Thursday, August 31, 2006

Drop down menu for labels (categories)

Thanks to Ramani of Hackosphere, I now have a drop-down menu for the labels or categories. Check further down the sidebar to see the drop-down menu. To see all the labels.

If you want to have a drop-down menu of your own, surf over to Drop-down labels - First Blogger beta hack

Update: Drop-down menu hack was done successful, as seen on the web, but in the Template layout, when I tried to move the label element, got this error message: "An error occured. Please try again. This mean you will not be able to change the position of the drop-down menu using the template layout, but will have to use EDIT HTML to move it. In fact, with the hack, trying to move any other page element will result in the same error message.

Update: Changed over to Ramani's 3 column template. See 3-column Template for Blogger Beta. With that change of template, the drop-down menu for the labels is now no longer in this blog. Since it was just for testing purposes, I have decided not to replace it. BTW, it seems with the drop-down menu for label hack, dragging and dropping page element is no problem at all. See Chuck's comment in this post.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

At last, EDIT RAW HTML is here!

Well, the feature for Blogger Beta that many has been waiting for - EDIT RAW HTML is here! Only thing is, it is not called EDIT RAW HTML. It is just EDIT HTML. To get to the raw HTML for Blogger Beta, just click on the TEMPLATE tab, then EDIT HTML and you will have access to the raw HTML. See screenshot below (click on screenshot to enlarge):

Monday, August 21, 2006

Testing uploading of photos in various browsers

A few people have complained of problems uploading photos with Blogger Beta. So I am going to test to see how uploading of photos will go with different browsers. I will use Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer. (Note: I actually had made a first attempt, and succeeded in uploading one photo with Opera, and it was successful. I could see the HTML (in the EDIT HTML mode) and photo (in the COMPOSE mode). But don't know what I did, somehow I exited the page, and the post was gone. No time to publish. Now in my second attempt, I cannot find the toolbar where the UPLOAD PHOTO icon is located, and neither can I see the EDIT HTML and COMPOSE tabs. So I will publish this post and retry with the other browsers.

Now I am in Internet Explorer and trying again. Let's see how it goes.Well, it uploaded successfully on the second attempt.

Now I am going to pubish this post then try with FireFox.
Succeeded on the very first attempt. Very fast. For more information about FireFox, and also to download and install FireFox, go to FireFox Alert

Now I am going to publish, go back to Opera and try again.

Now I am in Opera No luck. I don't see the toolbar with the Upload Photo icon, nor the EDIT HTML and COMPOSE mode. Will try again tomorow. Don't know why when I first tried to upload with Opera, I could see the toolbar and the EDIT HTML tab and the COMPOSE tab, and now I can't. Unfortunately, I didn't publish fast enough to show that I was telling the truth.

Today I am going to try with Opera again. I am in the post editor now, and this time I can see the toolbar and the EDIT HTML and COMPOSE mode. I tried uploading a picture and succeeded the first time. Very fast. I am in the EDIT HTML mode now and will now cut and paste the HTML code for the newly uploaded picture below:


BTW the photos are at the curtesy of Tourism Malaysia. Malaysia is having a Visit Malaysia Year in 2007 and they are having loads of things in line for tourists. Make it a date in your calender.

Note: Photographps are copyrighted by Tourism Malaysia. To use them, you will have to get the their permission. They can be contacted at Email: enquiries@tourism.gov.my

Sunday, August 20, 2006

To test if the normal solution to large spaces caused by tables work

This table is created by typing the HTML for the table in a single line, without line breaks:
ItemPrice
apple$3.00
orange$2.20
pear$3.40
pineapple$2.40
banana$1.80
papaya$1.40
 

If you use the normal of formatting a table, see the result here: http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/08/testing-posting-tables-in-blogger-beta.html
There is a resulting wide space above the table, which if may lead readers to think that there is no table in your post.

You can see how it is done at this post here: How to avoid large white spaces above the table

Testing posting tables in Blogger Beta

This post is to test if the normal way of formatting a HTML for a table causes large spaces as in the standard Blogger. You can see the codes I used for the table at this post here: How to avoid large white spaces above the table




















ItemPrice
apple$3.00
orange$2.20
pear$3.40
pineapple$2.40
banana$1.80
papaya$1.40

Friday, August 18, 2006

Introduction

This blog is specially to test out the newly rolledout Blogger Beta. There are many new interesting features added, like labels, ablity to alter the appearance of the blog using the mouse (meaning one need not deal with HTML), etc.