links for each post, this on a day that someone actually decided to Digg something of mine -- by the way, thanks nailinmyeye.

But as I said at the start, I'm loyal and lazy, a perfect customer, and I probably won't switch to another service unless Blogger gets a whole lot more annoying, or drops the edit template feature altogether.

Technorati tags: Blogger | Blogger Beta