Before I get started let me make it clear that I’m grateful beyond being able to express my gratitude to the folks at Blogger for providing a medium which permits just about anyone with internet connections the ability to rant on and on about anything they so desire at no expense. I’m sure they make money from their services; just not directly from me. Thank you; it would be a sin and a shame for me not to acknowledge such a neat service.
Okay, why am I frustrated with Blogger? It has to do with Blogger having a will of its own, so to speak, when uploading articles for publication. Maybe it’s just the dummy on the keyboard, maybe not; but I’ve been having the devil of a time of late.
Yesterday when attempting to post Bing This I ran across some significant challenges. Granted, there were some built in facets which required planning and execution; tabbed quotations and colored background on certain paragraphs led the way. What turned out to be the straw, the straw that broke this camel’s back, was watching Blogger reorganize the article, placing entire paragraphs helter-skelter each time I went in to edit. Any seemingly insignificant alteration moved paragraphs from the middle of the article all the way to the bottom.
I almost gave up on that particular post; but remembered a trick from long ago. I grabbed the entire article and dropped it into a temporary Notebook “txt” file. At that point it washed away any hidden commands and let me post back to Blogger. That worked fine until I attempted to tab over the quotations; you’d have thought I shot my computer in the gut the way it treated my article. I decided to settle for less than planned for; but close enough for “government work”.
Today was a re-run of the same issues while posting, Houston’s Metro a Microcosm of Washington , and without the back colored lines for effect. The tabbed quotations worked just fine; that is until chaos broke out each time I tried to edit the post, the post which showed up beautifully once, now started moving paragraphs all over the article. Why is that, Blogger fans?
I did away with tabbed quotations and made sure not to do any editing, none. That worked and I guess I’ll have to live with these new limitations; no editing, zip, nada and zilch!
I did have to go back over to my Facebook account, delete the reference link I’d established after having seen what I thought was the finished product, re-enter the link with the newly assigned URL and call it a morning. Gosh and oh by golly that was fun, now where’s that bear with the tooth ache?
I think from now on I’ll simply leave a comment after the article has been published instead of taking the chance Frankenstein’s Monster will show up if I attempt to edit, even making a spelling correction. Now I can let out a sigh, breathe in, breathe out and get on with my day.
7 comments:
Thank you for validating my decision only to blog when necessary or when I feel really up to battling the erratic Blogger. I'm quite tired of having to spend more time fighting the stupid program than my thoughts.
Hey, where you been old friend? I have to say you did in one sentence what it took me an entire article, "I'm quite tired of having to spend more time fighting the stupid program than my thoughts."
BTW: This article was cross posted over to The Moral Liberal and you will note, I didn't go back in to edit the original out of fear it would mess things up.
Why is Blogger so complicated? I write my articles in Word; I have the net open at the same time so I can insert cuts; I now know most of the standard html tags and code them as I go; I have my own set of shortcuts like bq for blockquote and a quick series of "replace" edits to fill those out before pasting to the Blogger panel. A quick check on Blogger for missed html tags and finito!
BTW Eugene, it takes about 20minutes for my (dialup) system to load your page completely. I have given up on Old Whig for the same reason.
On a general note and not just to ET, how many people consider the amount of bandwidth their virtual child soaks up evey time someone loads it? I would guess that for many it would never cross their minds.
Sorry, TF. Rant over.
Ya I have had a heck of a time ever since google took over Blogspot. I am not impressed.
I have hunted around for another engine but the closest I can find is wordpress. There you would have to make or get your own page design though because they don't have to much choice.
I have had a ton of trouble too at times. I used to use a nifty little program but then that quit working. I find what happens is that blogger won't do /end tags properly so you end up with a bunch of garbled HTML and that seems to be the problem. Sometimes I have found if I save any editing until I'm done typing then I have less of a problem. Sometimes I have to completely erase any formatting and start all over. One of the things I wish I could do is put pictures where I want them rather than them ending up at the top of my post.
I have used blogsome but I find wordpress just as frustrating. I don't think it is the end all wonderful switch that so many others do.
A few months back I switched from the "old" blogger to the newer one. I can load pictures where I want them which is a big plus, the old blogger sent everything to the top like Tigersue mentioned.
There are some formatting issues with the new blogger; the biggest is spacing of paragraphs which show up real quick. That and the random placement of paragraphs if you edit will drive you up a wall.
As far as using dial up, Probligo; you have to remember, these are spoiled American bloggers, many of us have been on high speed internet so long we can't remember waiting for a page to download.
Thanks to all for joining in.
BTW- I am learning to get along with WordPress, which is what the folks at The Moral Liberal use for posting. I'm getting where I like it a lot.
Whatever platform you use, you need a bit of html coding to get by. I do most of the typing in notepad and use html code for tabbed sections and such.
Eventually you get the hang of it. Keep at it TF, keep it as simple as possible where you can.
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