In response to a blogger query as to whether it is possible to make a post title an image which is clickable (a hyperlink), I am now trying to test that now. If it is successful, you should see an image in the post title. If not, I will just have to change the post title and update this post.

Well, as you can see, the title of this post is an image. Try clicking on it and see what happens.

For further information, I will put what is inside the post title (in the post editor) in a scrollbox below:

<a href="http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v336/cikgu/newpost.jpg" alt="test"></a>

Just one note. If my memory didn't fail me, I did the test with a photo hosted by Blogger as described in this post: Getting New Blogger to host pictures for your profile, sidebar, Header, etc.. However, it couldn't published and I can't remember if there was a message that the character length exceeded the limit set by Blogger. There probably was, but maybe one day I will test that as well. This probably was because the picture URL using that method was too long. I uploaded the picture to Photobucket and this test was successful as Photobucket gives a shorter URL for the picture.

Testing to see if images, when deleted, will also be removed from the Web.

In Old Blogger, after you upload a picture, irrespective of whether you delete the picture from the post or delete the whole post itself, the picture will remain on the web. I believe that is no longer true for New Blogger and I am going to test it in this post. I will post a picture of a castle beside the Sarawak River in Kuching, Borneo Island, Malaysia below:

(photo deleted 24 May 2007)

This picture will be deleted in a few days tine. To enable you to see if the picture is still on the web, I put the URLs of the picture in the scrollbox below:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjW7tWZHdgVpl2MfHo2mzYb5i60cJxcyXMXgVXWiWo3P3ng7ibZCZob3lCViX8O6xX9E6Y5j9ZeRiK0_WfMpsvvthV7WZWPCoW94W1LOJihmLhceLldvY4pweBWK-Mby-LeehL2cE9Nm5N/s1600-h/CastleBySarawakRiver.JPG

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjW7tWZHdgVpl2MfHo2mzYb5i60cJxcyXMXgVXWiWo3P3ng7ibZCZob3lCViX8O6xX9E6Y5j9ZeRiK0_WfMpsvvthV7WZWPCoW94W1LOJihmLhceLldvY4pweBWK-Mby-LeehL2cE9Nm5N/s400/CastleBySarawakRiver.JPG

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjW7tWZHdgVpl2MfHo2mzYb5i60cJxcyXMXgVXWiWo3P3ng7ibZCZob3lCViX8O6xX9E6Y5j9ZeRiK0_WfMpsvvthV7WZWPCoW94W1LOJihmLhceLldvY4pweBWK-Mby-LeehL2cE9Nm5N/s1600/CastleBySarawakRiver.JPG

Update: 26 May 2007: The first link resulted in a webpage displaying the photo. The second and third link lead to Microsoft Photo editor displaying the photo. Looks like I will have to test the links again because if I am not wrong, the Blogger Help page said they will be removed from the web after 24 hours. I have made another post with a picture which will be deleted, and for record purposes, I put the picture URLs below in a scrollbox:

First URL in the picture HTML
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_sEyw6txVACs/RlccmyTd7tI/AAAAAAAAAi4/u2P8voCElgc/s1600-h/delete+photo.jpg

Second URL in the picture HTML
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_sEyw6txVACs/RlccmyTd7tI/AAAAAAAAAi4/u2P8voCElgc/s400/delete+photo.jpg

By clicking on the picture and viewing Page Source
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_sEyw6txVACs/RlccmyTd7tI/AAAAAAAAAi4/u2P8voCElgc/s1600/delete%2Bphoto.jpg

Update 11 June 2007: The result for the first test is still the same. First URL led to a photo on the web, second and third URL led to the photo being downloaded, with the second URL giving a smaller image and the third URL giving a larger photo.

For the second test (post deleted), first URL led to a message [delete+photo.jpg]
and second and third URL led to error message:

Not Found
The requested URL /s400 was not found on this server.

I want to test again because it has come to my knowledge that when you delete a post with photos, there are options of whether to leave the photo on the web or delete them. It could be that in my deleting post test, the options were below the fold and I did not see it. So I am going to publish another post with photo and then delete the post. Will report again the result.

Update 11 June 2007 (second update): I published a post with 2 images. The URL of the photos are in the scrollbox below, with the first URL being the first one in the HTML for the image (same as the URL you will see in the address bar when you click on a picture), the second being the second URL in the image HTML and the third the actual URL of the image which you get by selecting VIEW > PAGE SOURCE in the menu bar of the browser when you are in a page with just the image:

URL of image to be retained
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibi06v9wsXf7TSLQAHnmoq7_BPMdbC7V1NrM3lQCDQLEsAdc2e42ud4SLkAYPhWY8QYAR6tkZOflNAg7is7KVpc_WxQOMOiKs7iHAtBhZ0aOJd68kGAmbANLSr8IIp_Gn86KvCCsl4GjjB/s1600-h/Blogger+Contact+Us.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibi06v9wsXf7TSLQAHnmoq7_BPMdbC7V1NrM3lQCDQLEsAdc2e42ud4SLkAYPhWY8QYAR6tkZOflNAg7is7KVpc_WxQOMOiKs7iHAtBhZ0aOJd68kGAmbANLSr8IIp_Gn86KvCCsl4GjjB/s400/Blogger+Contact+Us.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibi06v9wsXf7TSLQAHnmoq7_BPMdbC7V1NrM3lQCDQLEsAdc2e42ud4SLkAYPhWY8QYAR6tkZOflNAg7is7KVpc_WxQOMOiKs7iHAtBhZ0aOJd68kGAmbANLSr8IIp_Gn86KvCCsl4GjjB/s1600/Blogger+Contact+Us.jpg

URL of image to be deleted from web
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sEyw6txVACs/RmxlveFJmSI/AAAAAAAAAjc/Ty9kAyh5GXg/s1600-h/amazon+gift+ideas.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sEyw6txVACs/RmxlveFJmSI/AAAAAAAAAjc/Ty9kAyh5GXg/s400/amazon+gift+ideas.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sEyw6txVACs/RmxlveFJmSI/AAAAAAAAAjc/Ty9kAyh5GXg/s1600-h/amazon+gift+ideas.jpg

When I delete the post, the following options appeared and it was right above the fold, very visible. So it must have been introduced after I did the earlier test, otherwise I would have seen it:



I have deleted the post, with one to keep and the other one to be deleted. Let us see what happens after 24 hours.

Update 13 June 2007: I tested the photo URLs above and for the URLs of the photo which I opt to be retained when I deleted the post, the photo could still be seen on the web or can be downloaded. For photo URLs above for which I opted to be deleted, they resulted in a [something] dispalyed (no photo, but cannot copy and paste for Flock browser I am currently using), or resulted in a 404 Not Found error message. You can copy the URLs, paste them in the browser address bar and try them yourself.

Testing adding link to add del.icio.us at bottom of post

This site How to add del.icio.us links to your posts described a way of adding a link to add a post to del.icio.us at the bottom of every post, so I decided to test it out. The test is successful and you can see the result in this blog Good Health Information.

The method will involve adding a script to the template. Whenever you make any changes to the template, it is always wise to backup the template first and if you are not familiar with how to do it, refer to this post: Backing up and changing template. The post will also show how to get to the template editor window.

In the template window, you will have to find the line
<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'/>

An easy way to do it is to click inside the template editor window, either press the keys ctrl+A or right-click and click "select all" to highlight the whole template. Press ctrl+C or right-click again and chose "copy" to copy into the clipboard, open Notepad, and paste the template into Notepad. Highlight the whole codes, then click "Edit" in the menu bar and chose "Find". Copy and paste the line you want to find into the "Find" field, then click "Find next". The line will be highlighted. Create some space below the line, then copy the script from the above site and paste it in. Highlight the whole template in Notepad again and copy into clipboard. Go back to the template editor. The whole template should still be highlighted. Just click the DELETE key, then paste the content of the clipboard into the now empty template editor window. Preview, and if OK, click "Save template".

Update 19 May 2007: Found out that Blogsearch take into consideration the number of times that your site/posts have been bookmarked. So I think I will add that to all my major sites, including this one.

Testing New Blogger autosave

According to Blogger Buzz, New Blogger now autosave your post in case your computer crash, etc. Here are extracts from their post:

"Today we're adding autosaving of draft posts to the Blogger post editor. Now you don't have to feel so bad about browser crashes, random laptop restarts, or that hamster vs. gerbil war going on behind your desk that keeps knocking your power cord out of the socket, because Blogger is automatically saving as you type! It's doing it to me right now. Even if I..."

"the page will periodically send a copy of the text, title, labels, etc. to our servers. We do this about once a minute, unless you type a lot, in which case we'll save as soon as you stop typing,"

I am going to leave this post editor window, open a new tab to view the Dashboard without leaving this post editor window (if you use Internet Explorer 6, there is no tabbed browsing and my strong suggestion to you to to install FireFox. It is much more superior than Internet Explorer 6. You can read more about FireFox at What is FireFox and why you should be using it. Statistics says the majority of surfers uses Internet Explorer. For them, I strongly suggest they get Firefox. You can download and install Firefox by clicking "Browse the web faster. Get Firefox with the Google toolbar" text link at the top of the right sidebar of my blogs. It is only recently that Microsoft is trying to catch up with Firefox by introducing Internet Explorer 7, which now has tabbed browsing. In any case, I find having more than one browser so useful that I have 4 browsers in my computer - FireFox (my favorite), Internet Explorer, Opera and Flock. If want to know the advantages of having more than 1 browser, surf over to Why you should be using more than 1 browser,


OK, I don't know how many minutes have elapsed since I started typing this post. I haven't published the post yet. I opened a new tab by right-clicking "Edit Posts" and selecting "Open link in new tab" and here is the screenshot of part of the Dashboard (click on screenshot to enlarge):



As you can see, even though I haven't published this post yet, you can see this post saved as a draft (automatically, I didn't do anything). Now I am going to publish this post. (The only problem is, I am trying to add the label "testing" by showing all the labels, but Blogger display a message "Now Blogger saves your drafts automatically and it hides that label because it is at the bottom of the list of labels. I have to type the label manuallly. I wonder how long Blogger will continue to display that message and hide part of the label list.

Update 20 May 2007: When Blogger implemented autosave, it caused a number of problems, among which are

- Publishing problems in Safari (The Save Now, Preview and Add Image
buttons don't respond)
- Comments get disabled (thanks for that info - is this strictly
related to the autosave feature?)
- Possible publishing problems and comment link problems when you use
the back button in the post editor

I have been informed that Blogger is aware of the problem and is working on it. So just be patient if you are having any problems with comments, etc.




Books for Google Blogger

How to adjust the height of the Header with a graphic as a background

A blog reader asked how to reduce the Header height of a blog with a graphic background in a comment in this post Adding graphic to your blog Header (click BACK button to get back to this post), and I have done that before in this blog: Business, travel and leisure. However, it was sometime back. I can only guess now. I think what I did was first crop the graphic with Irfanview to the proper height, upload the graphic to the web (this can be done using various methods including what is described in this post Getting New Blogger to host your pictures for the profile photo, sidebar, header, etc or using an external host like Photobucket, then getting the URL to the photo on the web.

Now you need to tamper with your template and a good thing to do is always to backup your template before you do that. If you are unfamiliar with how to do it, you should refer to Backing up and changing templates for the New Blogger which will also show you how to get to the template editor.

Now, in the template editor window, I think I looked for the blocks

#header {
margin: 5px;
border: 1px solid $bordercolor;
text-align: center;
color:#FFFFFF;
}

and then added

background: url(http://.......

so that the block of codes become

#header {
margin: 5px;
background: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrTETiKvhpKDzYy0w4mT8bRE7d-DeEZugM5mZnBvlOaYGlb3BA1SVXIwAz16X2wwTnxWZ1tTPtgTd8oTf9IvXPL3cnR6ho67rLu6oh5tJsB89ktZH4dFcjaBvCdhKH7ZXcw3AQptubNypk/s1600/Bukit+Tinggi,%2BPahang%2BHEADER%2BGRAOHIC.jpg);
border: 1px solid $bordercolor;
text-align: center;
color:#FFFFFF;
}

I am not very sure if that was the method, and if I have the time, perhaps I will test it again and see if that was what I did. And if I do that, I will make an update here.

phydeaux3 Label Cloud Hack

phydeaux3 has described a hack for converting the New Blogger standard Label List to a label cloud at Code for New Blogger Tag Cloud/Label Cloud. I have decided to test it and see if it works. I tried the hack for this blog Gizmos and Gadgets, and the test was successful. The only problem was that blog used Ramani's of Hackosphere New Blogger fixed width Neo template, and the color for the minimum number of labels was black, and it was hardly visible. I had to experiment with changing the colors until the label colors was nice and visible. I had to change what phydeaux3 set for the colors to

<script type='text/javascript'>
// Label Cloud User Variables
var cloudMin = 1;
var maxFontSize = 20;
var maxColor = [255,255,255];
var minFontSize = 10;
var minColor = [191,240,255];
var lcShowCount = false;
</script>

to make the labels easily visible. You can see the Label Cloud at the bottom of the left sidebar of the blog Gizmos and Gadgets.

For the alteration, I used ColorPic to help me determine the RGB values to input into the maxColor and minColor.