Subscribe by Email

"Subscribe by Email" is one of three ways that readers can elect to be notified when you publish a blog post. 

It is also the name of a sidebar gadget in Blogger that will present this option to your readers.

Hipster interface design

BIT OF A RANT HERE

Websites should be clean and simple. Also, they should be transparent and functional. 

These two criteria do not always dance well together. 

Furthermore, the optimal mix of simplicity and functionality might be different if you are viewing and interacting on your phone versus a computer with a large monitor.

In my view as a desktop user, The New Blogger often strikes the wrong balance. (But in many respects, the legacy UI did too: I am a critic from way back).

Neverending Blogger.com changes

Those busy beavers at Blogger never rest! And, one is tempted to add, unfortunately.

This week's change involves the batch controls, with special implications for managing labels.

New and Improved? Unsung Features of The New Blogger

Let's be fair.

Blogger is hard to use, and it is not your fault.

Google could have done so much better when it revisited the "back end" of Blogger—the tools we bloggers use to create blogs and posts.

I've been critical (and, I hope, helpful) on this blog. 

But to be fair, I'd like to put the criticism aside and remind everyone of things that are new and improved. Of benefits from the change.

Third-Party Tracking Cookies

PAIN FROM BLOGGER'S COMMUNICATION PROBLEM

Third-party tracking cookies (tiny files that your browser downloads from just about everybody, unless you block them) are facing legitimate concerns about privacy.

Apple started blocking these trackers in its Safari browser by default in the spring of 2020, and now others, including Google, have come around.

That's good—but also a problem for Blogger. We felt the pain for five days in January.

Fixing the Broken "Delete" Option

A PROBLEM YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD

Want to delete a comment you left on someone else's blog?

Photo: Auaan, cc by-sa 4.0

It just got more difficult.

Blog comments are affected by the same issue that recently disabled the quick-edit tools.

A workaround "fixed" that issue. It also has the effect of fixing comments.

Restoring the 'Quick Edit' Tools, Version 2.0

The removal of the quick-edit tools has made Blogger harder to use.

Here's how to get them back, at least for now.

Update: Google has reversed course on this—at least for the present.

Blogger Gets Harder to Use

AND IT'S MY FAULT

Sam Beebe/Ecotrust (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The latest casualty in Google's War On Usability is the class of Quick Edit tools that many of us use to maintain our blog and perform other editorial functions.

These are little icons—a pencil, or a wrench crossed over a screwdriver—that linked directly from a post or widget to its respective editing window. Very handy!

So, why did this happen? And, can anything be done about it?

The answer to why is this.

It is my fault.

Which Blog Theme Is Best for You?

A CRITICAL APPRAISAL

Creative Commons attribution below

Even the very oldest Blogger themes (also called "templates") still work, in that they faithfully render their contents on the World Wide Web. 

Beyond that, any of the three families of themes from the past decade are broadly  functional. Each family has advantages and drawbacks not offered by the others.

So, a reasonable question is, what theme should I use today? 

Don't Make Me Click

The new Blogger user interface is a boon to hand surgeons everywhere.

Why: All the extra clicks, distributed over hundreds of thousands of users, must surely translate into more cases of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Don't Make Me Think

The title of this blog post is

1. the name of a book by Steve Krug
2. a fundamental principle of website and app design
3. a yardstick with which to measure the new Blogger user interface