Google Blogger Leaves Beta

VE3OGG writes "It would seem that Google's famed, award-winning blogging software, Blogger, has just left beta, ABC reports, and entered a growing (but still short) list of Google products to move out of beta. Of course, with this change is status also came a few crucial new features for Google's blogging agent, specifically Google account integration, "Web 2.0" code free updates, and tagging."

I just tried this out yesterday.

[jZnat]

And of course, the Safari/Konqueror love was nonexistent. Works perfectly in Firefox, obviously, but you can't create new or edit existing blog posts in Safari/Konqueror with or without the WYSIWYG editor.

Still a Few Bugs in the System

[Doc Ruby]

It's still going to have bugs, like all SW (and everything else). Most of its users won't notice the difference with the qualitative version change, except maybe the usual new features magically appearing. So what's the difference between "Beta" and "release", when the Beta was a "public Beta release"?

I bet it's just some way to start charging money for access. Might as well drop the "Beta" designation, and just call "releases" the "money release".

FWIW (little, post-Netscape), "Alpha/Beta/Release" aren't subjective names. "Alpha" is a version tested (used) by people who also designed/implemented it. "Beta" is a version tested by people who didn't design/test it, unless perhaps the design/test team did get them to produce and/or review acceptance tests/criteria. And "Release" is the version that has been tested OK against release criteria.

To be complete, correct version numbering isn't very subjective, either. The format is >major<.>minor<.>patch< . Bugfixes (not new features) increment the "patch" number. Format changes, in API, transmission (eg. network) or storage (eg. files) still backwards compatible increment the minor number. Feature changes still using the same UI increment the minor number. Format changes not backwards compatible, feature changes which change the UI, or transformational bugfixes which change either formats or UI to break backwards compatibility all increment the major number. Incremental builds can extend the numbers with a dash (eg. "2.13b4.77-154", for the 154th build of the 77th bugfix of the 4th beta of version 2.13), but only in Alpha and Beta versions, not actual releases. A good project's bug reporting will list bugs by their reported ID in lists of which bugfix release fixes them. "Release Candidate" numbers are just nicknames for the last in the series of Betas. Much as the the b1 version is identical to the last Alpha version.

That's it. Each number change should have an Alpha/Beta/Release version, though Alphas can sometimes be skipped with tiny bugfixes. So there's no need for "odd/even" version numbering to reflect "development" versions. And numbers are sequential, except of course when a higher order number increments, resetting the smaller order number (eg. 2.13.77 -> 2.14.0 ->2.14.1). Version numbers have been hijacked by marketdroids, which just confuses the market they bamboozle, which is ultimately bad for sales, and even worse for costs of support. The version number should tell people whether to upgrade, and whether their old data, training and related activities will be noticeably impacted (with associated extra costs).

Netscape broke everything with it's "public Beta" release that defined Web SW distribution. Microsoft has made the curse ubiquitous with SW versions 1, 2, 3 standing in for Alpha, Beta, Release, but mixing it up with new features to substitute for bugfixes. And Service Pack versions that form an entire new chain, and ongoing patches, and every other unmanageable version numbering "scheme" possible. And Linux distros continue the damage with the odd/even numbering and arbitrary versioning, with major releases measured in minor numbers, requiring various extra versions, and version numbering of each release for each distro.

But the numbering schemes change monthly, quarterly. If developers just return to the simple discipline, we'll get back to numbers that actually mean something helpful to users and developers, not just marketdroids counting up to their next bonus.

Re:The "beta" crap

[zataang]

The other thing is that despite the shortcomings, they do get my work done. Docs and spreadsheets has a large number of bugs, but I can live with them just because shared-editing saves us a whole lot of hassle.

Re:Google product?

[momerath2003]

The new "Blogger beta" represents a complete overhaul of the Blogger system by the Google team.

from a different perspective

[alphafoo]

Ironically, I just switched away from Blogger last week because the new templates, although great-looking, are not easily configured for right-to-left (RTL) languages. I'm not a CSS expert but I did give it a try over the weekend and eventually I gave up fighting it and reverted back to the old template which relied on my surrounding each entry and post title with a DIV DIR=RTL.

I searched around to see what other people had done with the new Blogger and to see if I could just use someone else's template, but all of the ones I saw were a mess. Some parts RTL, some not, some of the layout broken. So, I moved to a site with excellent RTL support, but difficult to use because it seems to have been built and tested solely for Internet Explorer, so Firefox1.5 and Safari and Opera on the Mac all choke on various (but different) aspects of the posting process.

If someone has had some success making a clean Blogger template using Arabic/Farsi/Hebrew/etc, please share.