Latest Blog Posts
09 November 2006 Migrating to Blogger Beta
Back in August I posted about Blogger Beta being released. Yesterday, they finally announced that users with FTP-publishing blogs could migrate to the new system (using a Google Account) and benefit from some of the improved features.
I’ve just migrated my blog to use Blogger Beta and have discovered a few bugs / issues with it:
Previous Posts
When using the
They are no longer encoding the ampersands in the links created by the
will now appear as:
Which means any XHTML validation will obviously fail. And they’re still converting line breaks in comments as
Clicking the link to post a comment on a Blogger Beta blog now takes you to a page served over HTTPS instead of HTTP. This page contains both secure and nonsecure items, which means that Internet Explorer users get an annoying popup. (Who cares about those losers though, right?)
I’ve just migrated my blog to use Blogger Beta and have discovered a few bugs / issues with it:
Previous Posts
When using the
<BloggerPreviousItems> tag in your Blogger template to display previous posts on your individual item pages, this used to display a list of all the posts you made prior to the post that was on the current page. This meant that you could easily use this list of links to go back through your blog archive. This is no longer the case. Instead, it simply shows your 10 most recent posts. If you never re-publish your blog, this wouldn’t be such an issue, but they really shouldn’t have changed this functionality.Encoding HTML entitiesUpdate: 10 November 2006 (13:08)
The Blogger Team sez: We're aware of the Previous Posts issue. I don't have an ETA for when this will be fixed, though.
They are no longer encoding the ampersands in the links created by the
<$BlogItemCreate$> template tag. For example, this:http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=12345678&postID=1234567890will now appear as:
https://beta.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=12345678&postID=1234567890Which means any XHTML validation will obviously fail. And they’re still converting line breaks in comments as
<BR/> instead of <br /> despite the settings page saying that “single hard-returns entered in the Post Editor will be replaced with single <br /> tags in your blog. [...] This also applies to the comment-posting form.”Posting commentsUpdate: 10 November 2006 (13:08)
The Blogger Team sez: We did not know about the URL encoding; I'll add that to our internal bugs tracking system. (We generally don't report tiny stuff on the Known Issues blog.
Clicking the link to post a comment on a Blogger Beta blog now takes you to a page served over HTTPS instead of HTTP. This page contains both secure and nonsecure items, which means that Internet Explorer users get an annoying popup. (Who cares about those losers though, right?)
There are probably loads of other issues that I haven’t even noticed yet but hopefully all the extra features and improvements will overshadow those though. I just hope that the Blogger team don’t let the development of any new features overshadow the need to fix any bugs...Update: 10 November 2006 (13:08)
The Blogger Team sez: I'm not familiar with the IE problem on posting comments. (I mean, I didn't get a popup the last time I tried this.) Can you send the URL of an example page that gave you this alert? [Which I’ve done...]
Update: 10 November 2006 (13:08)
As you may have seen in my comments, Blogger Beta also seems to generate the blog feed differently. Instead of including the most recently created posts in the feed, it now includes the most recently updated posts. If you’re one of the people who subscribes to my feed and received a load of old posts in your feed reader yesterday, please accept my apologies; I was just taking advantage of one of the new Blogger Beta features and adding labels to all my old posts. (I’ve asked the Blogger Team whether that’s behaviour by design or a bug.)
Labels: blogger, google, ruscoe.net
14 August 2006 Blogger Beta is finally here!
Last Tuesday, I said:
As well as migrating Blogger to use Google Accounts, they’ve also (finally) added loads more features:
(I wasn’t able to migrate my Blogger account to my Google Account, so I just created a new Blogger Beta account using my usual Google login.)
So, there we have it. After all this time, Google have finally made some changes to the Blogger service that everyone thought they’d forgetten about! Will it be enough? Of course not! Users always want more...
(One final thought – I wonder why they’ve named it “Blogger Beta” rather than “Blogger 2.0 Beta” instead. “Blogger Beta” indicates that it’s a predecessor to Blogger, which it obviously isn’t...)
[Thanks to Pierre S in the Google Blogoscoped Forum.]
On Friday, I suggested that Blogger was going to be migrating to Google Accounts. And today they’ve launched Blogger Beta!Just when I was starting to actually believe that Google had abandoned all development on Blogger, I noticed something that could possibly mean that they haven’t forgotten about their free blogging service after all...
As well as migrating Blogger to use Google Accounts, they’ve also (finally) added loads more features:
- Customize your template by dragging and dropping page elements; there are also new templates from which to choose).
- Create a private blog by editing your permissions to control who can view and contribute to your blog.
- Add category labels to your posts – at long last!
- More feed options are now available, including RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 (instead of just Atom 0.3) – and also feeds for your blog comments, even on a per-post basis!
- Updated Dashboard to check our blog’s activity and make managing your blog easier.
- Instant publishing whenever you make a change.
(I wasn’t able to migrate my Blogger account to my Google Account, so I just created a new Blogger Beta account using my usual Google login.)
So, there we have it. After all this time, Google have finally made some changes to the Blogger service that everyone thought they’d forgetten about! Will it be enough? Of course not! Users always want more...
(One final thought – I wonder why they’ve named it “Blogger Beta” rather than “Blogger 2.0 Beta” instead. “Blogger Beta” indicates that it’s a predecessor to Blogger, which it obviously isn’t...)
[Thanks to Pierre S in the Google Blogoscoped Forum.]
Update: 14 August 2006 (21:35)
View this post on my Blogger Beta blog here, which nicely shows off some of the new features including a nice new format for the archive menu, which is fully customizable, although still very buggy!
Also, on closer inspection it appears that you can’t:
- publish to a non-Blog*Spot domain (at least for the time being)
- edit the templates by hand – “Raw template editing functionality coming soon.”
11 August 2006 Blogger definitely migrating to Google Accounts
I recently questioned whether Blogger was finally going to use Google Account logins. Well, here are some screenshots of pages I just discovered that suggest this is highly likely to happen sooner rather than later...
This is what we see before we sign in now
This is what we will start to see soon
This is what we will see if we’re already signed in to our Google Account
In the last screenshot, the ‘Switch now’ link takes you to this page – blogger.com/migrate-login.g – which currently returns a 404 error but will presumably migrate or link your Google Account to your existing Blogger details.
So the only question now is, “When will this happen?”
This is what we see before we sign in now
This is what we will start to see soon
This is what we will see if we’re already signed in to our Google Account
In the last screenshot, the ‘Switch now’ link takes you to this page – blogger.com/migrate-login.g – which currently returns a 404 error but will presumably migrate or link your Google Account to your existing Blogger details.
So the only question now is, “When will this happen?”
Update: 14 August 2006 (21:27)
When will this happen? Sooner than we thought perhaps...
Blogger Beta is finally here!
08 August 2006 Blogger.com to finally use Google Accounts?
Just when I was starting to actually believe that Google had abandoned all development on Blogger, I noticed something that could possibly mean that they haven’t forgotten about their free blogging service after all...
As regular readers will know, I’ve been doing quite a bit of research into Google Account service names recently. As well as periodically checking for new service names, I’m also checking for any changes in behaviour of existing services.
Today I realised that the ‘NewAccount’ and ‘CreateAccount’ pages – which always seem to be identical – no longer generate the usual “The page you requested is invalid.” error when appending the word
(If you’re not already signed in, you’ll get the usual “Create an Account” page but customized for the Blogger service.)
This behaviour usually only occurs for services that you can sign up for using your Google Account. So, either someone’s introduced a bug that allows this to appear or Google are working on migrating Blogger logins to use Google Accounts.
Unfortunately, that’s where the fun ends for now because clicking the ‘Continue’ button appears to just reload the page whilst submitting the data to the CreateServiceAccount page. Oh well. Maybe all that will change in the next few days... or weeks... or even months!
Anyway, let’s hope this small change means Google are actually going to start developing new features for Blogger again!
As regular readers will know, I’ve been doing quite a bit of research into Google Account service names recently. As well as periodically checking for new service names, I’m also checking for any changes in behaviour of existing services.
Today I realised that the ‘NewAccount’ and ‘CreateAccount’ pages – which always seem to be identical – no longer generate the usual “The page you requested is invalid.” error when appending the word
blogger to the service parameter. Instead, you get this message (when already signed in to your Google Account):
(If you’re not already signed in, you’ll get the usual “Create an Account” page but customized for the Blogger service.)
This behaviour usually only occurs for services that you can sign up for using your Google Account. So, either someone’s introduced a bug that allows this to appear or Google are working on migrating Blogger logins to use Google Accounts.
Unfortunately, that’s where the fun ends for now because clicking the ‘Continue’ button appears to just reload the page whilst submitting the data to the CreateServiceAccount page. Oh well. Maybe all that will change in the next few days... or weeks... or even months!
Anyway, let’s hope this small change means Google are actually going to start developing new features for Blogger again!
Update: 12 August 2006 (09:16)
It seems that the ‘NewAccount’ and ‘CreateAccount’ pages both return the standard “The page you requested is invalid.” error again.
(BTW, I’ve since realised the difference between the ‘NewAccount’ and ‘CreateAccount’ pages; the ‘CreateAccount’ page will always show the full registration form, whereas the ‘NewAccount’ page will show a “Welcome back ... Get started with ...” page if you’re already signed in to your Google Account. When you’re not already signed in, they always seem to be identical.)
[Thanks to Sankar Anand in the Google Blogoscoped Forum.]
Update: 14 August 2006 (21:27)
Blogger.com to finally use Google Accounts? Yep...
Blogger Beta is finally here!
14 September 2005 Google Blog Search
Aha! So the reason why Google's been downloading my Atom feed every five minutes or so is because they seem to have been indexing blogs like crazy:It looks both are even indexing blogs regardless of whether they're powered by Blogger or not. You can even get the search results as feeds too, which is great for keeping up-to-date on the latest blogs for a particular subject. You can read more about it here.
And, linked to my previous post about Google Toolbar Custom Searches, here's the necessary registry file to install a Google Blog Search custom search button in your Google Toolbar:
And, linked to my previous post about Google Toolbar Custom Searches, here's the necessary registry file to install a Google Blog Search custom search button in your Google Toolbar:
23 May 2005 Ruscoe.net Version 5.0
My personal website has seen a number of changes since 1998. Back then it had no content, was "best viewed with Netscape 3.0" and was hosted on an obscure URL given to me by my university department. It's been hosted on the ruscoe.net domain for the past three years, and yesterday saw the launch of the fifth incarnation.
Why bother?
It's been over a year since I last made any major changes to my site and I got bored of looking at the same site design everyday. I also wanted to get away from the old-fashioned method of using tables for layout and instead move towards XHTML and better use of CSS.
New Blog
I've had an online blog since 2002. (The previous entries from 2000 and 2001 were pulled from my web browser's bookmarks so I could have an archive when I first put it online!)
I wrote my own first weblog system in ASP with an Access database backend, but I rewrote the whole thing using the FileSystemObject after Access caused me a few problems with server performance. This really didn't give me much flexibility and since producing an Atom/RSS feed was going to require quite a bit of extra development, I've finally made the switch to Blogger.
There's still some fiddling and tweaking to be done, but please let me know if you have any comments.
Why bother?
It's been over a year since I last made any major changes to my site and I got bored of looking at the same site design everyday. I also wanted to get away from the old-fashioned method of using tables for layout and instead move towards XHTML and better use of CSS.
New Blog
I've had an online blog since 2002. (The previous entries from 2000 and 2001 were pulled from my web browser's bookmarks so I could have an archive when I first put it online!)
I wrote my own first weblog system in ASP with an Access database backend, but I rewrote the whole thing using the FileSystemObject after Access caused me a few problems with server performance. This really didn't give me much flexibility and since producing an Atom/RSS feed was going to require quite a bit of extra development, I've finally made the switch to Blogger.
There's still some fiddling and tweaking to be done, but please let me know if you have any comments.
Labels: blogger, personal, ruscoe.net