Thursday, May 18, 2006

Admin: New template & layout - Blogger problems?

Blogger playing up?

Since yesterday, I've had no edit icons on my compose window, no preview, and the keyboard shortcuts aren't working. I use the plain text editor, not the WYSIWYG composer. Anyone else having similar? No image upload option either. I thought at first it was a problem with my other id, but it isn't. Also, I'm seeing a new favicon, the 'B' has been replaced by some pink effect blobs. Anyone else?

New site layout

OK, I've been aware for some time that the three column coding I tried didn't work properly in Internet Explorer at lower screen resolutions. I hope I've now fixed it (as requested and promised). Gaaaahhh! I hate hate hate Microsoft. Not only is it just as bad, but the fonts are all wrong as well. When is IE 7 coming out? Plan 'b'. Tomorrow night.

I'd been planning to use this template for awhile, but I hadn't finished it, it's a mix of three different templates and a lot of my own tweaking. Given I don't really know what I'm doing, trial and error is fun. So, firstly, Internet Explorer users, is it better?

Second, colour scheme; yellow headers better that that green that was there before? Sidebar boxes look better? There's a few things I need to finish off; the text padding seems to vary and I've tried to find them all. Also, following Duncan's lead, the vont should now be completely Verdana. I've probably missed something.

Admin point

I've added a new 'user', called TaKtiX. That's actually me, it's the admin account for my new site, and I keep forgetting what I'm logged in as, so posts from me using that are still me. The things we do.

7 comments:

doctorvee said...

I quite like what I can see of the new look, but now there's a line going through everything!

Anonymous said...

I use an off-line editor. Blogjet also uploads the images using FTP. It means I can work off-line over a period of time and flit about from one page to another while I check my sources. I don't think I've ever used a native blog editor.

WBloggar isn't bad either - that one is free.

Paul E. said...

Sorry Mat. I reckon it's too busy by half.

I'd keep it a lot simpler if I were you.


Oh, and btw, Ming. Tired? WDYT?
http://nevertrustahippy.blogspot.com/2006/05/spread-word.html

;-)

Anonymous said...

It's a bit of a mess in Firefox. Are the left and right sidebars meant to be aligned with the grey wrapper (95% width)? If so, you need to set their left and right margins (respectively) to 2.5%. As for the Verdana issu, I think the imported stylesheets that appear after your embedded stylesheet are overiding it. Certainly if usingthe Web Developer plugin in Firefox I add body {font-family:Verdana'} after them it has the desired effect.

Wouldn't it be simpler just to host it on your own domain?

MatGB said...

Duncan: You made the comment as I was editing, I'd not closed the tag on the strikethrough that I'd found after previewing it, you must've got there within a short 10 minute window.

Longrider: I've always used the web interface without a problem, I tried Performancing briefly, hated it, and went back to web; I use the xblogthis applet for Blogger that auto-inserts tags and gives me a spare compose window as a pop-up, until yesterday it was working fine.

Paulie: It's always been too busy I think, I need to calm it down, I agree, will be doing so at the new place regardless, as my own domain will allow me to take half the stuff off the frontpage, Paul and I will have separate pages for our substantive posts, etc.

Pete: In Firefox at home, it looks fine. But when I looked at it in the office earlier, it looked awful, very weird. I may have some cache issues on my home PC, I think I may do a clearout later.

The sidebars are supposed to float further out, thr porblem is I've changed the headerbox to the same sludge background, that was a mistake; it's much better on the standard layout I'm currently using here.

And yes, it would be, but I'm likely to continue using Blogger, as the way I've got it in mind Blogger works well, although Wordpress is still an option tha tI haven't ruled out. Basically, the location exists (Voting TaKtiX), but it's only placeholders, Google has had plenty of time to recognise the domain so no sandbox, just need to boost the pagerank quickly, which I can do easily.

I'll be making a decision over Blogger vs Wordpress over the next 5 days, no work for me, my last real break before the end of July.

Thanks for the tips re the stylesheet, as I said, it looked fine in Fx last night, it was IE that it looked messed up, but today at work, Fx had the same issue.

Ah well, plenty of time.

Falloff Boy said...

You have my sympathy.
I've been on the receiving end of plenty of IE stress the last couple of times I've tried a redesign.
Nowadays, as long as it works in Firefox, that's good enough for me.
Life is too short to meddle with IE.

MatGB said...

Unfortunately, I can't, the design I was running meant that IE uses on small resolution couldn't read it; that includes a few friends in office jobs where they've no choice.

OK, they shouldn't be surfing at work, but find me an office worker that doesn't...

Still, fixed now, I hope.