Commenting Issues

Blogger made us better again... and I can't fix it this time!



O.k.... this is more or less a continuation from my previous Question post.  Someone sent in a question asking why they couldn't get the images to full size.  I made the post assuming they were having problems with the "Lightbox" method not displaying the full image.  So I went ahead and wrote up how to do it.

But at the end of the post, I wanted to make sure I got the correct wording from Google Chrome (the browser I use the most), Firefox and Internet Explorer.  I would have got Opera and Safari too, but I don't have those browsers installed.  But when I went into my blog in IE, I found the issue.

It seems that if you are using Internet Explorer to read my blog (as well as several other blogs), that when you click on a post, it starts to load, then displays a blank white page.   Upon further investigation, I found out that this only happens to posts with comments.

That helped me search out for problems with blogger, Internet Explorer, and comments.  And boy... its a problem alright.  It seems that blogger recently gave us all an 'upgrade' so that people could respond to specific comments.  I've seen it on a few blogs, and while its kind of nice, I don't really care about it one way or the other.

Except that blogger is getting flooded with requests for help.  It seems that this new shiny feature broke a lot of blogs.   And the problems are all over the place.  Some blogs just stopped existing, while others accept the comments, but never show them.  I did see several with the same problem I'm having.  It works just fine in most browsers, but not IE.

There is a workaround.  Right now when you click to add a comment, you can do it right in the page.  If I turn that feature off, and make it so that adding comments takes you to an entirely different page, then returns you after you make your comment, then IE works just fine.  But I find that terribly frustrating.

So I'm left with two options.  Make everyone jump through some hoops to post a comment to my blog, or block out IE users from reading any post that has already been commented on.  Now while writing this up, I was dead set to just block out IE users.  I am fairly sure that blogger will have this fixed soon.  But the more I write and the more I think about it, I can't just flip off 25% of my audience.  Sadly not many people comment, so instead of flipping off 25% of my audience, I'm forced to flip off my vocal readers.

So to everyone that comments... I'm sorry but I have to ask you to take a few extra steps.  I'll keep trying things out, and looking for better solutions, but until its fixed for everyone, it will have to remain this way.

I just wish I could figure out what the real problem is.  I loaded up IE (ick) and visited the blogs that are listed to the right.  Most blogs worked fine, but I specifically had the same issue on Dee's, Sacha's, sp2000's,  Samntha deSavory's Geofrey's, and Trisha's  blogs.

To those bloggers that want to fix this, follow me:

Get into your dashboard, and click on 'Settings'.  Click on 'Posts and comments'.  Underneath the 'Comments' Header you'll see the option for 'Comment Location'.  In the drop down to the right of that select 'Full Page'.  Once you've done that click on 'Save settings' in the upper right and you are done.