Blogger's Pissing Me Off

Well, apparently it's All Meta Week here at RBE!

Back when the new interface was introduced in the spring, I tried it out and reverted to the familiar one, figuring they were still working on getting the bugs out, particularly since the implementation was pushed back. I didn't dislike the new interface aesthetically - yeah, it's incredibly bland and kinda ugly, but so what? I don't go to my blog dashboard to be visually stimulated.

But I expected at least the same level of functionality.

With the old interface, my post list page included a list of all my tags/labels, so I could click on one and bring up all the relevant posts. Now, that feature is gone. Tags show with individual posts, but there is no list or cloud of tags on my post page, meaning I will probably need to locate a widget instead, further cluttering up the main page.

I miss being able to view posts from my post list page as well. Remember the little arrow? Click it and the post becomes visible, with links in the page actually active? I used that a lot, as opposed to preview, which is slower to open and doesn't include live links.

And I can't remember exactly how they were positioned before, but in the first eight or nine months I managed to click the Publish button instead of the Save button exactly once, With the new interface, it's now happened three times already.

Early on on expanded my composition window to full size for my desktop monitor, but it's annoyingly large when viewed on my laptop, and I can't shrink it down again, on either computer - neither dragging the corner nor double-clicking it allow me to make the window smaller.

Finally, my reading list disappears more often. It happened a couple of times with the old interface, but now it happens more frequently, and for longer times - the other day my reading list was gone for more than four hours that I know of.

All of this pales in comparison to the ultimate sin, of hitting Publish and have a post disappear altogether into the ether, never to be seen again. Fortunately, it was a Cinematic post with nothing but a YouTube link and easy to replicate - if it was anything else, I'd probably've ended up on Google's doorstep with a torch and a pitchfork in my hands.

And of course no amount of feedback sent ever merits a reply from our Masters at Google.

I've read other bloggers complaints about Blogger, but honestly I never encountered much in the way of problems before the new interface was implemented. I'm generally not someone who objects to change for the sake of change - I like new and improved as much as the next guy or gal, but if you promise new and improved, you'd better friggin' deliver the on improved.