little. yellow. different. A weblog by Ernie Hsiung

blogger, picasa and a lot of rounded corners

OK - this is my first crossover entry from the mini-blog to the regular blog: blogger redesigns and forms an alliace with picasa, or more specifically, through the app Hello.

Some thoughts:

1. If rounded corners and drop shadows were ever out of style on web pages, they’re back in again. In a bind? ROUND THE CORNER AND PUT IT BEHIND A DROP SHADOW. AND GRADIENTS! WE NEED MORE GRADIENTS!! (Of course, Yahoo! Photos uses rounded corners, thus making me the biggest hypocrite in the universe.)
2. Did anyone notice how Blogger Profiles is basically, well, TypeKey? Except when MT announced TypeKey, they got endless amounts of misery and grief for it. Lesson learned: don’t announce your features in advance.
3. Remember when Blogger was the blog power-app of choice and MoveableType was the underdog publishing tool and all the bloggers rushed from one service to another? So, with this Blogger.com redesign, will webloggers come rushing back? Will it be like the civil war, with like people wearing gray and blue and fighting on hills and shit? [OK, no more civil war references]
4. There’s been a lot of research on incorporating photos to weblogs as easily as you can writing and publishing weblog posts, but no company has seemed to get the process working perfectly. Hello is a P2P application, like instant messager, that was originally created for photo sharing but now enables sending photos to Blogger via a “BloggerBot.” It’ll be interesting to see how this functionality will take off, especially since software like Hello depends on, well, a lot of people using it.

Your thoughts?

I’m just patiently waiting for us to all shut down our blogs and spend more quality time with our real lives.

Of course, I’m then a hypocrite because I’m secretly waiting for MT 3.0 too.

I use Blogger because I’m too lazy/inexperienced to bother trying to set anything else up. I was thinking about moving to something else but with comments @ Blogger now I might not. But my blog isn’t a big important blog like this one =).

Blogger’s new templates remind me of how:

I keep meaning to write my own damned template for my blog instead of lazily using one of the MT precanned ones,
I have to do me a lot of CSS practisin’ in order to make a template as funky lookin’ as these new Blogger ones

Siggggh.

I will admit that I had a moment of frustration where I thought “Aargh! Look at all these blogger features! I’m so fucking sick of waiting for mt 3.0! Maybe I should switch back!” But it was just a momentary spurt of geek lust. Blogger is now much better for new bloggers, but MT is still better for me. Although it DESPERATELY needs updating.

I’m not sure if it will be like the Civil War, but it might be like the great Super Nintendo versus Sega Genesis debates from back in 1991ish. I liked SNES way better because of two words: Square Soft.

Hello everyone, my name is Lisa. I am a content manager whore.
Yah, I’ve tried ‘em all: Blogger, WordPress, MT. Even Xanga.
Only MT has made me want to settle down with it and pick out throw pillows and talk about a commitment ceremony in Canada.
Seriously: I think that all of these programs serve different niches. Blogger is great for those just learning, or those who want a nomuss/ nofuss site. Other programs are more involved and complex, if you are a control freak and want to rollup your sleeves a little. It is good to see Blogger rolling out some new features. I agree, though…MT 3.0 is waaaaaay overdue.

It’s strange that google, its subsidiary companies are just not interested in making the features that they have for Windows platform available to Mac users. The blogger interface for mac had been dramatically different if one was on a mac browser versus a pc browser, hello is available for download only on the PC, gmail only works (kina) on mozilla browsers on the mac (and not safari or internet explorer)…. of course Yahoo isn’t much better either, as its yahoo messenger doesn’t have the voice chat feature for Mac…

My thoughts?

Blogger sucked last week and it will probably suck next week too.

Meanwhile MT kicked ass last week and next week it will continue to kick ass.

hello nuprin,
i am afraid of the new blogger. like the confederate overseer hold up in the fields with his ‘trusty’ slave militia, i fear the advance of change like the sound of well-armed yankees approaching in the distance.

I logged onto blogger today (albeit from linux) and I was horrified at the interface. I think I may have gasped out loud. I don’t know anything about the features, I just can’t imagine what they were thinking when they designed the look!

AS much as I like MT i dont want to pay DotEasy to have the ability to use PHP or ASP or whatever the hell it runs on….. and i never used blogger. I’ll stick with notepad and http://FTP. bang. zip. it’s done.

I want to use blogger bug got redirected to
blogspot. Or vice versa.

New features don’t really interest me on Blogger at this point - I got tired of dealing with how sluggish and generally crappy Blogger was a long time ago. I would like to have tried MT, but our server doesn’t carry the proper programs for it. Tried Greymatter for a while, and it was better but not perfect. I have since moved on to Pivot, which is finally out of beta and working wonderfully. It would take an awful lot to make me move back to Blogger, redesign or not.

Rounded corners and drop shadows? Doh. Note to self: Redesign personal website.

I like how the first notes in the design (link below) touch upon these topics: “The design features rounded corners, large icons, direct concepts, and helpful directions.” Oddly enough, it’s still quite a while into the site before you actually discover what a blog even looks like. And the first question in the FAQ is “What is the dashboard?”, as though it were almost rhetorical. Ah well, progress.

http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2004/05/09/blogger.html

But Brian, what, truly, [i]is[/i] the dashboard? Hmmm.

Yeah, I Admit -please, cover my eyes with that black bit of cardboard on your desk- that I use Blogger, and I found this new look… ermmm… childish?

It reminded me even more so that I’m just using Blogger ‘coz I’m not clever enough/don’t have enough time to work harder on my blog, but what the hell? It does work, and it has more options now, or makes things easier… to an extent! There are options they sell as automatic that need a bit of fiddling about, like YES, the comments.

But at least now I’m not having to hunt around and lose part of my blog every time I try a different Comment system, that doesn’t work, and fucks my whole blog up :((

When I’m older I want to be Ernie

While the main blogger site may not look brilliant, the new templates should be an improvement - designed by Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Rubin, Dave Shea and other excellent designers.

Same old blogger - I tried to change a post from “publish” to “Draft” yesterday, and good ol’ reliable blogger reliably ate the fucking thing.

I think it looks good, in a rudimentary kind of way. I started blogging using Blogger, and quickly realised it’s limitations. In my opinion, it’s pretty damn good for all those who don’t really want to put much time into the design of their site, and just want to use it to write stuff down. I still use Blogger for my side bits and pieces (I used one for a vacation journal, and I have a new one for logging how I am moving forward in the career/lifestyle status), as it’s straightforward, basic and easy to deal with. I also have a Livejournal, as I don’t want to bitch and whine and be an emotional girl and embarrass myself on the blog circuit (for my non-existent public, of course).

But…I’d never use it for a main, day to day blog. Never ever ever. I have standards…much like you guys. I want my own look, I want my own customising, I want my own flexibility on my own time. I don’t want a big company (with the obligatory bugs in the system), with a “you get a better service if you pay us” line putting limitations on my space on the net. I want what I want : not what millions of other people want.

(Having said that though - I am beta testing Gmail because of my use of Blogger, so I shouldn’t bitch too much)

Ernie, Ernie, Ernie… *just* the Civil War? Man, you’re losing your touch. You know this won’t be an Ernie Classic *until* you mention Hitler, WWII, or why Germany invaded Poland.

Because we all *know* Hitler loved his rounded corners and gradient shading.

Well, I’ve been drooling over MT-created sites for a while now, and I still hope to make the leap some day, but the main reason I even created a site was because my service came with the web space, so I thought I’d use it. I don’t think I can do all the CSS jazz on my free space, I know I don’t have an SQL DB there, so Blogger been the way to go. If they’ve now incorporated comments, then that’s one more reason to postpone my leap into MT and actual domain aquisition. My question is: Why am I learing this for the first time on Ernie’s site? I guess I should post more often. Thanks for the heads up.

Part of me wants to be using the new Blogger. I’ve moved to Silicon Valley… i want to be using what the hip cool kids are using. Heck, I got Blogger Pro the very first day that I could way back when. But today I read about the new livejournal-like comments (which makes me glad I hung onto my Blogger account). I think I’ll stick with Movable Type.

I would think anyone who knows anything about design and blogs would thirst for a free Zeldman, Bowman, etc.. template. Of course if you are one of those designers and you see a bunch of lame ass blogs using your template with content such as posts about how cool Mary Kate and Ashley are and photos of spinning rims, maybe you’ll rethink the whole idea. Lookie a Zeldman template of my porn movie review blog. Juicy!

I’m surprised nobody’s perfected the easy-pictures-in-posts thing yet - it would be fairly easy to do (on Windows, at least). An ActiveX control is all it would really take - or for compatability, a Flash or Java app - coupled with some special uploading functionality and a PHP/Perl script. Hm…

am i, like, the only person who uses blogger’s ‘bits’ to publish to my own site using my own look? hmm.. i guess i’m not cool - i don’t think it sucks that hard. ;-/

I use some blogger code with my own page design and it works really well. I don’t have the cash to shell out for my own server space, and the space offered by my ISP is useful for storing pictures and various pages, but not for a MT style blog. My only problem with the new Blogger is the compulsory registration required to leave comments. Hopefully they will change that feature and allow anyone to post with their name instead or the register of post anonomously choice.

kyle… you can post anonymously, you just have to be on a blog where someone’s allowed that. the default is blogger users only…

A little known journaling site is Tabulas.com. It has way more features than Blogger will ever dream of. So, the templates weren’t designed by Web gods. You make your own based on the teachings of the likes of Zeldman and Shea.

So Blogger rounded corners and gave FrontPage templates a run for their money. Too bad the templates don’t come with soundfiles or those scripts that let snowflakes fall across the screen, because then I would have giggled myself into an orgasm and passed out cold. In the meantime, I will be on the balcony and praying to Jesus that His merciful angels smite overtly hyped redesigns.

well, i just downloaded “hello” and i’m trying it out right now.
i guess i’ll just have to wait and see what it can do for me.
blogger’s new comments function are pretty sucky and seem to not work with the “hello” posts.
i have *no* computer literacy skills, though, so.. what the fuck do i know?

I’m a little worried about Movable Type given today’s update, which seems to indicate that if I want to use it even a little then I will end up paying quite a lot.

Not that I don’t love the software, but I would say a lot of my love comes from the free-ness, and if that means I live at version 2.66x, then I think I can do that.

isn’t this a cute pic of you two:

http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nlisa2020/detail?.dir=/Yahoo!+Party&.dnm=dbdf.jpg

hopefully that link works. if not, email me.

That is a tongue crying out for a stud.

Um … you can take that any way you want, I suppose.

I agree, Ernie really needs a tongue piercing. And I also agree… Blogger is consistently pissing me off since this latest “upgrade.” But I, too, am too lazy to do anything about it… but bitch, of course. I can always find time to bitch.

greymatter is the best!

Uhm, I didn’t understand a damn word in this post but I love Ernie. So there. And I think a few of the people who left comments are a little psycho. But I love Ernie. So double there.