Sunday, July 26, 2020

Blogger Preview and Safari

I’ve tried the new Blogger interface and switched back. To my eyes, it’s terrible. But I just switched again to see if I would run up against a problem a fellow blogger and Safari user encountered: no Preview view for a draft post. I did. And I noticed that every time I chose Preview, the words "Pop-up window blocked" flashed by in the address bar. So it appears that Safari identifies the Preview view — which should open in a new tab — as a pop-up window. Apple’s fault? Google’s fault? Who knows. But everything works properly in Chrome.

Here’s how to get Preview view back in Safari:

Click on Safari in the menu bar.

Click on Settings for This Website.

For Pop-up Windows, click on whatever setting is displayed and change it to Allow. There won’t appear to be other options, but click and they’ll appear.
Google plans to switch all Blogger accounts to the new interface, so this fix is worth knowing about. For me it'll be one more reason to write posts in MarsEdit. One downside: because of Google rules, MarsEdit can’t upload images to Blogger. And the app’s developer Daniel Jalkut is honest enough to no longer list Blogger as compatible with MarsEdit. But the app does still work with Blogger for writing.

My only connection to MarsEdit is that of a happy user.

comments: 6

Daughter Number Three said...

I haven't gone back to try it again since early June, but I couldn't figure out how to do a block quote, and couldn't find (or the popup was maybe blocked?) to access the HTML view. Yech.

Michael Leddy said...

The pencil icon on the left lets you switch between Compose view and HTML view. Block quotation is available only in Compose view, from the ellipsis button (...) on the right. Not especially intuitive. I’ve already figured out that to write much of anything in the new Blogger, it’ll be necessary to use Compose view. The Return key doesn’t make a new line in HTML view, and there’s no longer an option to have it make one.

Keyboard shortcuts (an option built into the Mac and, I think, PCs) make stuff like the blockquote code easier. An app like aText or (the much more expensive) TextExpander is even better. You can copy a link, type a shortcut, and have the link pasted in, with the cursor positioned for typing whatever text goes with the link.

Sir Hugh said...

Thanks for your advice on sorting the Preview thing. Reading your post above and your comments you seem to use Blogger in a much more technical way than I do. I don't have anything to do with HTML, just preferring to keep things as simple as possible. I have now got my head round most of the new interface and apart from a few minor irritations I am finding it not much different from the original. I have no problem with uploading photos from my iMac desk-top to Blogger posts.

Michael Leddy said...

A nice feature with the new interface: if you upload an image and want to display it at a smaller size, all you need to change is the width. The height, for which there’s no setting, adjusts automatically.

Daughter Number Three said...

I guess we have until August 24 with the old Blogger... thanks for the tips. I found the block quote and HTML spots. What a lot of DIVs!

Michael Leddy said...

And if you choose Format HTML, there’s no undoing it. I really don’t see the point of these changes. At least we can leave “feedback” (via the question mark, top right, I think).