Google Accounts Interface All But Unusable

Google sent me an email to say I needed to renew payment details for a web domain. This used to be a quick process with a simple web form. But their system now displays half blank screens saying "Loading", followed by warnings from my web browser about unresponsive scripts and garbled forms where I can't tell what to enter where. After several attempts working my way through all this I finally managed to enter new billing details. Only then did I notice that I was being warned my domain will not be renewed on July 2 next year. Why was Google wanting me to urgently update details six months in advance? Is it because their interface is now so hard to use it may take six months to get it to work? ;-)

Classic Google Blogger Interface Please

Some weeks ago Google introduced a new interface for their Blogger product. Like many new web interfaces this is highly interactive and does not work very well on a slow Internet connections. But unlike Fastmail, who have the option "Use classic interface" on the log-on screen, I have not found a way to switch Blogger to a simpler interface.

This evening I was blogging Ian Rankin's talk and Blogger's poor quality interface resulted in the loss of my post. I had to rewrite the post and send out a corrected web address for it.

Similarly Qantas, appear to have decided that they do not want customers who have slow internet connections, (presumably because these are customers with less money).

Google Blogger Interface for Low Bandwidth Users?

The new Google Blogger interface is very much slower and much more difficult to use under the Google Chromium browser. Also I have found that I can't get the interface to work at all with Firefox with Firefox 15.0.1 for Linux. Is there some way to get a simplified, efficient, less-interactive HTML interface for blogger? As it is the new interface is a very large step backwards and a great inconvenience. Even on a university network with a multi-gigabyte Internet connection Blogger is now so slow as to be annoying. I tried sending Google some feedback via Blogger but in Firefox I could not get the Google feedback function to work.

Google Blogger Spam Detector

One problem with allowing comments on my Blog "Net Traveller" is Spam. About one half of the comments posted to the blog are not real comments, they are automated messages designed to promote a product. Typically these have a couple of sentences saying how useful my blog is and then a link to a nasty product, such as where students can purchase assignments. I moderate all comments to the blog, but it can be hard to catch all of this Spam. The new Google Blogger Spam Detector is intended to help with this.

However, seeing the new Blogger comments interface for the first time is a little confronting. The Google system listed all 575 comments posted to my blog since it was started. I thought I had to go through all these and mark which were spam. But it turns out these are those Google thinks are legitimate. There is a separate tab for those thought to be Spam (none in my blog) and another tab for those awaiting moderation.

Removing Validation Errors from Google Blogger With HTML 5

Since I teach accessible standards compliant web design it was embarrassing to have pointed out that my own Blog had dozens of validation errors and accessibility problems. It is difficult to generate valid HTML code using Google's Blogger, but after considerable work,I think I have managed it now. The Blog posting in question now passes W3C HTML Validation with no errors (i hope).

I changed to a new version of Blogger recently, which may have been a
mistake. I assumed by now that Google would be generating HTML code
without errors in it. But when I replaced my hacked template with one of
Google's new ones, instead of dozens of errors, I got hundreds.

After looking at some articles on the topic, the way to avoid validation
errors seems to be to avoid Google generated code. So I cut away most of
the Google template.

At the same time I thought I would try out HTML 5. This seems to reduce
the amount of custom code Blogger generates for fixing idiosyncrasies in
particular browsers and so reduces the amount of code with validation
errors in it.

does not seem to be finding as many errors as the I am not sure if less code is being generated because HTML 5 is a better standard, more standardised browsers have been created, or so few are using it the problems have not yet been found. Also the HTML5 validationXHTML one, perhaps because HTML 5 is less rigid in its syntax, because the checker is better (not finding spurious errors) or is worse (not finding real errors).

Apart from HTML validation, there are still problems with my blog for CSS validation and Mobile compatibility (the blog only scores 64% for Mobile Web compatibility). Some of these I can't fix, such as Blooger inserting a style sheet with an error in it and settings in the HTTP header. Perhaps it is time to change to a more standards compliant blog system.

Blogger Conversion Working?

Google is shutting down FTP support for its Blogger Blog service from 1 May 2010. But the alternative service appears to have some problems. The idea is that instead of my blog residing on my own web server at http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/ my postings would be on Google's server and accessible via http://blog.tomw.net.au.

Back in March I was having difficulty with the transfer to their new service. It seems I was not the only one and Google set up a new support service specifically to handle the transfer.

The Google support were able to help me with some of the problems, but not all. I was able to set up a sub-domain for the Blog, but not work out how to associate it with Google's site ("associate" is the DNS magic which then makes what is on Google's web server appear to be on mine ).

Google provided detailed instructions for a range of systems on how to make the changes. Unfortunately I could not find out how to do the association with my system. Also most of the Google instructions were about how to associate my whole web site with Google. If I did that my entire web site would disappear and be replaced with just my blog. The Google instructions had one step about the association and then another, with a note to say not to do the second step for sub domains. But it did not say what to do instead for a sub domain. After much head scratching over several weeks, I guessed that I did not have to do anything instead of the second step. Even so I was worried as one wring step and my entire web site would disappear.

After asking Google and searching around, I realised that I could not actually do the association myself and had to ask my web hosting provider. That only took a few hours for them to do.

I then activated the transfer process. This first offered me a backup of my blog (which I took), then set up the new location and lastly added redirections at the old location. The process went reasonably smoothly. However, each time I stopped and went back to check I had entered the correct new address for the blog, the screen reset to default settings and I had to reenter the sub domain. Crossing my fingers I finally confirmed the conversion. This then went smoothly over a few minutes: the blog was at the new location, my web site was still there are the redirections were at the old location.

However, the next day I find that the new sub domain is not working reliably. I get '"blog.tomw.net.au" could not be found.' most of the time. The postings are still at the old location, but after 30 seconds these are redirected to the new location where they are not found. Of course if you are reading this via the new blog address, then it must have been fixed.

Google Blog FTP Shutdown

Google is shutting down FTP support for its Blogger Blog service from 1 May 2010. However, so far I am unable to understand Google's instructions for migrating to an alternative service.

The current service, which I use for two blogs, allows me to create postings using Google's Blogger software, which then posts the resulting entries to my own web site.

FTP causes support problems for Google. As an alternative they are offering a service where they will maintain the content on their own service, but accessible from a sub-domain on my site. So instead of the current http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/ my postings would be at www.blog.tomw.net.au

The Google alternative sounds reasonable (FTP seems to be slow), but I can't understand the instructions provided. Google provide a migration tool which I can't get to work. I can't find a written description of what the tool does, just a video. There are no instructions for creating a sub-domain, just a domain and even there there are no instructions for the popular CPanel interface which my ISP uses. It seems likely that if I followed the instructions given, at best I would end up making my web site inaccessible, and replacing it with just my blog. In place of the usual online support, Google provide a Google Docs form with everyone's site listed.

Perhaps I am asking a lot for a free service, but I do have web ads on my blog pages and Google is probably making several hundred thousand dollars a year from these, so I do expect a little service.