Life is Healthy

And Blogger users get a special discounted rate. I went to the last one and it was great. This time, the BBS is being held in a palace. An actual palace. The Palace in San Francisco, to be precise. Publish and Prosper August 17-19, 2005.

We have a fix for Blogger users experiencing template woes due to our recent update. First, I'd like to explain what the issue was.

In order to provide the layout options in our newly released Blogger Images we had to wrap all posts in a <div clear:both> tag. For some users this resulted in template formatting issues (even without uploading images). So today we introduced a new setting to suppress that markup.

Please note that suppressing the markup will result in layout problems when using left or right alignment for images. You should only change this setting if you are currently having trouble with normal posts.

How To Use The Setting

1. Sign in to your Blogger Dashboard
2. Click the "Change Settings" icon next to your blog
3. Click "Formatting" under the Settings tab
4. Choose "No" on "Enable float alignment"

Update#2: There is a way to fix the layout problem without using any special code. It is now just a setting in Blogger: Read all about it.

Update: We've got a solution that provides users an easy way to disable the markup that is causing them some layout glitches with their blog. It will allow those who have custom templates and certain older templates to fix their blog up right proper. We're building and testing the solution now and we'll let you know when it is ready.

As mentioned on our status blog, recent updates to Blogger are causing annoying layout problems for some of our users. We are working on the bigger solution for this but in the meantime we've got a quick workaround for what appears to be one of the biggest culprits--the big space at the top of your blog, most notably blogs using the Bluebird template. This workaround requires that you modify your template. Here's how to do it:

Just below the line that says <style> or <style type="text/css"> try adding this:

#main #menu {
position: absolute;
right: 21px;
}

The reponse to Blogger Images has been huge! There's LOTS of images being posted and we're psyched. Some users did experience a template issue which I just posted about here and we're working that out now. (Keep an eye on the status blog for that.) Otherwise, post 'em if you got 'em. Like so:

Portabella's are $5.00 a pound. How about that?

As you can see by this screenshot of the Blogger.com front page featuring my cat, we have launched Blogger Images. Now you can put a photo (or any JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF or BMP format image) into your blog posts easily and for free. From your hard drive or from the Web. How do you like that? Also, since I can just click a button, here is a photo I took earlier today:

I'm pretty sure local laws require a doctor to be on-site wherever deep fried twinkies are being sold. (If they don't, they should.)

Found via BoingBoing is this blog called Squattercity about squatters and squatter cities around the world. The blogger, Robert Neuwirth, is a writer who spent two years living in squatter communities on four continents and has published a new book called Shadow Cities in an attempt to humanize these maligned settlements.

MIT's running a Weblog Survey, if you've got a few spare minutes.