Mastering Blogger
Three of my goals for 2006 were to:
I feel like I have really done that.
Last weekend, I fixed a bug in the template in one of my blogs that leads Blogger to insert a completely spurious HTML/XHTML syntax error in the page. Not a teeny one but a pretty egregious one.
I will be applying that fix to my other Blogs' templates soon, I recckon.
This morning, I fixed a problem in the sidebar of one of my blogs. For some reason, the template author had omitted the Recent Posts section. It simply was not there.
So I added it.
I recently bought a very handy little reference book named Publishing a Blog with Blogger by Elizabeth Castro. It is very handy.
I just followed the instructions in her book.
At first, it did not work.
I immediately went and checked the templates for my other blogs, to see how that part of the template was written for them. Looked the same as in the book.
I went back, checked the template addition I had just typed in. Spotted one insignificant but interesting difference. There was a space between the end of one of the Blogger tag names and the right angle bracket at the end of the tag.
Should not matter; that is perfectly legal in HTML, XTHML, XML, and so forth. In fact, it is common practice - almost as common practice as not having the space there.
Anyway, I removed the
Pretty good feeling.
And with that feeling, I realized that I had finally mastered Blogspot templates. I understood how they worked, how they were parsed, how some were expanded into text and some were executed as loops or conditionals.
Although I have known HTML since the first year it came out - something like a year or more before Netscape first came out - I did not quite feel like I had completely mastered what in my mind were some secondary aspects of it.
These aspects, however; were rapidly growing in importance to the people who used public websites and intranet software - and the people who paid for them.
One was CSS. I got that one checked off my list a few months ago. I knew it since 2002, but I had not mastered it. This year, I mastered it.
Another was Blogging. I wanted to be able to do more than just pick a template, choose some settings, and click the Add button over and over again to simply create new posts.
Well, I can totally control the shape and appearance of my blogs now. I am really comfortable with the templates that control the presentation of blog posts for blogs on blogspot.com.
In the process of achieving these goals, I can tell I am a better web developer.
Things that I would have stumbled over two or three years ago, are now pretty simple.
I use the latest tools, know the latest rules. I know how to make a page look just the way I want it too.
I can also make web pages do things they were not especially intended to do. I can not only highlight but filter information entered directly into a web page. All kinds of crazy things.
For the past few months, I have sort of been thinking it would be nice to create some kind of a blogging tool.
There are a couple kinds of tools that would be useful for blogging.
One is a WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing posts. Extremely useful. Flock and other free tools have recently filled that void at the freeware level. Shareware tools to do it have existed for some time. Microsoft has announced features coming in Office 2007 (working title?) that will bring these features to the commercial software tier.
So that one is already done.
Another thing that would be nice is a tool for automating, or at least simplifying, the creation of the templates. Particularly the ones that are used by Blogger.com blogs by blog authors over on Blogger.com. Thatis where the blogs have their genesis.
I have not seen someone do that yet, so I am going to mull that idea over some.
It seems like such a tool would be popular, if done well. It would have to be easy to use, require no user manual or explanation to use beyond the tool itself and a tiny bit of online help. It might be necessary to require some knowledge of CSS to fine-tune things - but not to create/customize the template in basic ways.
And construction of the custom template, from scratch, should take no more than 5-15 minutes - depending on the user's familiarity with the tool.
Anyway, that is my working idea for the project.
- Master CSS
- Master Blogger
- Customize My Blogs
I feel like I have really done that.
Last weekend, I fixed a bug in the template in one of my blogs that leads Blogger to insert a completely spurious HTML/XHTML syntax error in the page. Not a teeny one but a pretty egregious one.
I will be applying that fix to my other Blogs' templates soon, I recckon.
This morning, I fixed a problem in the sidebar of one of my blogs. For some reason, the template author had omitted the Recent Posts section. It simply was not there.
So I added it.
I recently bought a very handy little reference book named Publishing a Blog with Blogger by Elizabeth Castro. It is very handy.
I just followed the instructions in her book.
At first, it did not work.
I immediately went and checked the templates for my other blogs, to see how that part of the template was written for them. Looked the same as in the book.
I went back, checked the template addition I had just typed in. Spotted one insignificant but interesting difference. There was a space between the end of one of the Blogger tag names and the right angle bracket at the end of the tag.
Should not matter; that is perfectly legal in HTML, XTHML, XML, and so forth. In fact, it is common practice - almost as common practice as not having the space there.
Anyway, I removed the
extraspace. Voila! It worked!! My Recent Posts for that blog then appeared in the sidebar.
Pretty good feeling.
And with that feeling, I realized that I had finally mastered Blogspot templates. I understood how they worked, how they were parsed, how some were expanded into text and some were executed as loops or conditionals.
Although I have known HTML since the first year it came out - something like a year or more before Netscape first came out - I did not quite feel like I had completely mastered what in my mind were some secondary aspects of it.
These aspects, however; were rapidly growing in importance to the people who used public websites and intranet software - and the people who paid for them.
One was CSS. I got that one checked off my list a few months ago. I knew it since 2002, but I had not mastered it. This year, I mastered it.
Another was Blogging. I wanted to be able to do more than just pick a template, choose some settings, and click the Add button over and over again to simply create new posts.
Well, I can totally control the shape and appearance of my blogs now. I am really comfortable with the templates that control the presentation of blog posts for blogs on blogspot.com.
In the process of achieving these goals, I can tell I am a better web developer.
Things that I would have stumbled over two or three years ago, are now pretty simple.
I use the latest tools, know the latest rules. I know how to make a page look just the way I want it too.
I can also make web pages do things they were not especially intended to do. I can not only highlight but filter information entered directly into a web page. All kinds of crazy things.
For the past few months, I have sort of been thinking it would be nice to create some kind of a blogging tool.
There are a couple kinds of tools that would be useful for blogging.
One is a WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing posts. Extremely useful. Flock and other free tools have recently filled that void at the freeware level. Shareware tools to do it have existed for some time. Microsoft has announced features coming in Office 2007 (working title?) that will bring these features to the commercial software tier.
So that one is already done.
Another thing that would be nice is a tool for automating, or at least simplifying, the creation of the templates. Particularly the ones that are used by Blogger.com blogs by blog authors over on Blogger.com. Thatis where the blogs have their genesis.
I have not seen someone do that yet, so I am going to mull that idea over some.
It seems like such a tool would be popular, if done well. It would have to be easy to use, require no user manual or explanation to use beyond the tool itself and a tiny bit of online help. It might be necessary to require some knowledge of CSS to fine-tune things - but not to create/customize the template in basic ways.
And construction of the custom template, from scratch, should take no more than 5-15 minutes - depending on the user's familiarity with the tool.
Anyway, that is my working idea for the project.
posted by John Collins at
8:05 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home