The Real Blogger Status

Some blog owners, when publishing a new page or post, really appreciate the "Preview" option in the page / post editor. In some cases, some people may use "Preview" so instinctively, they may overlook the limitations. We see the confusion, occasionaly, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Where is my page? There's no selection, under "Pages to show", even! The blog owner does not realise that unpublished pages or posts won't be visible, outside the page / post editor, and the "Preview" window.

We're seeing a few reports from blog owners having problems with Previewing their posts, using Post Editor in the New Blogger GUI. I can't preview my blog post, while I am composing it! It appears that Blogger has changed the New GUI Post Editor, to open the Preview window in a popup, instead of a new tab or window. Almost all browsers, by default, block popup windows. If you want to use Preview Mode, in the New GUI, you'll have to check all relevant filters , and ensure that popup windows are allowed. It's possible that Blogger decided that a popup window was easier to provide than a separate tab / window, involving cross-site scripting, as the Template Designer Live Preview currently requires. >> Top

Some Blogger blog owners, as they develop a post, use Preview mode to periodically observe what the post looks like. A few owners are confused about the privacy of a post, as it is Previewed. Some think that the temporary nature of the Preview window makes the content, as Previewed, intentionally unavailable for viewing by their readers. Fortunately, the links - even though they may be clickable by the readers, lead nowhere.

The new "Preview" mode in Blogger Post Editor is a considerable improvement over what we used to have - but it still can cause confusion. Lately, we see occasional glimpses of confusion, about it's use. I changed my blog, and the changes were visible when I hit Preview - but the blog was unchanged when I Published, and then viewed my changes.

One of the most exciting features of the Template Designer is the Live Preview. As you change any blog template setting using the Designer wizard, in the upper pane, you immediately see the effect of the change in the lower pane. That is the intended effect, when the wizard works. The Template Designer, as most Blogger blog maintenance wizards, runs in "Blogger.com". The live preview window, however, runs in the domain where the blog is published. This requires that both "blogger.com" and the blog domain have trusted status, and causes a vulnerability called cross-site scripting .

Personally, I don't care for indented paragraphs - though I know some who like this. I think that justifying all lines in my posts, straight to the left margin, makes for a cleaner look. And, I separate each paragraph with hard line breaks, not "<p> ... </p>", which makes typing my posts faster - though that does complicate things a bit, by requiring that I use the "Convert line breaks" setting . Not everybody agrees with my viewpoint, which is normal for the blogosphere. Some folks like indented paragraphs. And from them, we see the occasional query I put blank spaces at the front of my paragraphs, and that looks fine in Preview mode. But the published blog shows no indents. Why? And the immediate answer is Preview mode, and the published blog, will always differ .

Occasionally, we see confused queries from bloggers I setup my blog, and it looks OK in Preview. When I look at it online, it looks like crap. Help! or Nothing displays right, using Preview mode. When I look at the blog later in my browser, it looks better, but it is missing details. And there are examples of bloggers who confuse Preview mode with reality. Does this look like this post? When the post is published, it is added to the blog with the template code providing formatting. Under post editor, the template isn't part of the display. See the type face in the picture? In Preview mode, all of the text displays in Times Roman, the Blogger default font. I hate seraph fonts, but in Preview mode, without the template, that's what I'll see for the text. See the way the text wraps around the photo, where it shouldn't? One critical difference (for me), between Preview mode and reality, is Preview mode doesn't observe "<br clear=left />...