Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Another shoe drops, crippling widgets and disrupting flow

Shoes falling through the air

This week Google is removing the quick-edit tools from sidebar widgets in a way that cannot be reversed.

The removal is rolling out as I publish this report.

The only remaining option to edit these widgets uses the dumbed-down versions that are available from the Layout page of the Blogger dashboard.

The move suggests that the days of some other Blogger features that remain may be numbered.

Not everyone has access to the quick-edit tools, which remain (for now) in place for posts. These are links directly to the edit page or dialog for post or widget, visible only to the blog owner as tiny icons. Crossed wrench and screwdriver icon

(A pencil for posts, a toolkit for widgets.)

For many of us, they really helped blogging to just flow.

Unlike a similar move in January, quickly reversed, these tools are completely gone. They cannot be "unhidden" by any too-clever hacks.

And now the bad news

Unfortunately, if you want to edit or create some of these widgets from the dashboard, your options have changed. 

The dialog for the Text widget, for instance, is missing essential tools.

Before:

The old Text gadget, with formatting tools

After:

The new Text Widget, with no formatting tools

Dear Google: Some of us bloggers do not know how to code, or do not care to.

Being able to create a blog without learning HTML, CSS, Python, or JavaScript has been one of Blogger's greatest strengths since its inception in 1999.

Update: Here is a workaround for the widget problem.

With worse to come

We got warning of this in January, when Google disabled all the quick-edit tools, part of a long-term plan to move away from third-party cookies on which parts of Blogger rely.

The quick-edits returned within a week, but the cookies problem (which is real) remains.

Expect to see further impairment of Blogger's functionality.

That might include one that would break Google's promise that users own and control everything they create in the Googleverse.

Unanswered questions

  • What about third-party cookies means we can't have some basic editing tools in the Text gadget?
  • Why does this need to happen now?
  • Is this going anyplace good in the long run? Are these unpleasant changes actually stepping stones to a radically better Blogger? If not, why bother?

25 comments:

  1. Yeah, the widgets have gotten worse and worse....when they work at all. I know enough HTML to be dangerous, so I've worked around the problems on my blog Game Show Follies.

    Today, though, the popular posts widget was completely broken. Luckily, it seems to be fixed for now, but Google is really making Blogger harder and harder to use. Do they just want to get rid of the product completely?

    I could migrate to WordPress, but it would be a chore to move all the features on my blog to the new platform. So I'll hang in with Blogger and hope Google doesn't screw it up even more.

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  2. Oh no! Thanks for the heads-up. We weren't aware this was going on.

    We're 10+ years deep on the Blogger platform and really don't want to start over somewhere else.

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    Replies
    1. This change has been temporarily reversed because it broke some older themes. However, I expect the removals to return, perhaps as early as next week (sans other complications).

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    2. I just don't understand why Google is making Blogger harder to use. I hate to see the sidebar widgets Edit buttons gone. Now I can't even add or delete favorite blogs, or change the featured posts. So frustrating!!!

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  3. An unrelated change: items in the profile are no longer links that show other people with the same item. Locations, too, are no longer links. No idea how long ago that happened. Probably not a bad idea to have privacy that way,

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    Replies
    1. Michael, thanks, I had missed that change.

      I do not have any information about that one, but it feels like part of the slow erosion of the original Blogger network that included Next Blog and Blogger Friend Connect.

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  4. I am convinced that Google is trying to drive people away from Blogspot so that they can shut it down.

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  5. Very frustrating, thanks for sharing.

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  6. I noticed this too. (I too am one of the 'dangerous' users speaking HTML ;) )
    But as of yesterday all posts I edit or create are opened in the HTML mode, and when changing to Write mode tells me that something is wrong with my coding and it might delete some of my posting. I'm not easily scared, but this is a pain in the behind.
    I hope Blogger is going to mend its ways and once again turn user-friendly. I can't understand what they hope to obtain by this circus.

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  7. And do you have any clever solution for the Reading lists only showing the first five or so posts, and you have to clik (yet another click!) unfold, show more or whatefer (Danish is my blogging language) to see them all. Are there any clever HTML to add somewhere to avoid this?

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    Replies
    1. Charlotte, I am not experiencing this problem. Possibly something has changed to make the Reading List more sensitive to issues in one or more of the feeds you are following.

      You could test this by seeing if the prblem persists in the feeds individually (select them one at a time, not all combined).

      In any case, I would take this issue to the help community.

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    2. I'll take it to the community. But my bad English is not helping any here. It's not the reading list, I mean, it's the blog list gadget on the main page (sidebar) of my blog that is acting up. I do not use that other one.

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    3. And I found the relevant line in the HTML of my blog THis one (line 2248 for me)
      5
      And changed 5 to 50 :D

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  8. Hi Guys
    I have a feeling that Google is on a mission to gradually phase out blogger---I am experiencing the same problem with the all of the links in--- BLOGS THAT I FOLLOW---GADGET LINK---I emailed
    the following question to the help forum----

    None of the following links work on the ---Blog List I follow -Gadget--Title of most recent item---Snippet of most recent item---Thumbnail of most recent item--Date of last update
    I was in the blog layout section yesterday upgrading the blogs I follow and deleting the ones that no longer post. For some reason none of the blogs that no longer post would not delete. So I clicked on the link REMOVE thinking that would remove the blogs that haven't been posting and to my surprise all my blogs I follow deleted----so I had to go back and insert the ones I blog with regularly and when I did that----- it created the problem with none of the links I mentioned above not working. So now the only way I know if someone has posted a new post is to click on the there blog link and see if they have created a new post. This takes too much time, so if someone out there can tell me how to fix this problem with the links I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks for your help

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    Replies
    1. Hi Bill, sorry for your problems! The best thing to do is what you have done, that is, to take these issues to the Blogger help community.

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  9. I'm starting to look into wordpress. It is just becoming too frustrating to use Blogger. Started mine in 2008, but their constant mucking around has turned me off of it since this last July. Why are they so slow at fixing the problems they are creating, and why are they doing it in the 1st place?

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    Replies
    1. I felt the same way last year and now post new stuff on WordPress. Porting 79 long posts from Blogspot is not something I'm looking forward to, however.

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  10. Man, this sucks. The "quick edit" in the sidebar gadgets disappeared a long time ago on my main blog, but the little "quick edit pencil" remained on posts until just the other day when I decided to get fancy and upgrade my template. Now it's gone. It was a good tool. I found your post while looking around for a way to re-implement it. Thanks for giving me the news, even though it's bad news.

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    Replies
    1. Thomas, could not agree more about how unfair this is. You are one of a small (ish) number of users affected by a second bug. Most of us who had the pencil still do.

      Soraya Lambrechts has published an explanation and workaround. The explanation is in French and the workaround is pretty techy. But maybe it can help you.

      In fact, if you try it, could you let me know how it goes?

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    2. Ugh, I just had the same problem as Mr. Knapp when I did something similar. I really need a workaround.

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    3. I lost my pencil when I was looking for a gadget and naively went into the layout for how my posts are set. When I came back out, the pencil option was completely gone.

      I use a really old design that I've been using forever. I wonder if that's what caused this?

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    4. @PM&A: Do read my reply to Thomas Knapp—the same report to which you are replying.

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    5. The "workaround," provisionally, is provided in my answer to Thomas Knapp. Do give it a whirl.

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    6. Sorry I missed your original reply pointing to "the workaround." Thanks! I tried it, but got an error when I tried to save the template edit. I may take a harder look at it, and the error (it had to do with a span attribute), and see if I can make it work. If so, I'll describe the workaround here, or in a linked post.

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