Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Help! Blogger is screwing up again!

Blogger recently announced the addition of an "Autosave" feature. Here's what it says on the Dashboard now:
As you work on a new or draft post in the Blogger post editor, the page will periodically send a copy of the text, title, labels, etc. to our servers. We do this about once a minute, unless you type a lot, in which case we'll save as soon as you stop typing, just to be on the safe side. You'll know it's happening because the "Save Now" button at the bottom of the page will turn into a gray "Saved" button.

We'll autosave new posts (they'll become drafts) as well as draft posts that you edit. We won't autosave posts that are currently published, since you don't want your readers to see your updates while you're working on them.
It would be so wonderful if only it were true!

I just lost a long post on my 'other' blog -- I was minutes away from completing what had been an hours-long project.

Yes, I did something stupid. I can't remember the ASCII code (ALT + nnn) for the character "§" -- the legal abbreviation for "section" as, in the case of the article on which I was working, a section of a statute.

So I compensated. I put it on the clipboard. I just had to hit CTRL-v and insert the "§" character into my text.

But I'm a WordPerfect guy. To get "§" on WordPerfect, I hit CTRL-w, 4, 6. I'm really used to hitting CTRL-w when I'm reaching for special characters.

But -- and here's a warning -- hitting CTRL-w while you are creating a new post in Blogger closes out your screen.

Ah! you say. That is precisely the sort of numbskull move that Blogger is trying to protect you against with the Autosave feature.

And, admittedly, the first time I made this error this morning my post was recovered with only the last sentence I had just typed not included.

But, a half hour ago, I did it again.

And now the post is gone. GONE. And who knows where it went? Not I, certainly. And, after messing around with entirely ineffective help screens before beginning this screed -- finding only laments from fellow users who have been similarly victimized without the ghost of a clue from Blogger as to how to undo the damage new Autosave has done -- I can only conclude that Blogger has no clue either.

I am just a tad peeved at the moment. Just a tad.

I am open for suggestions: Anyone know how to fix this? Does anyone know how to turn off this dangerous Autosave?

11 comments:

SQT said...

I did this exact same thing while typing my post last night. And no, bloggers "auto save" feature did me no good at all. I have no idea where that post might be floating around.

Dave said...

Moral: compose and save the post on your computer, then copy past into Blogger.

sari said...

I didn't like that it didn't give me my draft button any more...I have to hit "control-d" to save as a draft.

But I don't get much more technical than that, so I don't have any advice, sorry.

Jean-Luc Picard said...

It looks like this idea, as good as it sounds on paper, need to be modified.

Patti said...

I feel lost without that 'save as draft' button there to use.

cmhl said...

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I'm with Dave--- post it all over at the last minute...

Empress Bee (of the high sea) said...

i not only lost a post, it had lots of photos in it, several days ago. i was so upset! i understand...

smiles, bee

Linda said...

They need to get these latest bugs figured out soon before it drives everyone totally crazy! Gotta agree with Dave, though, if it's going to be a long post it might be better to do it in Word or something and then copy it over.

Rob said...

More often than not, I compose my posts offline like Dave said.

Oddly enough, I'm an old WordPerfect guy too - back from the pre-Windows DOS 3.x days. So, I've got Ctrl-Ins & Shift-Ins forever lodged deep within my primitive monkey cortex. Thankfully, Microsoft has always carried those ancient WP shortcut key combos forward in their OS and Office apps.

Mother Jones RN said...

Blogger doesn't like my Safari browser, so I have to upload everything using my recently installed Firefox browser. I've also lost posts.

Bad Blogger!

Anonymous said...

How to fix it? Install Wordpress ;-)

Seriously, the best answer is to type it up in your word processor first, then copy it over. I always do this for long posts, a legacy of bitter experience....