Blogger has just rolled out a new "feature" that severly interferes with the way I'm displaying photos both here and on my main website. They're using their own, proprietary "lightbox" for displaying embedded photos all of a sudden. No announcement on the official Blogger blog on that, I stumbled over it by chance after posting a new photo. Way to go. The only coverage is on the Google Operating System blog, where I just vented in a heartily "how the hell do I turn this shit off?" comment.
I don't know what the folks at Google/Blogger are thinking when they introduce a feature like this without a way to turn it off. I don't know how many photo blogs where authors spent a good deal of time on the fine-tuning of the design they've just broken.
A couple of weeks ago, they announced "You can do amazing things with Blogger" on the offical Blogger blog ("Blogger Buzz") - I was hooked, and decided to use Blogger for my main website because of that very article.
And now they're breaking the user experience with that "feature" (just look at the artist pages on http://www.pinchgallery.com for example - images open in their own, stylish, designed lightbox, and under that, the rather bland Blogger lightbox opens. What a mess!
I hope this is just a glitch. Or maybe I should be looking for a hosting platform that leaves me in full control, instead of being exposed to the randomness at Blogger. Yes, I'm seriously pissed off.
UPDATE: here's the "main" thread in the Blogger help forums where A LOT of people complain about that new feature already, want it rolled back, and the Blogger folks get a (IMHO well-deserved) verbal beating.
UPDATE 2: in the thread mentioned above, on page 5 of the discussions, user "Bonjour Tristesse" posted a fix that works for me and does not break my existing Lightbox2 image presentation.
UPDATE 3: in what appears to be a very Google-typical move, after all the protest in the help forums over the weekend, Google officially announced the new feature on the Blogger Buzz blog as if nothing had happened, and nothing was wrong with it. Congratulations.
UPDATE 4: There's an announcement from Brett of the Blogger team in the forums, posted 21-Sep-2011, that they will roll back the feature and "make improvements". Whatever that means (no mention whether it will be able to turn it on/off on a per post basis, or how, what, etc.). We'll see!
I have the same problem and want to retourn to the old feature. I do not need a Dia-show, but the possibility to enlarge the pictures stepwise.
ReplyDeleteI hope, there is a possibility for retourn.
Thank You.
On top of that, on my blog, any photos posted over 18 months ago do not appear in the slideshow. Instead, a small red rectangular box appears in the photo, and the slideshow itself does not proceed. (This phenomenon occurs in Firefox; not sure about Internet Explorer.) See: http://troop60147.blogspot.com/2010/03/3-15-10-girl-scouts-98th-anniversary.html
ReplyDeleteAny ideas on this?
Hello Marc and Natalie, I updated my post with a link to a thread in the Blogger help forums where a possible solution is available - however, that solution is a hack, and not a permanent fix. It doesn't work with Lightbox2 (which I'm using) for example.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I can confirm that the images in your blog don't show in the new Blogger slideshow in Google's Chrome browser.
Alexander, I just applied the hack described here: http://englishjavadrinker.blogspot.com/2011/09/fixing-bloggers-mistakes.html
ReplyDeleteSeems to work. Please let me know what you see on your end. Thanks.
Please check this link http://englishjavadrinker.blogspot.com/2011/09/fixing-bloggers-mistakes.html
ReplyDeleteI applied it on my blog (http://explorecr.blogspot.com/)and it worked.
Thanks for the link to the fix/hack. It doesn't work for me because I'm using Lightbox2 by Lokesh Dhakhar as my photo presentation module. I'm still hoping that Blogger will roll back that feature or at least make it optional.
ReplyDeleteI want to thank for putting back the "slide-show"
ReplyDeleteThanks to all, who did it!