Blogger tantrums again

Blogger tantrums, indeed ... not Keegan having a tantrum, but the Blogger engine itself, in concert with none other than the star performer, Internet Explorer itself, which can be a real, genuine diva when she wants to be. Blogger and IE have just sung an aria that should win prizes.

Users who surf with Internet Explorer must have thought The World According to Mel had gone down yesterday. Opera, Firefox and Chrome displayed it perfectly, but there was something about one picture (a brochure shot of the iRex iLiad ebook reader) that must have been corrupt...

Did it crash the post and leave the blog behind, online and functional in IE?

Noooooo. It crashed the whole blog. If you tried to load The World According to Mel in IE, you got a strange little message, "Operation Aborted," and then the killer screen, "Windows cannot display the webpage."

O...kay. First thing I did was try the blog in the three other browsers I have, and whaddaya know? It worked. So it was just something about Internet Explorer jacking around when trying to handshake with Blogger. And so began a wonderful, 90-minute odyssey into the enthralling world of code.

I hate code. I seriously hate code. I tried everything you can imagine, and a lot you can't, and finally rebuilt he post paragraph by paragraph. It was fine (you guessed) until I got to the picture. Then, when the picture was pasted back in --

"Operation Aborted."

Which narrowed the whole thing down to one image. After that it was a simple chore to replace the picture, republish, and than go and sit in a corner gibbering for a few minutes. We call it recovery time.

Those who smoke probably chainsmoke; those who inhale coffee by the mugful are probably vibrating with a caffeine high. Since I neither smoke nor drink coffee (can't -- I get a reaction to it) I just recite a mantra of sorts...

There was a young William called Gates --
"Bill" to his billionaire mates --
The PC's inventor;
And THIS bold dissenter
Wonders how he'd like to swallow the bloody thing sideways for breakfast.
(And I know it doesn't rhyme; and the last line keeps changing. Anatomically.)

Well ... not really ... but I know you know what I mean.

Anyway: the blog is functional again, and/but keep this in mind:

If you're a blogger and your blog suddenly disables itself with Internet Explorer putting up a weird little message, "Operation Aborted," I'll give you 500:1 odds, you'll trace the problem to a corrupt image. Ditch it, import a fresh out, and ...

Your oars will be back in the water like magic.

Last note: Chapter Eight has concluded at Legends...

Now I'm going to go and have a nice cup of tea and drool in private for a while.

TTFN,
MK