Friday, January 25, 2013

My Dynamic View Experience using Google's Blogger

We've heard the politicians tell us that the U.S. economy is recovering and that a lot of jobs are being created. But, every time we read the newspapers, watch TV, or listen to the radio, we hear about a major layoffs in various companies.

So, last December, I decided to start a new blog recording the major layoffs occurring in the United States that I've read or heard about. I figured that by doing this, it would be easier to judge whether the politicians were right or wrong.

Thus, I launched the blog US Corporate Layoffs using Blogger's Dynamic View template as shown below.

When using Dynamic Views, the visitor is offered a choice of views by which they can see your site. However, the author must choose a default, or master, view. I chose the Classic view template because it is more like the other standard Blogger templates in that it simply presents all the blog posts in single scrollable format.


I had several reasons for using the Dynamic View template. First, I just think it looks "cool". Second, a user can change the display format by himself, and see just Thumbnails, or lists of posts at a glance. Third, because of the nature of the content, I thought that a simple, uncluttered, structure would be the most appropriate.

Lastly, I thought that because Dynamic Views were nearly 2 years old, Google would have most of the bugs corrected.

However, I was wrong about Google's performance and found a few frustrating features inherent in Dynamic Views.
  • Often, when the blog is initially loaded, the CSS heading and sidebar links fail to load. When this occurs, the selected color scheme is gone as well. The visitor is required to refresh the page 1 or more times in order to see the site properly.
  • When writing and pressing the Preview button 2 times or more time, the resulting Preview often displays the wrong post and loses the s resultse CSS formatting.
  • After the post Preview is shown, the overlay "Preview" banner in the upper left corner doesn't display. This leads to confusion as to whether the post has been published or not.
  • When adding and placing images in a post, the published image placement may not be placed exactly where it shows in the post editor or the preview window. This then results in other formatting problems that may be seen in the published post.
  • Embedded post images do not become Thumbnails display in the Flipcard, Magazine, Mosiac, Snapshot, or Timeslide views unless they (the images) were uploaded directly into the post. (They cannot be and not hosted by a 3rd party).
  • Changing the blog default color scheme doesn't work unless you use IE browser.
  • 3rd Party widgets such as nRelate, Feedjit, will not display.  
Below are samples of alternate layouts. The first is the Flipcard. As you will see, only one post has an image Thumbnail. The others only contain the post Title text. The reason for this is because I only embedded an image into the first post. All the others are links to other 3rd party locations.


The second layout  shows the Timeslide format. Again, because only the first post image is embedded, it is the only Thumbnail shown in the display. While all the other posts contain graphic images, they do not display as Thumbnails.


In summary, although I find some of the Dynamic View features lacking, I think that the overall effect of using Dynamic Views for this blog is most appropriate. However, if you are considering using Blogger's Dynamic Views, be fully aware of its limitations before beginning to use these templates.

6 comments:

  1. Hi there,

    Thanks for the post, really useful. Is there really no way to use Linkwithin or nRelate on dynamic views on blogger?

    Here's my blog: http://www.eatplaylivewithme.com/ and I would love to have related posts at the bottom of each article.

    Thanks,

    Ellie

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ellie

      First, I must say "Wow!!!", your blog is great. Your pictures are terrific and the articles are interesting (at least to me).

      But back to your question - I'll submit your question to the nRelate folks. But, I don't think that they can accomplish getting this to work, since the display content is dynamically generated by internal google scripts - which seem to ignore other user added content as well.

      I added their code on my US Corporate Layoffs blog, but nothing shows up. So, I suspect it is out of nRelate's control.

      However, I'll get back to you if I hear something more positive.

      And, don't give up on your blog. It is really impressive!

      JL...

      Delete
    2. I have related posts on my dynamic template blog http://www.irkitated.com

      I use a browser add on for chrome called Zemanta. Google it, its brilliant and works well for me.

      Delete
  2. I have a fix that sorts a lot of the issues i was having on my blog http://www.irkitated.com

    It is something to do with the timeout function on dynamic templates. It also stops the dynamic template from loading incorrectly every few loads, as mine was doing.

    Try this...

    It wont let me post html code here but i have put the answer at this link

    https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/blogger/S_uVwRQQrOY%5B501-525-false%5D



    Worked for me :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I use AddThis and LinkWithin happily on my Blogger Dynamic View sites, e.g. funny-joke-pictures.com, using a script I got from http://dynamicblogger.com.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Robert

      Your funny joke pictures site is very funny & I enjoyed.

      However, the LinkWithin & AddThis are free.

      I cannot see why anyone would want to pay dynamic blogger for these free services.

      But, whatever

      JL ....

      Delete

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