My Blogger Test Blog

Microsoft has a reason to be jittery

2006-10-30T12:11:00.000+08:00

AS I POINTED in my 100th post in the other blog, I have been a Windows user since computing hooked me as a college student and a greenhorn government worker.

But last Saturday, I finally got to handle a PC running on KDE, a UNIX/Linux variant, in the internet cafe of my niece in Pili. At first I was disoriented with the logic of the whole setup--the way I was disoriented with the 'new' Filipino that Irvin blogs about courageously, I think. But in the end, I managed to complete the task I set out to do, which involved

1. Locating the flash drive which the PC recognized seamlessly;
2. Finding and opening the text and image files associated with that post; and
3. Uploading them into Blogger Beta using the really intuitive and intelligent Mozilla Firefox.

I haven't even touched Ubuntu, to which Chin Wong, Master Jessie and Dune Padre swears by; but to which Joel, my niece's hubby, will definitely not agree.

But it was a vastly different Linux I saw and ran for a brief moment last Saturday, lightyears ahead of its incarnation in early 2000 that was no longer text-based (as in MS-DOS), but certainly not very user-friendly. Its graphical user interface (GUI) is almost Apple-like but has a distinctive feel and look that Microsoft users cannot sneeze at. And as Joel said, not prone to viruses, worms, malwares and other security hazards that have become synonymous with Windows.

And most important of all, open-source and BSA-immune: the bottomline for the individual computing enthusiast who does not have the financial muscle that corporates have.

Now I really believe Microsoft has a reason to be truly jittery.

This is going to take a lot of time

2006-10-19T08:10:00.000+08:00

VALIDATION, I mean.

The other day, I asked Master Jessie, EDP's resident webmaster who runs a very restrained blog that forms part of the Planet Naga aggregation as to why validation is necessary.

He said a validated site means it conforms to programming standards. It is also most probably the reason why my other blog--and by extension this one--does not render well in Internet Explorer, which I complained about in a previous post.

Which means this test blog will be here for a longer haul, owing to a raison d'etre whose breadth and depth has just grown many times over.

The reason behind validation

2006-10-17T06:53:00.000+08:00

BY THE WAY, here is the reason advanced by the W3 Consortium on why validation is necessary:

One of the important maxims of computer programming is: Be conservative in what you produce; be liberal in what you accept.

Browsers follow the second half of this maxim by accepting Web pages and trying to display them even if they're not legal HTML. Usually this means that the browser will try to make educated guesses about what you probably meant. The problem is that different browsers (or even different versions of the same browser) will make different guesses about the same illegal construct; worse, if your HTML is really pathological, the browser could get hopelessly confused and produce a mangled mess, or even crash.

That's why you want to follow the first half of the maxim by making sure your pages are legal HTML. The best way to do that is by running your documents through one or more HTML validators.

A lengthier explanation is available here.

Now, is it worth all the pain and the effort? You tell me.

First stab at HTML validation

2006-10-17T06:45:00.000+08:00

ONE OF the final suggestions of the CSS resources I consulted in coming up with this 3-column layout concerns the need to validate one's HTML pages.

So, I checked the W3 Consortium and led me to this free validator service.

Unfortunately, when I plugged the URL of my other blog, here is the result I got:

Result: Failed validation, 857 errors

The error items actually totaled 1,023 so I surmised there were duplications along the way. Which only goes to show this journey will take more twists and turns.

Two new enhancements

2006-10-16T09:07:00.000+08:00

SINCE yesterday up to this morning, I managed to implement two new enhancements to this and the other blog.

1. Tipped off by this post from Blogger Buzz, I restored the Google AdSense element. But this time, I placed it at the bottom of my right sidebar, under the subheading "Sponsors," instead of the top of my posts. That Blogger Buzz article is quite straightforward, using a new page element labeled "AdSense"; the only tweak I made concerned the "Sponsors" subhead, which is actually a separate "Text" page element.

Changing the subhead to "Sponsors" alone will not do the trick; Blogger Beta will reject it. One must therefore put in at least one character and color it white for that element to be accepted. I opted for a period (.).

2. The second is the Firefox promotional button, which can be accessed here. But I did not like the default buttons available from the page, so I saved it to my desktop, tinkered with the text using Microsoft Paint, resized it using Microsoft Office Picture Manager, and uploaded it to my Geocities account. Then, I made the necessary changes in the accompanying script, i.e. changing the image file location to the Geocities page where it was uploaded, and the subhead ("Optimized for").

Two observations: (1) My blogs are not rendered well in Internet Explorer, prompting me to place the Firefox buttom at the top of my left sidebar. (2) I had a hard time looking for the Firefox promotion button site using Google; but when I used Yahoo! Search it was right there on top of the list.

Is Yahoo beating Google in the search game?

Happy monthly anniversary(?!?)

2006-10-02T15:39:00.000+08:00

THE PREVIOUS post made me remember so I opened the "Posting" tab and confirmed that 25 posts later, this test blog has turned one month old! How's that for an HTML tyro like me?

By the way, a "monthly anniversary" is actually a misnomer, as correctly pointed out by Zero Now here. But what the heck! It's the nearest thing there is to this milestone.:)

And try googling "monthly anniversary" and you'll see that I'm not the only one, hahaha!

Some people read this (mis)adventure after all

2006-10-02T15:26:00.000+08:00

I THOUGHT no one would bother but a month after starting this test blog, three already bravely came forward and joined the fun.:)

First is chymera (from Guimaras?), who pointed me to a weblog of his own. Another is SyLuscious, who's asking me for to help solve a blockquote-related problem. Then there's 郁沉, a 23-year old blogger from China, who volunteered a solution to my previously unmoving Labels widget.

My posts are coming in fewer and farther in between, mainly because of the other blog, but it's been an enjoyable one-month ride.

Adding Sitemeter

2006-09-26T07:09:00.000+08:00

I WAS ABLE to pull it off in my other weblog first, so it is kind of an afterthought here.

Nonetheless, having a free webcounter like Sitemeter that tracks visitors and generates other useful statistics is an essential adjunct to the blogging experience.

Installing it in Blogger Beta is different now, thanks to the Page Elements function that treats it as a widget. The steps can be found here, which presumes one has already secured an account with Sitemeter.

Taking the pains in adding that widget somewhere in the blog is critical; as I belatedly discovered, Sitemeter only starts counting when it is already embedded as a script, not when an account is opened. In the case of my other blog, opportunity cost came at the price of three weeks of zero -- as in zilch, as in a big fat egg -- traffic when there were visitors who either dropped by and left instantly, managed to lurk around, or commented to their hearts' content.

But it's better late than never.:)

Fixing width issues in Internet Explorer

2006-09-19T09:27:00.000+08:00

I'VE uninstalled Internet Explorer for a number of months now, so I use the local Windows Explorer to see how the Microsoft browser handles my other blog.

Early today, I did the same with this test blog: a critical afterthought considering that IE does not intuitively understand the logic of my 3-column template design, unlike Mozilla Firefox. (Another proof of the latter's hands-down superiority.) As a result, my blog posts spill over into the right sidebar.

After checking how my two sidebars were structured, I identified the absence of a width declaration in the blogpost wrapper. Defining the best width through trial and error, and saving it in my code, zapped the problem away. The test blog still looks jagged and worn out in IE, but it definitely looks better. Yet it cannot compare with how Firefox renders the whole thing.

Testing image

2006-09-18T12:32:00.000+08:00

WILL posting an image work in my new template? I am as eager to find out.

So, here goes nothing...

Tada! A 3-column Jellyfish template

2006-09-17T22:45:00.000+08:00

THANKS to Patty, our youngest brother who has an ebook copy of Rachel Andrew's The CSS Anthology--101 Essential Tips, Tricks and Hacks, I was able to implement a three-column blog design in Blogger Beta, which is -- to my limited knowledge -- widely available from Wordpress.

The key lay in using the div tag: the logic and methodology is available from Chapter 8 of that invaluable reference, written in easy-to-understand language.

I still have some tinkering to do, mainly manipulating the font sizes. But then again, it was another milestone in my effort to maximize Blogger Beta's capabilities, even if I turned upside down its Page Elements feature -- which is supposed to make blogging customization more painless.

I just love w3.org:)

2006-09-16T18:59:00.000+08:00

IN MY quest to replicate my other blog using Blogger Beta, I am making new wonderful discoveries -- similar (in my own way, of course) to how Magellan or Columbus must have felt when they launched into their respective voyages seeking new worlds.

This site is definitely tops: the authoritative source for everything one needs to know about styling using CSS (that's cascading style sheets for you).

In fact, it just enabled me to tinker (using the good ol' trial-and-error approach) with the text decoration for my links -- from none to a thin dotted light blue line distinct from the dotted gray separator for my footer.

Neat, isn't it?

Solving the white space conundrum, finally!

2006-09-15T11:17:00.000+08:00

THIS MORNING, I finally disposed of the white space between the post title and the body text, something that has stumped me since I began tinkering with the HTML code of this test blog.

The key lay in defining p (as in paragraph), which this wonderful site pointed to me.

Now, it's one major headache gone away, and the color combination of the links and the headers are now quite OK, more reflective of my other blog. Plus, I have added a nice dotted borderline between the body text and the footer, courtesy of this site.

I'm now facing the major decision point: are these enough to migrate that blog and enjoy Blogger Beta's enhanced capabilities?

I'll have the entire Penafrancia fiesta break to mull this over. But boy, am I overjoyed!

Workarounds: 3 - Enhancing blockquote

2006-09-08T20:15:00.000+08:00

FOUR posts below, you will see that my blockquote now has a better look, thanks to a light yellow background I was able to tack in.

This was made possible by using a combination of the Pick New Template, Edit HTML and Fonts and Colors functions under the Template tab. What I did was to apply a new template (where blockquote attributes are more properly defined) to another blog using Pick New Template. In particular, Todd Dominey's Scribe template has this requirement. Then, I opened the HTML code using Edit HTML, located the following and copy-pasted it in the HTML code of this blog:

blockquote {
font-style:italic;
padding:0 32px;
line-height:1.6;
margin:0 0 .6em 0;
}

The Fonts and Colors function comes in handy in identifying the corresponding hexadecimal code for the background color I preferred. But to be able to apply this, I first had to create (again by copy-pasting and editing one of the original variable name entries) a variable name for my blockquote color: I called this blockquoteColor.

The final step was to insert the following line in the blockquote code I copied from the other test blog:

background: $blockquoteColor;

Confused? Most probably. But you'll only get to understand the logic if you also try...sometimes err...and get rescued by the "Preview" and "Clear Edit" commands under the Template > Edit HTML function.

Workarounds: 2 - Finetuning "About Me"

2006-09-08T17:29:00.000+08:00

IF YOU will care to notice, there are now two "About Me"s in my sidebar. It is there to demonstrate another successful workaround I managed to implement, this time resolving my inability to remove the picture that automatically comes from my Blogger profile.

The trick is to use the Text widget among the page items that can be added using the Template > Page Element function.

It required some trial-and-error HTML work on my part to exactly produce the outcome I had in mind after adding the Text widget. Specifically, it required tinkering with the Span tag to manage font type and size and the Ul tag to separate the "View my complete profile" link from the main bodytext.

Unable to find a way to eliminate the space between the post title and the body, I think I will have to make do with what I accomplished thus far. Which means I am ready to migrate my other blog to Blogger Beta.:)

Workarounds: 1 - Restoring "Recently"

2006-09-08T17:16:00.000+08:00

WITH THE Peñafrancia fiesta now underway, I was able to devote more time to this test blog.

A big headache I finally resolved was restoring the "Recently" list in my other blog to Blogger Beta. Thanks to eChuckler's solution that I found in the Blogger Help Group, I succeeded in adding a Feed widget that produces the same outcome, albeit on a limited manner.

The trick lies in copy-pasting the "Posts (Atom)" URL found in the bottom of the blog into the required URL box as one configures the Feed widget. Unfortunately, the maximum number is currently limited to 5.

I already used the Blogger Support Page to communicate my wish to raise the maximum limit to 10. Just a second ago, a canned reply entered my Gmail inbox; I hope something more concrete will follow.

The power of previewing HTML edits

2006-09-04T20:44:00.000+08:00

IT WAS just past 4pm and I was already done explaining our Reinventing the Naga City School Board initiative to a group of visiting international academics and NGO workers. So I took the time to look under the hood of my test blog and do additional formatting tasks using HTML edit.

For one, I was not happy with the space between the post title and the body text. Unlike my other blog, where text flows directly right after the title, there is that white half-space separating the two in this test blog.

For another, the post title and body text are practically indented almost beside the left margin, which makes for a wider workspace that is too irritating to the eye. Unlike Microsoft Word, there are no similar point-and-click formatting tools available in Blogger Beta.

Fortunately, there is the highly useful "Preview" button when one invokes the Template > Edit HTML function -- a carry-over from the previous incarnation. In fact, it saved my day many a times when my trial-and-error attempts went awry. And while I was not able to fix the half-space separator, the white space to the left and right has made this test blog definitely more eye-pleasing.

A bug, and a workaround

2006-09-04T09:34:00.000+08:00

SANAMAGAN, I just found out another limitation of the Blogger Beta, as I was trying to post a comment at Dom Cimafranca's blog. I can't. The message below (which I truncated) explains why:

Account Moved to a Google Account

The account you've just logged in with has been merged with Google Account.

You will need to log in to the new version of Blogger in beta with your Google Account.

Unfortunately, you cannot post a comment on a non-beta blog or claim a mobile blog using your Google Account. These features are coming soon.

UPDATE (9:44am): A workaround that would allow Blogger Beta users to post in the current Blogger-powered blogs would be to use "Other" as one's identity, and fill in the necessary information.:)

Editing HTML for the first time

2006-09-04T07:24:00.000+08:00

LAST NIGHT, I already did some tinkering with the HTML code of this test blog, with positive results. Until my Blast card ran out: goodbye dialup internet...

But the sequence was quite fresh in my mind, so I implemented them after going through my usual internet "morning rites": checking my emails (Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail), reading the news (Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Inquirer.Net, ABS-CBNNews, Google News: largely all at the same time), and finally checking the blogs in my roll.

Again, this HTML tyro was able to figure out how to retain the robust Arial Black title of his posts: essentially cutting and pasting the variable "blog title font" entry (which is built around that specific font) and renaming it "post title font". Neat, huh?

I also reconfigured my date header style to Verdana Bold, and used the Template > Fonts and Colors function to change its color to the shade of blue that matches my blog title.

It is the "Archives" widget that is proving to be too difficult: there's just too many greek-sounding and -looking line commands that my hotshot younger brother who's now working in some Paranaque-based international forwarder should easily understand.

In the face of this conundrum, I really postponing the migration of that other blog after restoring the "Recently" section in my other sidebar -- that I already thought to be largely irrelevant.

...looking forward

2006-09-03T06:14:00.000+08:00

BUT, and this is a significant but, I

am still unable to exactly duplicate the font scheme in the other blog here. I need to retain having the muscular Arial Black as the title font for my posts;
even if by default, the Archives widget (which makes the "Recently" section in my other sidebar largely irrelevant) is right-justified when minimized, the post titles are left-justified when maximized. Which does not fit the design and style for my sidebar; in fact, it looks like the proverbial sore thumb sticking out; and
need to fix the "About Me" introductory text leading to the expanded profile. They cannot be the same as these two blogs are radically different.

Which means I need to tinker with HTML, using the good, old trial-and-error approach, and in the process learn new tricks for this old dog!

So in sum, all premised considered, I am not migrating the other blog yet.:)

Looking back...

2006-09-03T05:52:00.000+08:00

SO, AFTER a night-long sleep punctuated by waking up at midnight to attend to a crying daughter, where do I go from here? Before answering that, let me review what I accomplished:

For the whole of yesterday, I:

set up this test blog, and chose a working template (Sand Dollar)
manipulated the blog's fonts to approximate my personal blog
incorporated changes in the sidebar, starting with the "About Me" and the Blogger logo widgets
updated my links by typing all that I had in the other blog here, but was dismayed by an apparent inability to categorize them
made post categorization operational (the main reason why I tried migrating to Wordpress) using the "Labels" widget
successfully embedded the Technorati javascript in the sidebar, which meant I claimed this as my second blog
discovered a workaround to the apparent inability to categorize links by adding mutiple elements of the same widget, and
shifted the working template (Sand Dollar) to my preferred template (Jellyfish).

All these, ladies and gentlemen, without using the restored edit HTML functionality and tinkering with the HTML codes of this test blog. How about that for an enhanced blogging experience!

Manipulating templates

2006-09-02T20:20:00.000+08:00

A REALLY powerful feature of the new Blogger Beta is its flexibility to change templates, and there are a handful, with ease -- without ever tinkering with the HTML code.

As can be seen here, I have shifted this test blog from the Sand Dollar to the Jellyfish template, which are both by Jason Sutter. The latter is the template of choice for my personal blog.

Questions, questions: Are the positive outcomes of these tests enough to justify the full migration of that blog to the new Blogger Beta? Or should I wait a little longer and try to discover more that this beta version has to offer?

These, I will sleep over tonight.:)

Enhancing "Links" through multiple widgets

2006-09-02T19:54:00.000+08:00

THE VERY first impediment to the full migration of my personal blog when I first discovered Blogger Beta was (apparently) the lack of sub-categorization of my links.

Truth of the matter is, I like how I was able to organize my links under the original Blogger, using a trial-and-error method in the HTML code underpinning it. It had four sub-categories: Institutions, Blogs, Media and Resources.

Now, Blogger Beta allows you to do that in a limited way: through multiple addition of page elements using the Template > Page Elements function. Limited because unlike the previous incarnation, these page elements are independent of each other; there is no organizing supertitle like "Links" which I used.

Thus, you will see my sidebar already featuring four standalone Links List widgets corresponding to what I had. Though I like my original configuration better, this is, for the moment, good enough.

Embedding Technorati

2006-09-02T14:41:00.000+08:00

ANOTHER useful widget in Blogger Beta that can easily be added to the sidebar is an HTML/Javascript functionality through the Template > Page Element function.

I successfully tried this, so a Technorati link can already be found in my sidebar.

Again, I was initially stumped by the "An error occurred. Please try again." message that attended my attempt to rearrange my sidebar widgets.

I found out that by closing all apps first encountering the error message, and then reopening them (shades of the classic Windows workaround: reboot when everything else fails, or hangs up) can do the trick.

Is Blogger playing with me, or what?

2006-09-02T12:27:00.000+08:00

REGARDING the previous post, I think the Blogger gods were listening as I fired away. The error message is gone, I was able to save the edited template, and my sidebar is now arranged the way I want it.