I know I have the option of writing my own html on here. But its been years since I’ve done that, and not everyone can do that. So yesterday I was taking a closer look at the things blogger offers to make things esier, and there are some things I so wish I could do, but blogger doesn’t offer.
I had a sighted friend look at my blog while we were chatting, and I wanted to make sure that all the labels aren’t in one long list. With a screen reader, its kinda hard to tell. Voiceover makes certain noises for new lines, so I really should have paid attention to that. Luckily, my friend informed me that all the labels are in a big block, so at least visually, it doesn’t make the blog really long.
But the thing with a screen reader is, it reads everything it encounters. So to get past all the labels, I have to go through every single one. The blog isn’t laid out nicely with headers. In some cases I can skip by using the headers to navigate, like skipping past the blog to get to the comments. But I can’t use headers to skip past the labels or the blog archive.
So I want a drop down menu for my labels. How much tidier that would be. Say you want all the Doggy Diaries post. You’d scroll down, open the drop down menu, select Doggie Diaries, and the page would reload with just those posts, just like it does by clicking the label. But it would eliminate the huge body of text with all the labels. Same with the blog archive. I’ve seen a blog archive drop down menu on another blog, but I have no idea how she achieved this.
Also, I’ve realized that some of my labels are incredibly redundant. So I want to delete a few, and rename some. Oh blogger, why couldn’t you allow us to edit the actual labels, rather than going through every damn post? How easy that would be. On the dashboard, have an area to edit labels. Each label would appear in an edit text box. You could have the option of renaming the label, or deleting it, and it would change all blogs associated with that label.
I tried to find out how to contact blogger, but as with every other google service, you have to post in a forum. I don’t want to post in a forum. I don’t care what answers I might get from other bloggers when it comes to this sort of thing. Not to mention it takes a CAPTCHA to post. I want to write directly to the blogger team. But there’s no email address or contact form, that I could find.
Oh, another good idea might be to include a labeling tutorial in the getting started section. When I first started, I didn’t get the point. It wasn’t until I started reading other blogs that it made sense.
And maybe have a disclamer in the security area that says, “if you select CAPTCHA security, you might exclude certain people from commenting”.
Another thing. On my Dashboard, it lists all the blogs I’m following, before my reading list. I can’t navigate by header to get to new blog posts, so I have to scroll past all the blogs I’m following. I know what blogs I’m following. I want to just get to new posts. Why not have the blogs I’m following in a drop down menu? Or have a link to “hide all” just like with labels when making a new post?
And, why not link the google reader to the reading list all in one place, so that non-blogger blogs can also be seen in my new post update, all in the same place? I know, I know, just get an RSS feeder, but why? I want it all on the same page, on my dashboard, so I can read all my updates, and post in the same place.
Does anyone know how to directly contact the blogger people?
