This opera is shrill

Now doing Blogger

I feel I must address this issue once and for all and hopefully from an objective perspective. When I first started blogging, my blog hosting platform at Blog-City was one of the leading providers in the midst of the many fledgling offerings in 2003.

Just 2 months ago, Blog-City informed us that the service will close in January 2012 and thus began the race to re-host my blog on a platform that would not pull the plug at whim.

I eventually chose the Blogger platform because I had already started a blog there in 2007 and from the 6^th anniversary of my blogging I had begun co-hosting my blog there.

From the statistics of market share [1], WordPress leads Blogger which has consistently been second for at least 4 years.

The new life of Blogger

The lesson learnt from having patronised a small Scottish firm for a service I did not realise might end has been to acquire a domain name for my blog http://akinblog.nl something that would have made it easier to move traffic from my old blog to the new location.

In a sense, my using Blogger offers a sense of security and if I do have to pay for the service at least it might come with better exercisable rights than those I’ve had with Blog-City.

With Blogger has come the menace of spam something Blog-City protected me from including legitimate comments when the readers failed the numeracy test.

Pulling my hair at comments

Whilst I do appreciate those who have left comments on my blogs I am beside myself with a whole set of generic comments that could go on any of my blogs that they are beginning to have the appearance of benign spam.

Typical ones like, “I find this article from Google, it's really useful for me, hope I can post this in my blog.”

“It took me a long time to search on the net, only your site explain the fully details, bookmarked and thanks again.” This appears on a few blogs without context or purpose.

“I am doing research for my college paper, thanks for your helpful points, now I am acting on a sudden impulse.” On a blog on slips, slippers and saunas – I had to reread the blog, helpful points, maybe I need help.

Moving on from what is persistent nuisance I got this, “I think, that you are not right. I suggest it to discuss. Write to me in PM.” From Anonymous who wants me to send a private message to challenge my assertions to corroborate his opinion. Did I say, he? The person could as well be gender indefinite and possibly not human; I have seen primate type letters on television.

For compliments, I get the acceptable, “Thanks for the post.” To which one could plausibly say, if you have nothing to say, say nothing at all.

When, I got the comment, “Absolutely with you it agree. In it something is also idea excellent, agree with you.” My perspicaciousness for correctness and annoying propensity for pedantry in grammar could not be excited for the want of trying.

This Opera is shrill

However, having made my case about choosing Blogger which is generally a popular blogging platform with no particular frills, it goes without saying that one would assume that readers would be using of the popular browsers to view by blog.

As I responded in a comment recently, my blog is more text-based than having multimedia content, I simply have not mastered that tack yet and really whilst the razzmatazz of pictures, audio and video can spice up a blog, they might well be a distraction from the writing. I try to be good enough at writing to obviate the need for glitter and bling.

Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers gets used by 46.45%, 29.33% and 9.00% of the market respectively [2], adding up to 84.78%. A long-standing but somewhat obscure web browser in September 2010 comes a distant 6^th with 3.19% of market share on the pie chart and 5^th on the tables; it is called Opera.

Ranking below Safari and Mobile Internet, users of Opera must be enjoying the show in an empty theatre waiting for the fat lady to sing, but she has long since gone to bed.

My blog on a popular blogging platform with basically no frills displays well on the leading Internet browsers, I would not know how to reconfigure the broad and basic format of the Blogger platform to shoe-horn its aesthetic viewability into the narrow spectrum of Opera.

I am being asked or it is pestered to make my blog viewable in Opera, I don’t think so.

Sources

[1] Which Blogging Platform Do You Use? | Peltier Tech Blog | Excel Charts

[2] Usage share of web browsers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia