matthearn.com

I’ve been using Blogger for like 3 decades now, and I’ve been mostly happy with it (except on the once-frequent occasion in which a network problem caused me to lose an entire, 3000 word post, but that hasn’t happened in a while). Periodically I consider upgrading to Movable Type or Serendipity or something, but since I don’t have a lot of time to go about completely rebuilding my database of posts and columns, I’ve not bothered.

Normally this is the point at which I say, “Until now,” and relate some kind of sob story about how Blogger deleted my entire webpage and then peed on me, but THAT’S NOT SO THIS TIME. Stop trying to predict The Hearn, man, because I am DIFFICULT TO PREDICT. And how.

Blogger was recently purchased by Google, which of course made the Blogger creators a pooppile of money, and Google immediately set about improving Blogger in their own way. Not long ago they released “Blogger Beta,” which basically was a nifty update. This week they released it as a production doodacky or whatever so I signed up like they were giving away free bacon.

I’ll give them this: it’s new and improved. Is it so new and improved that it’s worth making a big deal about being a new release and omigod everybody has to sign up lol wtf!?!??!?!!!1one? No. Here’s a short list of stuff they added:

• Labels. Meaning you can categorize your posts (you’ll see be low where I have tagged this one as “geek,” for example) and group them accordingly. Other sites have called it “filed under.” Kinda nifty.
• Private blogs, in which you can post a bunch of crap and not show it to anybody. Totally new wave.
• An improved Dashboard (it shows all the various blogs I can post to).

Well, actually I guess that’s about it. Here’s the list of things they say they added that I can’t find any evidence of whatsoever:

• Instant publishing: “Say goodbye to the dreaded ‘Publishing…’ spinner. Now, when you make a new post or change any of your settings, your blog is updated and changes go live immediately; you don’t have to remember to republish.” All I know is if I try to republish my entire blog, it takes so long that Blogger actually puts up a little tag saying “It was taking so long to publish your blog that we got tired of showing you the dreaded ‘Publishing…’ spinner. Click here if you’d like to keep watching it, you weirdo.”
• Template customizing with drag and drop, which is simply not there. Maybe I have to create a new blog, or select a new template? Sorry, I’m not going to wipe out my current template settings to try and find out. UPDATE: Apparently this only works with blogs that post to Blogspot, and because of some lame technical deficiency they probably won’t ever change it. Would have been nice if this had been mentioned somewhere in the “OMG SWITCH TO THE NEW BLOGGER!” pitch, although since the upgrade wasn’t exactly challenging I would have done it anyway.

Finally, I have a list of stuff that Blogger should have put in, but didn’t:

• A way for me to view the posts that don’t have any labels so I can label all my old posts. As it is now my post listing screen only shows me the most recent 30 or so, so I have to jump to a different page to label something, and once that’s done it dumps me back on the most recent 30 posts again and I have to figure out where I was. Let me filter out all the labelled posts so it doesn’t take me 300 years to do this, you bastards!
• A way to change it so it doesn’t say “Labels:” at the bottom of every post, but instead says “Filed under:” which is standard everywhere on the web at this point and sounds much less lame-O.
• A way to view my posts as they will actually appear on the page, with all the headers and footers and sidebars and things, so I know BEFORE publishing that the picture of Justin Timberlake from the “D*ck In A Box” video is too wide and is making my page look like it was designed by a muskrat. Blogger used to have this and it was, oddly, taken away in favor of the new preview format, which shows me nothing.

I’m just SAYIN’, Blogger dudes, before you go announcing “monster release lol omg” you might want to fix some of the existing flaws.