Requests to fellow bloggers

Wow, I'm on a roll this week. Yesterday was an ultra-stimulating post about yogurt, and today is about technology. Tomorrow I'll post about physics and guarantee you'll be in a boredom-related coma all weekend.

With that intro, I bring you today's post.

Dear fellow bloggers who use Blogger software,

Blogger has bugs. I guess we should expect that when there are bazillions of people using it, for free. So I'm trying not to let my head explode with annoyance over these bugs, considering the bargain I'm getting by paying exactly zero dollars for bandwidth and software.

That being said--you know, it really is frustrating. I have Windows Vista, a program that comes straight from the pit of...uh, Microsoft...and so many programs just don't work nicely with Vista. My usage of Firefox and Chrome as browsers has been discontinued; I had too many issues with them. I think Vista may have something to do with that. Interestingly, in a technological version of Stockholm Syndrome, I've reacted to this by using yet another Microsoft product...Internet Explorer 8.

And in using Internet Explorer, I'm suffering--suffering, folks--from some Blogger maladies, when I read your blogs. If you use Blogger, there are a couple of things you can do to make your blog play nicely with Internet Explorer so that your readers don't throw their computers across the room and replace them with Macs. (On the other hand, that wouldn't be such a bad thing....)

Here's how you can make your Blogger blog work more consistently:

• Disable the blog following widget. When that widget is active, blogs often won't open in Internet Explorer. Blogger says you can move it further down the page to avoid the issue, but this doesn't work. What I've done is remove my following widgets altogether and replaced them with messages advising my readers that they can follow the blog by clicking "Follow Blog" at the top of the page, in the blue Blogger bar.
• Disable embedded comments, and replace them with full page or pop-up comments. (Go to Settings-Comments to change this. Personally, I like pop-up comments.) Embedded comments were kind of a cool idea, but these days it's not uncommon to type a comment, try to post it, and be informed that it didn't publish. At one point it seemed that disabling Word Verification fixed this issue, but now it's an issue even without Word Verification. I'm not sure if this is an issue in Explorer only, or in other browsers too. Note: Since I originally wrote this post, Blogger has suggested switching to pop-up or full page comments for yet another reason--see here.

Thanks, bloggers, for making my life as a reader a little easier...and mostly thanks for entertaining me with your writing!