Sunday, June 29, 2008

Formatting Frustrations and Triumphs. Email woes.

First, a note about my email. If you email me I will answer you. If you don't hear from me it's because my email box dumped you into junk mail and deleted you before I remebered to check my junk mail. Sorry. Please email me again.

As for fomatting. I am a total novice with this blogging thing. I stumble my way through the formatting. I have figured out a few things, though, and Troy of Ramblings Around Texas has been a great help to me. Thanks Troy.

I have noticed that when I move photos around in compose mode that often they loose the ablility to open up to a larger size when you click on them. I still haven't worked this problem out but I did figure out how to fix one problem on Friday and I was so proud of myself.

Often when I publish a post I want to have a space between lines near the bottom. On my Skywatch Friday post when I published it originally it wouldn't leave a space between the 3 bottom lines, no matter how many "hard returns" I made at the end of the line.

I know NOTHING about HTML but, I looked at it anyway and discovered that all the html info was seperate from the words I typed. So, on a chance, I just made a space in the HTML after one of those > symbols. When I republished my blog there was a space! Hallelujah! You don't know how happy I was and how proud of myself for figuring this out. I know how I want my blog to look and it frustrates the heck out of me when I cannot accomplish that.

I also noticed that the HTML code for the top photo that enlarges was different than the HTML code for the 2 lower photos that don't. I work in the compose mode because I don't know HTML and I'm afraid to really mess things up and not be able to fix it. But, I may try a couple of things now. It's all about learning, right?

Note: I just found this in Blogger Known Issues:

In Internet Explorer 6.0 and in Compose mode, if you upload an image and then drag it to another location in your post, you might be unable to click through to the full size version of the image once the post is published. To avoid this problem,you can either use a different web browser or switch to Edit HTML mode to move the image code manually.— latest update on Thursday, August 09, 2007
June 30 Update: I tried this with today's post and it worked! yeah!

But, now I just noticed that some of my formatting buttons are missing from my post editor. GRRRRRRRRR.....!!!!! They have a new spellchecker that doesn't work. (6-30-08 The old spell checker is still there. This is operator error as the spell checker changed when I clicked into HTML mode. Once I clicked back into compose mode it worked like I expected it to and the other formatting buttons re-appeared.)

If any of you have any helpful suggestions, it would be much appreciated. I do go to Blogger's help articles but since I don't know the lingo I don't understand what they mean when they talk about certain things. They should publish a glossary of terms. That would help.

7 comments:

kjpweb said...

Sometimes it's a pain, isn't it?
Well - for the spellcheck there is a great solution for you!
Use Firefox - it has a spellcheck built in, working whenever you're writing something. Regardless where.

Cheers, Klaus

Mary C said...

Hi Kathie - I have had the exact same problem since last summer or fall. And my daughter told me about googling "html" and checking out some excellent sources. The one she recommended to me to learn more about html coding is this URL: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp
I still haven't taken the time to learn the html code and still prefer to work in the "compose" mode. My way of getting around it has been that I upload all my photos first, then write my post around the photos. Another way of getting around it would be to use Firefox rather than Internet Explorer. Firefox is the browser my daughter uses. Well, I hope this will help somewhat.

Shimmy Mom said...

I wish I knew your answers. I am too computer illiterate to figure out half of my own problems. I make my hubby help me and then listen to him laugh. I'm very impressed with the issues you have been able to fix yourself. Good job!

Anonymous said...

You have the right adventurous spirit to tackle these issues. Blogger uses style sheets or CSS in addition to HTML and that can also complicate the layout, colors, etc. It also has a mind of its own, doesn't always follow the rules, and isn't as user-friendly as it pretends to be. The moral of our story: the user is not broken. :)

That being said, I'd add another to the recommendations to use Firefox.

I also do what Mary suggested: first upload all the photos, then write the text.

It's hard to give general advice, but if you are trying to do something specific and have a question, ask away - I've always found lots of helpful advice from my fellow bloggers.

Kathie Brown said...

klaus, after further exploration today I figured out what happened and updated this post. Thanks.

Mary, thanks for your help and I will check out that site. However, today I tried doing what blogger suggested when I wrote my newest post and it worked. While I still don't know how to write HTML, I am learning how to work with it!

Shimmy Mom, Gus can help me with some issues but with Blogger I know more than him, so I am usually helping him instead. Glad your husband can help you!

Wren, thank you for your encourging words. It's amazing how stupid an inanimate object can make you feel. I tried the above mentioned tactic for moving my photso around with my newest post and it worked! I am so proud of myself! What is CSS?

Larry said...

If you look at my posts you'll notice I use little hyphens to force a space between paragraphs.-I hate doing all that stuff.-Its just no fun to me.-I did figure out the photo enlarge problem a while ago.-I just upload all the photos before writing anything.-It can make it difficult though.

Gerald (SK14) said...

There is only a smattering of html you need to know in order to use it in writing blogposts. Once you've mastered it you'll never want to use compose mode again.

When you upload photos blogger creates lumps of code. Just put a space after the end of the code and then you can see it separate from other text - just make sure you move the whole code around when moving it past text.

If you have more than one photo and several pieces of text - create the text away from blogger using a text editor (such as Notepad) rather than a word-processor.