All right, because you guys nagged, I tried again. I used the Blogspot posting template, as usual, but tried the "insert link" button that looks like a pair of eyes. Highlighting the text that I wanted to be linkable, I then pressed that button.... and all of my to-post text vanished, replaced by an href statement... and my entire posting was completely unrecoverable. Vanished. Gone.
There was no link "inserted". The link REPLACED everything I wanted to post.
Would anyone care to explain to me why I need the tsuris?
This was using netscape on a Mac. I tried Explorer and it was even worse, not even bothering to display the edit icons.
I will continue to simply post the url. If you are interested, paste it into the go to line. I do not have time for this.
9 comments:
David, your approach has not bothered me. The root cause of your trouble is probably the older version of Netscape (not to mention IE) which Blogspot probably hadn't considered in writing its tools. It expects you to be using Safari or Firefox, if you're coming from a Mac. And it expects that you're using OS X.
I still think you'd gush about a 12 inch iBook. I can't say enough positive about mine, since I bought it.
I also use a Mac with OSX. I use Firefox to be able to insert links to other sites. Blogspot isn't ready for Safari yet. Good luck.
I seriously recommend typing up your posting in your favorite word processor or text editor. Browsers were not really designed for writing emails and posting blogs, and all the browsing functionality can lead to data loss if you make a mistake. (e.g. backspace = go back one page OR remove previous character in posting, depending on context).
Congrats for pointing out that Blogger's browser support is rather weak.
The insert link icon USED to work on just about any browser. About six months ago they changed it so it only works with Firefox (Mozilla) and recent versions of IE. It doesn't work with Safari.
Extremely annoying. Blogger doesn't seem to care.
In Blogger, go to Settings -> Posting. In the field on the bottom of the page type a few copies of the A HREF tag. It'll be there every time you want to start a new post (not in regular WYSIWIG view but in the "View HTML" view). Just slide the URL between the quotation marks and a title between > and <.
I hate when that happens. It seems to me I have a couple problems with Firefox copying and pasting (not related to BlogSpot).
It seems the longer my post in some websites, the more likely I'll have an error where I can't recover my text.
It's just like MSDOS days. Save your work and save it often.
Yup. It's maddening.
Netscape and OS 9? Why not Lynx and DOS 3.3 (grin).
Heck, "Blog This" is broken some of the time with Firefox/OSX as well -- it gets confused about what's a link and what's a quotation and puts them in the wrong places. Post, Read, Correct, then make final.
David,
I am donating $50 to the David Brin OS X (DBOSX) fund. Have you used OSX as opposed to OS 9?
Let's help our favorite author be more "productive" ;)
I am serious.
Sidereus
"Highlighting the text that I wanted to be linkable"
Well, that's your problem; that's not what you do. Obviously, if you're pasting something, you don't highlight over something else unless you want to replace it.
When you paste, you simply put the cursor where you want it to, and paste (whether via mouse or keyboard).
I find the stupid blogger buttons not worth bothering with, and prefer to simply write text when I want to link. It's not as if writing
a href=""
requires brains.
But if you can't type that, use the blogger-button-for-sad-adults, and then paste in the link between the quotation marks in the brackets. It's Not Complicated.
You can also just use a standard post template, via your settings, although you'll always want to hand-insert additional links, of course.
This stuff all works by simple logic; not magic; it's not complicated at all. I'm no programmer, and I'm HTML-illiterate, but I picked up the basic tags in about ten minutes. I recommend this.
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