Metapost: Shit

Today my option to revert to the old Blogger interface went away. *poof* Gone.

I hate the New Google so much. Not because I'm adverse to change (which we all know is obviously the WORST THING TO BE) but because New Google literally hurts me. It gives me literal pain in my head. I am composing this post while staring at my keyboard because the screen hurts me. Fuck.

The word on the Google forums is that disabled people who can't use the new interface can apparently go fuck themselves (I'm paraphrasing), so I'm pretty pissy at the moment. I can only assume that I'll have to move the blog, which with 1,000+ posts and gods know how many comments will obviously be SO VERY FUN.

Stay tuned, and I can only apologize for the inconvenience.


Silver Adept said...

Ow. I hope Google gets their act together on this and provides a non-stabby way to go do this.

And because I'm a fixer-type, what's the problem? Is it something a set of custom scripts like Greasemonkey could potentially take care of?

Ana Mardoll said...

Here's Liss' post on it:


Basically New Google literally hurts my eyes. I've been able to avoid New Google so far -- I use gmail, but via Outlook on my desktop and K-9 on my phone.

I *LIVE* in the dashboard for this blog, I probably spend 4+ hours a day looking at it. I can't look at New Google for more than 10 minutes without a splitting headache. It's something about the white and the hovering and the low contrast? I don't know.

I don't have visual disabilities, so I can only imagine how Liss is coping.

Silver Adept said...

Ooooooog. Yes, I can see now how that will cause problems (and I'm guessing they don't offer skinning, like new gmail does, to try and mitigate the problem of white and bright colors all together with nearly-invisible borders between units.)

We're sorry that there's such a problem with things. Now I wonder if you can induce website-specific stylesheet over-rides so that new blogger interface does not cause massive pain and suffering. (Still trying to fix. Sorry.)

Ana Mardoll said...


I did find a firefox/chrome plugin that lets you change page colors, but a major problem is the spacing -- New Google has LOTS of whitespace. (You can condense in Gmail a bit, but not in Blogger.) If anyone figures out a solution, do share -- there are a lot of folks over at Shakesville with the same problems.

This whole thing frustrates me to tears and makes me want to leave Google entirely. If I have to learn a shitty new interface I don't want, I may as well learn one from a website that has a contact number in case of customer complaints.

But I know that doing so will take weeks if not months of my life. JOY.

SherryH said...

Ugh, ugh, ugh. So sorry to hear that they are forcing the new interface on you, that it sucks so hard, and that they don't seem to care if it makes Blogger completely unusable to a significant portion of their users.

They did the same thing with Gmail. (I'd mostly gotten over it, but I'm definitely willing to get a mad on again over it...)

"Hey, we changed your Gmail over to the new interface!" Blech. Ugly. Do not want. Search Google (ah, the irony) to find out how to change it back. Fill out feedback form explaining the ugliness that is the new layout and how it contains so much less information and how much I hate it.

Several weeks later - oh, look, they've changed me over again. Change back. Fill out feedback form explaining that the new layout is piss-poor for my purposes and I won't use it.

Several weeks later, they change it again. I change it back. Rinse, repeat.

Finally, they change it and remove the option to change it back. I fill out a bug report. "Surely you wouldn't *really* change over to this monstrosity and give users no option to fix it. Must be a bug." No response*, and I'm left using Ugly!Gmail. (I could switch to another email, but haven't found one I like better for the volume of mail from different directions I get.)

*I'm not sure what response would have satisfied me. Not a tepid not-pology, for sure. "That's not a bug, that's a feature" would have made me laugh, at least.

Silver Adept said...

I may have a solution. There's an extension for Firefox / Chrome called "Stylish" that purports to allow you to apply your own CSS style to any website you want. If that's the case, garish color contrasts, giant amounts of white space, and ill-defined borders could all be fixed, allowing the new interface to not actively cause evil headaches. It will require an intrepid hacker to create the initial stylesheet, but after that, anyone with the extension could download and install the work and breathe a sigh of relief.

As of this comment, Stylish works with the latest versions of both Firefox and Chrome.

depizan said...

What a completely fucked up thing to do. They knew people didn't like it or we're unable to use it, so why force the change? It would be much better customer service to let people use the old version. This seems more like someone's petty power trip.

Anna said...

Wait wait... did you just end the post by apologising for the minor inconvenience-to-us of your awesome blog moving, which was caused by the major inconvenience-to-you of Google not giving a shit about accessibility?

Because, yeah, you're really not the one who should be issuing apologies here.

JarredH said...

Glad I wasn't the only one who had that reaction to Ana's apology.

JarredH said...

Keeping two radically different interfaces available as options means maintaining and offering technical support for two radically different interfaces. As a developer, I can certainly appreciate Google's desire to move back to supporting a single interface.

Having said that, I think Google has totally botched this and let down far too many users and potential users. I think they need to develop and offer an interface that is accessible to all their users.

Jess said...

Unfortunately, I have no ideas on how to improve the interface from the end-user side (bad form, Google, that we're even using phrases like "fix it from the end-user side" because of your absolute lack of proper design for accessibility.) But if Google's assholishness continues unabated, you find no satisfactory alternatives that will allow you to stay on the Blogger platform, and you make the decision to move the blog: I am in the process of moving a group book review blog (The Readers Cafe) to a self-hosted WordPress site from Blogger. We'll probably make the switch in the next couple of weeks. My experience hasn't been horrible, though yes, it was time-consuming. But if WordPress would be an option for you, I have accumulated a bunch of links on "how to do" stuff, and I'd be more than happy to share, and/or provide an extra set of hands to help out, should you need it.

Also, +1 Anna and Jarred - nothing for you to apologize for here!

JarredH said...

Question: Would using third party software be a possible solution? For example, MarsEdit (which is available for Mac, not sure about PC's) allows you to create and edit posts to blogs hosted by Blogger. That way you could still host your blog on Blogger, but use a (hopefully) friendly interface provided by third-party software.

Ana Mardoll said...

Ha, it's kind of what I do.

Ana Mardoll said...

Ironically, they don't provide tech support, which has been an ongoing problem with Blogger. But the resources point is valid. Though I think Google can afford a few extra servers. *sigh*

Unfortunately, I can't find a 3rd party solution that accesses ALL the blog features, as opposed to just posting. I would guess there's not been a high demand thus far.

Ana Mardoll said...

I found that. I'm going to have to mess around with it. A big problem for me is the white space, not the contrast issues (though those are an issue. Just not the MAIN issue). And I don't speak CSS.

Silver Adept said...

@Ana - I do speak CSS, or at least know where to find something appropriate for it. Looks like the right way to go is to tell the margins to go away and apply some amount of padding to the elements in question.

Maybe something like this page: http://pactumweb.com/tutorials/spacing.php can help with the necessary CSS and collapse a lot of the useless white space?

chris the cynic said...

And here I just hate it because it's ugly. Painfully ugly, but in an aesthetic rather than I have to look away from the screen way. Although I get so many headaches that it could be causing me them near constantly without me noticing because, hey, that's normal.

Anyway, I don't feel your pain, but I also hate google now. It's also not lost on me that the new interface seems to be less useful than the old one in various areas.

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