The pencil icon that allowed for quick edits to Blogger posts and widgets disappeared a few days ago, along with the tools icon for editing widgets. But there are ways to get them back. Two posts from Adam at Too Clever by Half, this one and this one, explain.
I took what looked like the path of least resistance: I downloaded the Mac app Cascadea (new to me, $2.99) and created a Blogger Tools style for my blog, typing in my URL and one line of code:
You can also restore the Quick Edit tools so that they display (in unusable form) on any Blogger blog. That change makes it possible to once again delete comments that you’ve left on other blogs while logged into Blogger..item-control {display:initial;}
An ideal fix would have the Quick Edit tools visible on your blog alone, and only when you’re logged in and can use them. But to paraphrase Salzberg’s Theory of Pizza, it’s better to have a pencil you don’t want (or can’t use) than to want a pencil you don’t have.
Having just spent more than half an hour trying to figure out how to get Blogger to display side-by-side images with wraparound text, I will agree with Too Clever by Half that Google continues to make Blogger more difficult to use.
January 25: The Quick Edit tools are back. But to have them available in Safari, you have to allow cross-site tracking. (The setting is under the Privacy tab in Safari Preferences.) I’d rather not have cross-site tracking, so I’m going to use the Cascadea modification and just get used to seeing the tools all the time. It’ll be like living in a home workshop.
comments: 4
I was going to try to figure out how to do this, because the pencil is so handy, but then I saw it's still on my blog.
Because I have an old theme layout?
I hope it stays...
It seems like you fight google a lot in terms of usability. Do you ever consider moving to wordpress?
Fresca, I don’t know what would explain that. I have an older theme too, Minima, highly tweaked.
Charles, I’ve gotten as far as glancing at the directions for porting a Blogger blog over there. I think “sunk costs” explains my willingness to stay here.
Fresca, it looks like the pencil is back. But to get it in Safari, you have to allow cross-site tracking (under the Privacy tab in Safari Preferences). That must be how Safari knows that you’re signed in to Blogger. I’d rather not have cross-site tracking, so I’m going to use the Cascadea modification, even though the pencil’s presence when I’m not signed in is a little annoying.
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