Safari 3.1 Review: Works with Blogger. Finally!

Well, it looks like the new Safari 3.1 release works with Blogger. Finally! The WYSIWYG editor seems to work just fine, which was the major crashing point before. I'm running Safari 3.1 on my Powerbook G4 12 inch on Mac OS X Tiger. I love Safari, but mainly because of it's clean apple interface and because it's generally the fastest browser on my computer. Although I think Camino and the new Firefox 3 beta are very close seconds.

Firefox 3 Beta Review: Works Great with Blogger and Powerbook G4 Mac OS X

So I'm constantly on the lookout for a better browser to use on my 12 inch 1 GHz Powerbook G4. I currently have 3 main browsers that I use on my dated but useful powerbook:

1. Safari 3.1
2. Camino
3. Firefox 3 Beta

I will be posting updated reviews of all three of these. I have to say, that I love the Firefox 3 Beta. There is a cool new zoom that actually intelligently resizes not just text, but images, and layouts! That means that when you increase or decrease the size of a web page, the webpage still looks good. This is unbelievably useful, especially on my dinky 12 inch monitor. All of a sudden, I can watch a video (which I am doing now) while browsing the web without having horizontal scroll bars stunt my surfing style. I love it. Go Firefox! It's my new favorite browser for my 12 inch Powerbook, and it works great with Blogger too!

Camino is the Best Mac OS X Browser for Blogger

So I've been using Camino with Blogger for the past week or so, and it just works. Flawlessly. So if you went through problems with a buggy experience with Safari or a slow experience with Firefox and Blogger, I highly recommend Camino. It solved all my issues.

More Blogs Unlocked by Blogger

So a few days ago, I complained that several of my blogs were locked by blogger. Well, all but one were unlocked. I don't know why the last one wasn't unlocked. Go figure. Hopefully it will be unlocked soon.

Alternative Web Browser for Safari on Blogger

I finally found a browser that seems to work seamlessly and fast on my Powerbook G4. Camino! It's fast and works with blogger. It's my new blogging browser of choice. Finally a browser for my mac that is fast and works with blogger.

Uploading Blogger Images Takes a Long Time

Have you ever tried uploading an image to Blogger? It takes forever! I am trying right now to upload an image to my blog where I put up a (crappy) drawing each day, Dan's Daily Doodle, and it crawls along at a snails pace. The file is only around 300K, less than a third of a megabyte, but the upload takes forever, it's been 30 minutes already, so I give up. For those who don't know their bytes, that's pretty small.

Maybe it's just my ISP, but I suspect that blogger is just slow with image uploads. A faster, but more cumbersome solution may be to put up the drawing somewhere else first, than put insert the image as html...

One Blog Unlocked by Blogger

So a while back, I blogged that my blog was locked by blogger. It was unlocked today. I had filled out the form that was emailed to me with the recaptcha image. Of course more of my blogs were locked today as well. And those were empty too. So no spam. No comments spam.

So I took one step forward and many steps backward. I filled out the captcha image form, so hopefully, it will take a short while to unlock the blog. The blog that was unlocked today was locked 4 days ago on March 4th, so it took 4 days to unlock, including two weekend days.

I think blogger has some definite work to do with their "intelligent" spam bot. Locking an empty blog is pretty dumb.

Multiple Empty, Blank Blogs Locked on Blogger

So I went a little blogger crazy the last few days and registered more than a handful of blogspot names on blogger. Most of the blogs are empty, and are awaiting content. Well, Blogger's spam-detection bot just locked many of the blogs I registered, identifying them as spam. Except they are empty ... completely blank! What gives?

I know blogger (more likely Google) has to work to avoid spamming blogs. I've actually found a few spam blogs just from doing some searches on google's blogsearch, nobody wants to see the internet filled with spam, especially not Google, since it makes it hard for their search algorithms. But it seems like empty blogs that were recently started should not set off any flags. There's no SPAM, they are empty!

I wasn't going to post onto the locked blogs for a while, so it's not a huge inconvenience, but it's definitely annoying.

Safari and Blogger don't get along

So, I've decided that Safari and Blogger just don't like to play well together on my Powerbook G4. Safari will "unexpectedly quit" way too often when using Blogger. Well it's not unexpected for me, it's happened about 15 times in the last two days.

Apparently the WYSIWYG editing features are not compatible with Safari yet (see help article), and it looks like it might not be for a long while.

For the most part, that's okay with me, since I use the html editing panel mostly, but it's annoying. On the other hand, overall Blogger appears to be slow when I'm using Safari. Of course Firefox running on my Powerbook G4 is a CPU blackhole, and terribly slow. On a window's machine, even an old one, Firefox is nice and zippy and has no problem running.

Am I stuck with a crappy blogger experience on my powebook g4?

Blogger and Wordpress Early Comparison

My three blog's right now are on blogger. I don't have a lot of complaints. It works, and the interface is clean and intuitive. There are bugs though. The compose tool does weird unexpected things with formatting, so I only use the pure html box. And Safari on my powerbook seems to hate blogger, so I have to use Firefox.

I've been toying with wordpress.com as well. I haven't put any blogs up yet, but it looks easy to use. It has a slightly steeper learning curve than Blogger, but Wordpress looks easier to customize. But on the other hand, you can do more advanced customization with Blogger. And it is more speedy.

Here's a dated but detailed comparison http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2005/09/27/bloggercom-vs-wordpresscom/

I'll update soon with more impressions.

Using WordPress.org CMS

I have been playing with lots of different CMS's (Content Management Systems) and blogging software. There are an overwhelming number out there.

If you are new to blogging and using CMS, like I was two days ago, it can be totally overwhelming. That's okay. I've been there. It's like being a kid in a candy store. There are tons of cool things, but it's hard to pick one thing that is exactly what you want.

I've actually been playing around a lot with wordpress lately. They give out free blogs on their wordpress.com site, and also they have a piece of software you can run on your web server on their wordpress.org site.

Wordpress software is really easy to install on your personal website. All you have to do is download their software, put it where you want your site to be, change some read/write/execute permissions, and voila you are done. And there are tons of cool plugins that are very useful. One called E-Commerce makes it exceedingly easy to sell things on your site. It's amazing how easy it is (with some tech savvy and know-how) to quickly setup an online store.

Overall, wordpress is very cool and easy to use. I like blogger, but I'm definitely going to give wordpress a trial to see if I don't want to use it for some new websites I am working on.

Empty Blog Locked

So my blog was locked down by Blogger today. Not this one, another. I confess that I got blog greedy after my first blog yesterday, registering quite a few new blog addresses. I know I'm not the only one that has done this, because a lot of the blog names I wanted to try were taken, and the blogs were completely blank.

So I have no idea why my blog was locked. The message I got said

Dear Blogger user,

This is a message from the Blogger team.

Your blog, at http://xxxxx.blogspot.com/, has been identified as a potential spam blog. For an explanation of what spam blogs are, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577

You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog. To request a review, please fill out the form found here: http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=xxxxx

It is not against the terms to register multiple blogs. The blog is completely nakedly empty. I haven't blogged a single post! Go figure. Now I can't put up new postings, change settings, delete the blog, or anything. I have to wait for the blogger staff to review the blog (should be easy, since it's empty) to make sure that I am not spam robot. Oh well, I wasn't going to get around to get that started for a while, but it still drives me a little neurotic. Anyone else had this problem?

I did some searches on how long it takes to get blog unlocked, and have heard anything from 4 days to weeks. So it could be a while. If you've ever had this happen to you, talk about frustrating.