The perils of third-party tools

harsh penalties for those who stray from the map

GARBIS MINASIAN / CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED

A change at Google Drive has bolluxed images inserted into Blogger using tools like Live Writer.

The images no longer display on Blogger. Indeed, the change affected pretty much any use of Drive to host media for any websites. Check your embeds.

A (somewhat) similar problem afflicted the users of an app called BlogTouch last year.

These and other alternatives to the standard blog-post editor worked without issues for years. Some who used these apps accumulated a massive technical problem, with hundreds of missing images.

Google never warned us away from these tools.

If you've relied on them, you may have years of blog posts that are broken now.

People chose to use these apps because they are better than the native blogging experience, at least on mobile devices.

This despite the fact that Blogger, unlike Drive, natively provides free unlimited image storage.

Third-party tools

Third-party tools have always been a grey area. I once relied on a web-based service called Yahoo Pipes to show blog posts in oldest-first order, until Yahoo pulled the plug on it.

(There is a better way to change post order today, using a script that is not likely to break.)

Recently a service called feed2js stopped working. It had provided an easy way to create automated lists of posts by label (very useful). 

I've found a substitute, but everything had to be redone.

These tools allow us to make things that Blogger ought to provide natively. When the tools go away, things break. 

When Google breaks things

The recent failures around image placement from third-party apps are of different order. The apps did not stop working: rather, Google made changes that broke what the apps did.

Google generally supports its own features, but not off-label uses. It celebrates the openness of its platforms, but shrugs when changes at Google break the third-party innovations that use that openness.

Desire lines

The obvious lesson is to proceed cautiously, if at all, with third-party tools, and triply so with tools that embed their work into blog posts.

But let's not let Google off the hook.

People used the flawed apps because they are dissatisfied with the native editor. The editor should be better.

People (like me) use third-party tools to extend the functionality of their blogs. Blogger should provide that functionality natively.

In transit planning, the term "desire line" refers to the path that, for instance, pedestrians naturally prefer, sometimes cutting ruts across a grassy area to the dismay of architects and planners.

But a recent trend in planning is to put the sidewalk where the desire lines are. They guide planning.

These third-party uses are desire lines for Blogger.

Update: Here are some options for images hosted on drive.