In case you’re among the uninitiated, bx- error codes are randomly assigned to template issues in Blogger blogs that are currently irresolvable. I had thought I had seen the last of my share of bx- errors last year, but apparently the gods of Blogger certainly don’t think so. I tried to perform the simple task of moving the lines of CSS mentioned in this post higher in the header section of my blog, and got a bx- again. Worse, when I tried to edit anything in that post at all, the code got garbled, and at times the page would even refuse to load. The solution? As I had figured out myself. It’s going to be a rough summer…
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
How to write things like <head> in webpages
February 20, 2009
Whenever you try to write code including tags like <head> in webpages, the browser steps in and refuses to process angle brackets. There's actually a simple solution, but being moronic I keep forgetting this: just type "&" next to "lt;" or "gt;" (without quotes), for left and right angle brackets respectively. There.
The opposite? To write the actual code to get <head>, type "&" next to "amp;" and followed by "lt;" or "gt;" (without quotes again) to get the left and right angle brackets, in that order. Hence: &+amp;+lt;+head+&+amp;+gt;, sans the +'s. Voila.
Standards compliance, huh?
February 20, 2009
I decided to run quick CSS and HTML/XHTML markup validation tests on major sites using the tools on the W3C website (here: markup and CSS). Here’s what I found:
| site | markup errors | CSS errors |
| 62; 9 warnings | 1 | |
| Slashdot | 145 | none |
| Wordpress.com | none | 52 |
| Technorati | 13; 6 warnings | 19 |
| Yahoo! | 48; 44 warnings | none |
| NYTimes.com | 318; 69 warnings | 52 |
| Microsoft | 176; 36 warnings | 33 |
| Lifehacker | 314; 70 warnings | 2 |
Despite such errors, since browsers will almost always load pages the way they were intended to, it makes sense to reduce code, especially when your site receives millions of hits. Google’s homepage, for instance, doesn’t even have a DOCTYPE declaration. But as web designers and students of the trade who are persistently insisted across textbooks, websites and workplaces to follow standards, where does that leave us?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
It’s incredible
February 18, 2009
It’s incredible. It took my close to two hours just to publish my last two posts on Blogger. Every time Blogger was scrambling up code I was trying to display; I finally realized that I had to change a setting (read here). On top of that, I’ve tried out so many bits and pieces of code (call them widgets, modules, plugins or whatever) that my Blogger template right now, having accumulated years of dilapidated apps, is pretty close to a digital scrapyard. Looks like there’s no way other than hand-coding a brand new template from the ground up…
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
How to get rid of the Blogger navbar
February 17, 2009
There's hardly a Blogger user to be found who hasn't been irked by the navbar. True, it’s not entirely useless – it lets you quickly log on to Blogger and provides a quick customization link. But by just being there the navbar brings a generic look to your blog, which is enough to make readers not take it seriously. On top of that, the navbar allows any Blogger user to flag your blog! (Which, assuming you’re one of the good guys, puts you at the mercy of the goodwill of your diverse readership.)
Therefore it’s imperative that you hide your Blogger navbar, or at least know how to. In case you’re wondering, the Blogger Terms of Service doesn’t say anything about the navbar, so you’re good to go.
Hiding the Blogger navbar1. Sign in to your Blogger account. This will take you to your Dashboard. Click on the Layout link of your blog.
2. Click on the Edit HTML link on the Layout page. Don’t worry, you don’t have to know anything about HTML! I’ll take care of the code.
Scroll down the Edit Template field and paste the following immediately before the Profile section as in the following picture:
#navbar-iframe {display:none; visibility:hidden; height:0px;}
You ought to add a comment (/* for example, this part would be a comment */), just in case you wonder someday why you inserted this particular line of code. Anyway, what this line of code does is hide the navbar – but this will leave some empty space above your header, or as in my case, leave less space and make your template look like it’s been trimmed on the top.
3. If there’s an empty space above your header, scroll up the Edit Template section and paste the following immediately within the curly braces of the body section and as shown in this screenshot:
margin:0; top: -20px; position: relative;
Once again, don’t forget to add comments. What we’re doing here is negatively positioning the body of your template to hide the area left vacant by the absence of the navbar. (Some bloggers have proposed solutions using the !important tag, but this might cause problems with screen readers and is therefore not advisable.) Please note that the margin section might already be defined in your template. In that case, just skip pasting the first line. Also, -20px might be too much or too less; tryout a few values to see what works best for you.
4. If your template looks like it needs a tad more space on the top (whether step 3 applies to you or not), just increase the margin a few pixels. For instance the following did the job for me:
margin:2px;
5. Save your changes by clicking on the big orange Save Template button beneath the Edit Template field. Click on View Blog -it should now be navbar-free! If you want to bring back your navbar, simply remove the lines of code you’ve added and save your template.
Happy blogging!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The 3 best free blog editors, and their quirks
January 28, 2009
Okay, of course this is highly subjective but I doubt anybody’s going to disagree with me on my picks.
Microsoft Writer: the best, and possibly as good as a paid alternative. I’ve never been as happy with a MS product since… Notepad. Writer will remind seasoned users of Frontpage, while newbies will be right at home with the simplicity of the application.
Best features: can synchronise posts; supports most blogging platforms; ease of use; plugins available
Let-downs: some issues(see end of this post)
There’s also the Flock blog editor, the built-in blog editor of the socially-friendly browser, Flock; and ScribeFire, the able Firefox plugin. It’s always a merry occasion when you have a blog editor right inside your browser, and ScribeFire even comes with useful options ranging from an inbuilt revenue-earning system and one-click posting to advanced pinging options.
But if you ask me, at the end of the day Writer wins hand down for its user-friendliness and solid synchronization.
Known quirks: many of the plugins for Writer (there aren’t really many, surprisingly) don’t work; others are plain scratchy. Among the ones broke are the ones made by the Microsoft devs themselves (not so surprising, eh?). Formatting often doesn’t agree either; take a look:
The original post in Blogger has a line break, which Writer fails to reflect. From my experience, I’ve had trouble synchronising posts with both Flock and ScribeFire. They also support fewer blogging platforms compared to Writer; and although ScribeFire in particular has some interesting features, both applications essentially feel like plugins, and lack the necessary MS Word-like seamlessness one would look for in a blog editor.
[Update: I had just published this from Writer where the post turned out like this. I had to dig into the code -- a simple matter of tags getting mixed up -- to fix it.]
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