The Real Blogger Status

We're seeing confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about unfairly limited Blogger / Google support policies. Why can I not Follow my favourite blog, without using a Google account? and Why must I upgrade my computer, to be able to use Chrome? Some blog owners and readers take the support policy limits personally, as if Blogger / Google is punishing them - or their readers - for not using the right account to login, or not upgrading their software.

Sometimes, you may find yourself reporting a problem, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken - and observe that nobody else has the same problem. If there's any normal problem activity in the forum, you might find yourself waiting - in vain - for an immediate answer to your problem report. While you wait for advice, why not do some basic analysis of your problem? A differential test set of your problem, based on some reasonably basic details, can help you see where many problems may originate.

This month, we've seen more than a few reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about various Blogger dashboard problems. Both the Overview and Post Editor dashboard sections seem vulnerable to problems - typically described as bX code terminations . Many of the people reporting problems admit that they are using Internet Explorer V8. For some blog owners, the choice of staying with IE V8 is not an option. Get everyone to use Chrome, and don't support those using IE V8. Win XP works fine. Everyone can't get new computers or operating systems, every time some new software comes out! Unfortunately, Windows XP was sunsetted, by Microsoft, some time ago - and IE V8 is the last version of that browser that will run, on Windows XP. Windows XP and IE V8 may be "good enough" for now - but time is running out, on both.

In the jungle, when the big ape speaks, everybody listens. In the computer jungle, Microsoft is the big ape. Yesterday, the big ape burped. Yesterday was the second Tuesday of the month , aka "Patch Tuesday". And Microsoft issued a patch array that was described by one Microsoft MVP as "brutal". If you (or your readers) suddenly start seeing problems using Blogger, or accessing blogs, you might want to carefully consider what changes were recently made to your computer (your readers computers). It's possible that patches being made available this week , in many cases automatically (and without concern by the computer owner), may cause interesting problems. All problems are not caused by Blogger . Really. >> Top

Many times in the Blogger Help Forum , we see bloggers angrily complaining Why does Blogger not work now? It worked yesterday! What did Blogger break today? and sometimes, we will see a trend of multiple bloggers complaining of the same problem. Generally, and given enough bloggers with the same complaint, Blogger Support will investigate, tweak some code, and things will get back to normal. The latter scenario doesn't happen immediately, though, nor does it happen consistently.