So I’ve been bumming since the Blogger Beta went live and the old hack that would get rid of that potentially dangerous (at least for classroom teachers) “Next Blog” button from your blog stopped working. But yesterday in one of my presentations here at NCCE, Glenn Malone offered up a solution. Problem is, I can’t get it to work on my MAC, but I think it might be user error on my part.
Here is the work around that Glenn offered (and Glenn, if you read this, please follow up in the comments if I get any of it wrong.)
1. Go to the Gecko&Fly site that has some new Blogger Beta Templates and choose one you like.
2. Click on the link to visit the template page.
3. Download the template code.
4. Unzip the file and open up the code in a text editor and copy it. (Here’s where I get stuck and need help from MAC users…see below.)
5. Open up your current template in Blogger, select all and paste the new template code over it. Save it.
Here’s my problem…I can’t seem to open the code for some reason. With some of the templates, when I unzip the file and click on what extracts, it tries to open it in some game application. Strange. And when I do get a file that will open in the text editor, it’s not xml…it looks like a web page. So I’ve never been able to get to step 5. Any ideas?
UPDATE: Thanks to Dan Meyer who e-mailed with the final step. Just paste the following into the CSS of the template.
Have you downloaded TextWrangler? From Bare Bones, http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ , this freeware text writing app should have no problem opening xml files. To open a file in another application, you can right-click (control-click if no 2 button mouse) and select open with and choose the application of your choice. You can also get info on the item, choose what application to open it with and at the same time change all files to open with that application or just that one file to open with your chosen application.
If you have Dreamweaver, that will work as well.
I used drag and drop to open the file with TextEdit, but the resulting text file when pasted into Blogger generated errors. I then drag and dropped the file onto Word and the resulting text file not only looked different, but when copied and pasted into Blogger worked as expected with some minor issues.
I have lost some of the side elements, my Flickr badge, my Clustmap, and a few other things and so did not save the changes until I can figure out how easily it would be to get those elements back.
So, I did not save the changes. Nothing to look at there, as I did not want to lose what I had. Next step… figure out how to incorporate those elements again.
Thanks Bob…tried it and it worked…but that dreaded Next Blog button is still there! AAARRRGGHHHH! Hey Glenn, maybe it’s just some of the templates??? Help!
TextEdit Preferences > Open and Save > Ignore rich text commands in HTML files.
I use a Gecko & Fly template for a personal blog and it’s bye-bye “Next Blog” button.
I’m a pc user and used the first Gecko & Fly template but still have the next blog button.
http://kidspired.blogspot.com/
Any suggestions?
Will,
Text Edit works fine for opening the XML file properly if you go through the Open dialog and check “ignore rich text commands.” I’ll go through the rest of the procedure and see if I get any different results with the button…
Tim
We have used blogger for a couple of years for class blogs and have hidden the whole navbar as a solution to the “next blog” button…we did this by a small code insertion in the template
The move to New Blogger simply required a different bit of code…add the following lines anywhere in the template [enclosed by tags] and the blogger banner will disappear.
#navbar-iframe {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}
This removes the whole navbar at the top of the blog, which solves our NEXT BLOG dilema…
I’ve had good luck using the code in the comment above, and putting it in the html template just before
]]>
which is near the bottom of the template.
I’ve had good luck using the code in the comment above, and putting it in the html template just before
]]>
which is near the bottom of the template.
There also used to be a hack that let you edit people’s comments. The old code stopped working but I haven’t had any luck with the new one. I’ve gotten it from this site:
http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2005/07/edit-comments.html
Does anyone else know of a source for this that will work to let you edit comments? In using blogs with elementary level students, it is rather a necessity to be able to go back in and edit the comments the kids write so that others will be able to read them.
Sorry. The code I copied into my comment above about where I put the hide nav bar code, didn’t print for some reason. Instead of saying just “]]>” it should say “]]>” which is right at the end of the “head” section of the html.
Never mind. It keeps erasing itself. Should have left well enough alone. 🙂
Not to put a damper on things, but, if your blog is hosted on Blogger itself, you are violating their user agreement policy that you “signed” when you signed up by removing the NEXT BLOG header.
However, if you use another server for hosting the Blogger site (one where you have FTP rights), and just use the Blogger interface for posting to your blog, you are permitted, by Blogger, and are even given a drop-down box, to disable the NEXT BLOG hyperlink.
At least that is the way I understand the rules to be…
Just wanted to keep everyone on the up and up!
Kathy
Will, Sorry for the delay in my reply; looks like you have a solution and I left out an important step.
The HTML for my Blogger Beta site http://AlmostMonday.BlogSpot.Com is located here for review if needed: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=acsgnjpc9x7h_57cdtvkt.
Kathy, I did consider your point before I decided to remove the navbar by but I came to the conclusion that Google had not explicitly address the NavBar…
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/12/disable-hide-blogger-navbar.html
Here’s the full text:
http://www.blogger.com/terms.g
I wonder if Darren has upgraded to the beta version yet?
http://adifference.blogspot.com/
Will…Great job on the keynote today & yep you did close your eyes 🙂
It’s one of the many reasons I prefer edublogs even though I started my blogging in blogger/blogspot. Reason 2 – Word Press templates are prettier.
Also the “adminwall” that Scott McLeod recently talked about is more easily convinced to unblock a blog environment that is specifically set up for education purposes.
We talk and talk and talk about teachers using technology in the classroom. Here is a perfect example of why they are reluctant: CSS, navbar, 0px, open and closing braces. (“Enlightened” ones may know that a missing closing brace will have serious side-effects.)
Perhaps the poor usability factor has scared them away….
This is for Classic Blogger
1. copy this code
2. log in to your blogger blog
3. click on template
4. scroll down until you see the word with these brackets and not {body} (that is a style code)
5. replace with the code in #1 6. republish your blog.