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Monday, June 1, 2020

The New Blogger Platform

Blogger is moving to a new interface for managing blogs. The blog itself will be the same, but the tools will have a bit of a different look and feel. Two days ago I switched over, since it'll happen at the end of June anyway. Not everything is smooth, but it seems to be getting better.

I noticed that Joe commented that his comment had come out as by "Unknown." That's a glitch that I've noticed. I've always set things so that all comments go to an email account, then I handle them with the Blogger software--it works for me and allows me to recover from mistakes. Since switching over, I've noticed that--for no reason I can discern--while the comments in the email inbox show the proper commenter names, they don't always show up that way in the Blogger comment management software. They normally do show up correctly once published. That's all I can say for now, and presumably Blogger is trying to iron those things out.

14 comments:

  1. one thing I noticed last night: the links to the most recent comments that appears over in the right hand column of the page was lagging a substantial period of time behind the actual comments that had been approved by you and posted.

    I have never seen that before.

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    Replies
    1. I didn't notice that, since I'm monitoring the blogger softeware, instead. It could be. I know other parts of it were very slow the first day. The second day it got better but there may still be problems. I have no control, of course. The settings remain the same.

      Here's one example. When I enabled your comment, it was as "Unknown," but it displays correctly.

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  2. I began using the new Blogger a couple weeks ago. I experienced so many problems that I reverted yesterday to the legacy Blogger.

    In one of my blogs, I post many YouTube videos. I found that many such videos would not embed. When they did embed, they embedded far away from my insertion point.

    In all of my blogs, I frequently use the HTML page, and I try to make my HTML very simple. In the new Blogger, however, the HTML is messy and troublesome.

    Another problem I found was that it's difficult to go back to posts that I did in the distant past. All the previous posts are listed in one long page -- not in a series of pages. So, if I want to go back to a post I did in, say, 2010, I have to scroll all the way on one page.

    Yet another problem is that tags are selected from a series of options boxes, and then it's troublesome to see which tags are selected.

    In general, I perceived that many changes were made just for the sake of novelty.

    I tried to find some guidance or discussion of the new Blogger and could not find any. The only stated justification for the changes is that they improve the displays on smaller screens (e.g. phones).

    I was very happy to revert to the legacy Blogger yesterday and to find that it still works well for me.

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    1. I feel pretty much the same way as you do--change for the sake of change. As far as I can tell there are really no new features--and I would have appreciated a few of those.

      Also, this morning I tried to embed a youtube video and was unable to.

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    2. I found that about one-fourth of YouTube videos do not embed.

      I found also that waiting a day or two does not make any difference. Once a video does not embed, it never will embed.

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    3. When I write a blog article, I often switch back and forth between the Compose window and the HTML window. I know how to tweak an article's appearance in the HTML window.

      I am not an HTML expert, but I am familiar with HTML -- in particular with the HTML on the previous Blogger.

      In the new Blogger, working in the HTML window is messy and troublesome. For example, the font is smaller, for some inexplicable reason.

      Also, the HTML code always extends to the right margin and then wraps to the next line. The HTML code resists efforts to break it up into separate lines.

      Also, the HTML window puts every line into a div/div even if I do not want to do that.

      I was open-minded about the new Blogger, and I hoped it would provide significant improvements. I tried for a couple of weeks, but then I gave up on it.

      I would be happy to provide my criticisms to Blogger, but I don't know where to do so.

      ======

      My blogs get few comments, and nobody comments often. So, I did not have any trouble with managing comments on the new Blogger.

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    4. "change for the sake of change"? Or, "one-fourth of YouTube videos do not embed."
      Election-year deliberate?

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  3. The Washington Post has a story out on the Sullivan case.

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    1. Judge filed his required 10 day response:

      https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/michael-flynn-judge-just-told-the-d-c-circuit-why-he-refused-to-immediately-dismiss-prosecution/

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    2. Judge filed his required 10 day response:

      https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/michael-flynn-judge-just-told-the-d-c-circuit-why-he-refused-to-immediately-dismiss-prosecution/

      Delete
  4. Thanks for explaining this, Mr. Wauck. And your answer potentially clears up something that I had noticed. TexasDude used to post as TexasDude. Lately, he comes up as Unknown and at the end of his comments, he adds TexasDude.

    I guess that he has experienced this problem.

    Joe

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    1. Actually, he started doing that before I switched over. And I see you're showing up correctly now. Next problem, can I embed videos?

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  5. OK. Thanks for that info regarding TexasDude.

    I bet that you will overcome the glitches with YouTube.

    I'm temporarily putting my name at the end of my comments. It's probably overkill and I will stop once I see that Blogger has worked out the kinks.

    Joe

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  6. @Mark

    I still wish all of your erudite commenters who comment under the name "Unknown" or "Anonymous" would also sign their comments like Joe is doing now and Tom S and Rob S (with their real names or noms de post, it doesn't matter) so that the rest of us can keep them apart.

    Just wishing...

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