Sunday, January 24, 2021

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?

Finger pressing the "delete" key on a keyboard
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.

Friday, January 22, 2021

Restoring the 'Quick Edit' Tools, Version 2.0

A green young plant sprouts from the dirt

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.

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Blogger Gets Harder to Use

AND IT'S MY FAULT

figure straining to push a huge boulder
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.

Crossed wrench and screwdriver icon 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.

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Which Blog Theme Is Best
for You?

A CRITICAL APPRAISAL

wine taster
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? 

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

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.

Friday, January 1, 2021

Don't Make Me Think

Rodin's The Thinker"

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