The previous post caused the sidebar to shift to the bottom of the page. I tried un-publishing it, but the problem remained. Individual post pages don't have the problem. Any ideas?
UPDATE: I solved the problem.
October 5, 2021
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27 comments:
I designed web pages but not the code...maybe a graphic/photo is too large and is pushing everything else around?
All I've got as I don't know the Blogger platform...
Go into Blogger, and on the left side there is a label called "Layout" (between "Pages" and "Theme"). Click on that "Layout" label. Where is that sidebar?
You probably messed up your BGM routes and/or your DNS
no wait; that was Facebook
The sidebar is on the right when you go back one page using "Older Posts". Just an observation.
"Go into Blogger, and on the left side there is a label called "Layout" (between "Pages" and "Theme"). Click on that "Layout" label. Where is that sidebar?"
It's where it always was, next to main/blog posts
I didn't change anything in layouts before the malfunction began
Someone somewhere updated a library that blogger calls as a dependency.
They messed with the public interface. Blogger makes calls to that library and something isn't there anymore or does something slightly different.
Blogger is sending a lot of tickets to some library owner right now. They will have to change their library calls or the depency will have to revert.
There is nothing you can do really except pick a different blogging service.
The more you learn about the nuts and bolts behind all of this the more I view it as a miracle that any of this works to be honest. This is all application layer stuff too. This works over the top of the Kernel layer and if you want to really get your mind bent you start looking at how the operating systems and the hardware/software interaction layers work.
It may be blogger, rather than anything you’ve done. My advice is to wait a few hours and see if the problem goes away.
I see the sidebar on the right where it's always been.
Notice that if you click on the post title and get to the "post page," the sidebar displays correctly. It's only the home page that has the problem.
Ah! No, wait, I found one post that doesn't display correctly, the gender pronouns thing! Let me check that out.
I'm republishing that one without the link.
That corrected the problem!
Do you think WaPo did something to that link? It was https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/04/does-your-kid-want-to-change-her-pronouns-read-this/
It makes no sense that a link would change your formatting, except for the fact that links don't 'break' like text does.
If a word like 'extraordinary' is at the end of a line, it breaks to 'extra-
ordinary.'
That link probably messed it up because of its length, but it's odd that it hasn't happened before...
I'm republishing that one without the link.
That corrected the problem!
That is very strange.
I think that Blogger does practically nothing to support the application.
There seems to be no way to report such a problem and to get a response.
I agree that it's strange, but it worked. I'm still interested in knowing why. I'm glad I thought of a way to do some trial and error.
"There is nothing you can do really except pick a different blogging service."
Why would a different service be better than Blogger?
Blogger has worked for me since 2004. I remember an occasional problem years ago, but nothing recently. This problem came out of a WaPo link.
Anyway, Blogger is Google, just as YouTube is Google, and I recently had a very good experience with YouTube (cancelling YouTube TV), so I'm feeling good about Google.
I switched from YouTube TV to Hulu, but we don't like Hulu and are going to go back to YouTube TV.
Ann Althouse said...
I agree that it's strange, but it worked. I'm still interested in knowing why. I'm glad I thought of a way to do some trial and error.
Careful! we'll make a software engineer out of you if you don't watch out!!
Reboot your computer.
There. I'm back on YouTube TV and off Hulu
Ann Althouse said...
I agree that it's strange, but it worked. I'm still interested in knowing why.
Then go back and "linkify" the url and see what happens. I doubt it is the url, most likely you picked up a control character of some sort when you were cutting and pasting quotes and that was the problem.
Years ago, I had that problem on my blog. Yes, the link length and where it breaks will shift the format. The solution for me was to take an extra step to use a link shortener like TinyURL.com and the problem was fixed. There are other such services, I just like this one.
Ann Althouse said...
"There is nothing you can do really except pick a different blogging service."
Why would a different service be better than Blogger?
It wouldn't necessarily be any different. It is how the system works.
The only reason another service would be better is because they are just better. It is all in the execution.
I was just trying to give a brief 30 second overview of what is going on. Blogger ate a longer more detailed description.
I love Wordpress. Perhaps your blog is too large for it, but whenever I have a problem, I call them and they answer the phone and fix it. Any time of the day or night, a helpful human is there.
Here’s what likely happened. The left (content) and right (sidebar) sides of your blog effectively function as two sheets of paper that have to be inserted into an invisible envelope. The width of the envelope is likely specified to be exactly the specified width of the left sheet plus the width of the right sheet. But if one sheet or the other is rendered in such a way that it is slightly wider than is specified, then the two sheets no longer fit, and the sidebar sheet is placed below the content sheet.
In this case, the link on the problematic post was rendered by the browser in a way that made the content sheet slightly wider than it was supposed to be. Unlike actual sheets of paper which are limited to a physical size, the width of the content sheet expanded. When you changed the problematic post, the content sheet reverted to its proper width, and the two sheets fit side by side in the invisible envelope again. As to why the browser wasn’t smart enough to prevent that expansion from happening, you could consider that a design defect. It is clever that the page width can expand in some contexts.
I don’t know enough about this particular HTML code to say whether that is fixable. It probably is, but the fix may have its own potentially bad side effects in this or other situations. Since it is a rare event, it’s probably not worth taking the time to have it fixed. Note that the problem would have gone away on its own after you had posted enough more posts that the offending post rolled off the bottom of your page.
@Left Bank of the Charles
Thanks for that explanation.
It makes sense.
" Perhaps your blog is too large for it...."
My blog has been too big to move for a very long time. I am just happy that Blogger continues to be able to hold it. I assume there is a day out there in the future when it will break and die.
" Perhaps your blog is too large for it...."
I've got big blogs
Oh I've got big blogs
And they're such big blogs
Fancy big blogs
And he's got big blogs
And she's got big blogs
(But Ann's got the biggest blogs of them all)
'My blog has been too big to move for a very long time.'
Too big to fail : )
“ I don’t know enough about this particular HTML code to say whether that is fixable. It probably is, but the fix may have its own potentially bad side effects in this or other situations. Since it is a rare event, it’s probably not worth taking the time to have it fixed. Note that the problem would have gone away on its own after you had posted enough more posts that the offending post rolled off the bottom of your page.”
My memory is that HTML allows for relative column spacing, or using what is left from one column as the width of the other. The problem is that Blogger has, essentially, a preprocessor that does this sort of thing for you, and it is buggy.
Back better than a decade ago, I ran a blog on Blogger, and being a programmer at heart, and having created all of the HTML for the web site for my patent practice by hand, I felt compelled to seriously customize my Blogger pages. For example, I limited the length of text displayed in a post (as is well known here, I can be quite verbose), then provided a mechanism to expand, contract, or even hide, the text of posts, and reverse it, at the individual blog entry level, or for the entire visible portion of the blog. It was slick. Then, Blogger changed their preprocessor, and issued new templates, including the very popular one that Ann uses. My custom templates, of course, broke, and it was a pain to fix them. About that time, I was hired by a big law firm, and blogging on anything remotely legal, technical, or political became problematic. And that was the end of my blogging career.
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