EPTMac OS 10.5.8
Goal
Use Blogger
Browser Challenge
Go directly to a blog you read without signing in. Sign in using the tab at the top. Comment on blog.
The Results
Group A for "Awkward"
Chrome, Safari, Opera
All of these browsers will sign you in and direct you to your account dashboard. From there you can access the blog you wanted to comment on (either through your reading list, or by the url/bookmark/etc., or by going back to the page) and you will be signed in and can comment.
What you can't do is sign in and be returned to the blog immediately. Blogger tries to do everything through the dashboard, which is stupidly retarded at least from my point of view.
Safari: Full-featured browser, but tends to crash a lot. Doesn't always handle video as well as other browsers.
Chome: Right now a little lighter, lacks features (an about:config page, tab options) that I find useful. Fairly stable though.
Opera: Still the odd browser out. Not as good a feel, screws up gifs for some reason, but stable.
Group F for "Fail"
Mozilla browsers (Firefox, Camino)
On these browsers you can't sign in on any particular blog. You will only be signed in on your dashboard. As far as I can tell you can't leave comments. (Last time I checked this was also true for Firefox on Windows.)
Firefox: The Standard. Reliable, reasonably fast, safe, etc.
Camino: A lighter Mozilla-based Mac browser. Only noticeable difference is the url bar call-up is less detailed. Possibly slightly faster.
Verdict
Blogger (Google?) has really screwed things up. There's no excuse for your blogging service plain not working on the best & most popular browser out there, and being awkward to use on other common browsers including Google's own.
The Call for Help
1) Am I doing something wrong, or is this what everyone experiences? If you got Blogger to work perfectly (on any browser) or even got Firefox to the "awkward" stage, what do I need to do?
2) The most user-friendly blogging system I've ever used is (don't laugh) xanga. Layout was straight-forward, reading and commenting ditto. However, that also tends to be a "less serious" blog host so I'm reluctant to go back at this point (besides, most blogs I know of are on blogger/wordpress at this point and idk if crossover subscriptions exist/work). Do we have user recommendations?
