Day 10: Do you see what they see?

Today it’s time to take a very close look at your blog in a very broad way. Presumably you see your blog pretty often. But let’s face it, how often do you visit your blog from the same browser, on the same computer, using the same monitor with the same resolution settings? That’s a pretty narrow viewpoint! Today’s challenge is to do nothing more than look at your weblog! Sounds easy, right? Well it is… sorta.

We’re going to do a browser and RSS check across multiple operating systems if possible. I want you to see what your blog looks like on both Windows and Macintosh computers, specifically checking it on the following browsers: Firefox (OSX and Windows), Internet Explorer 6 (Windows), and Safari (OSX). You should also check out your RSS feed in your aggregator of choice. Bonus points will be awarded for going the extra mile and checking out your blog in any of the following browsers: Opera (OSX and Windows), Flock (OSX and Windows), Chrome (Windows), Internet Explorer 7 and 8 (Windows) and Safari (Windows). Don’t worry about mobile versions, we’ll be coming back to that later in the month. Extra bonus points for changing the resolution of your monitor and seeing what your blog looks like in various standard resolutions like 800×600, 1024×268 and so on…

If you’ve never tried a different browser than the one that came on your computer, then this is a great opportunity to give it a whirl. Firefox is a good one to start with. Just visit Firefox.com, click download and install it. It will import all of your current settings, and then you can give it a trial run. If you like it, then just choose Firefox whenever you have some surfing to do. If not, just use it to see what other people are seeing on your blog so you can identify potential problems.

What we’re looking for here is issues in your blog’s theme. Does everything look consistent between different browsers? Is anything sticking off the edges, or look scrunched up? Anything falling off the page, or hard to read because of color schemes? What you really want is for all readers to experience your content the same way across all computers and browsers. Keep a notebook handy because more than likely you’ll have some writing to do. Don’t forget that your blog contains more than just a front page. Spot check other pages like your About page, archives pages and a single post page (clicking through to view an individual post). Sometimes one page will look great, but another may have an issue.

Here are some screenshots I took while doing this for Teach42. I noticed a bunch of minor problems, mostly related to plugins that I have enabled like Related Comments and Zemanta, but I also noticed two major problems. 1) My footer is shifted over to the right on ALL browsers! No idea what’s causing that one. 2) On Internet Explorer 6 for Windows, and ONLY that browser, My blog is a two column blog instead of three columns. It took the content in the right skinny column and dropped it below the left skinny column. Why? Not sure! I’m going to have to do some research.

Let’s face it, knowing is half the battle. Today’s challenge is to KNOW. Don’t stress about solving all of the problems you find today, although you can if you want to obviously! But take your time and get yourself a good list of outstanding items you need to figure out. If you feel comfortable tweaking code, then maybe you want to try to fix them yourself. If you don’t, maybe you want to ask your PLN for some help or leave a comment here and see if anyone can help you. Or you could even go so far as to change to a different theme if it’s a MAJOR problem. Of course, depending on the severity, you can also feel free to just ignore the problem. Believe me, I know there are times when it’s just not worth the trouble to get a picture shifted over a few pixels and such. But at least make that decision deliberately, rather than out of ignorance.

I did mention that you should also look at your blog through an aggregator. Full credit goes to Sue Waters on that one. After yesterday’s challenge, she suggested having everybody subscribe to their own feed to see what it looks like. I couldn’t agree more. It’s a great exercise to make sure it looks like you THINK it does. She has two related posts that are worth browsing through on this topic. One note about this one, it’s possible to display either your full posts or just a teaser blurb in your RSS feed. Sue strongly recommends that you display your FULL posts in there so that people don’t need to click through in order to read your content. While I do agree with her, and do so myself, I don’t feel nearly as strongly about it. Some people prefer to just put out a teaser because then people actually have to VISIT their blog. If you put a lot of time into the look and feel of your blog, as well as adding things like ClustrMaps, sidebar widgets and so on, you probably want people to actually SEE the blog itself. By forcing people to click through in order to read the entire article, you do increase your site traffic and the potential that people will spend some time exploring your site. Really, it’s a personal decision. And while I prefer to display full posts, I can see the merits to both sides of the decision.

By the way, while you’re doing this challenge, keep an eye on your sidebar. What you like about it, what you don’t and such. We’ll be coming back to that in a few days.

Clearly when I did my searching, I found a few issues that need to be corrected. Did you? Any surprises lurking between browsers and operating systems?

Checking Teach42 across different browsers:

Safari, OSX

Firefox, OSX

Chrome, Windows

IE6, Windows

Firefox, Windows

Google Reader

Bloglines

30d2bbb image by Jason Robertshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

18 Comments

Jim Beeghley
11/10/2008

Hi Steve,

I have become more aware of this since switching from Blogger to my own hosted WordPress page. There are some subtle differences when things display especially when it comes to widgets and if you have any embedded items in your posts.

The other big one where I have found errors is when the post shows up in my Bloglines account. You just never know when you have some wonky piece of HTML that messes up the feed.

Thanks,

Jim Beeghley (aka fifer1863)

Jim Beeghley´s most recent blog post.. Using Poetry to teach the Civil War

aschmitz
11/10/2008

It should be noted that Browsershots (http://browsershots.org/ ) will let you poke at your website in a great variety of browsers and operating systems for free, should you not have access to a good lab of computers (or VMs, really) for doing so yourself. (And if you do, why not set up some as Browsershots factories and help everyone else?)

An alternative exists in BrowserCam, which is more tightly-controlled (not run by volunteers), but is rather expensive. BrowserCam also lets you interact with the computers for brief sessions, if you want to test interactivity, but that’s really rather expensive. (Unless you can find a Fundable group to go in with, which makes it only about $25/year)

Elaine Plybon
11/10/2008

I used both Browsershots (www.browsershots.org) and BrowsrCamp (www.browsrcamp.com) to test my blog. Browsershots will run out and gather screenshots from multiple browers and deliver them to you on one page. BrowsrCamp does the same thing, but through the eyes of a Mac user.

Both of these are free services. (BrowsrCamp has limits to how much you can use it for free, though).

Elaine Plybon´s most recent blog post.. Teaching Truth #9: Don’t Let Go!

Sue Waters
11/10/2008

I’m tired and it’s still early so will come back and read your post more thoroughly. However just thought that your participants could make this task quicker using Browsershots.

All you need to do is enter your URL and see screenshots in numerous browsers. Nice way to test what your blog looks like without having to load into lots of web browsers.

Sue Waters´s most recent blog post.. Interested In FREE Online PD This Friday?

Sue Waters
11/10/2008

Told you I was tired. Apologies to both Aschmitz and Elaine I normally read comments — tired, doing too many things.

The reason why many bloggers set to partial feeds isn’t to force people to visit their site but to make it harder for people who steal blog content using RSS.

The trouble is your readers who read via RSS are considerably more than the number of people who visit your site. Most people like me will just unsubscribe if a blog feed is set to partial because it just isn’t practical to visit blog sites when you subscribe to the number of blogs I do. Having it set to partial feeds defeats the purpose because you want people to subscribe to your blog not unsubscribe.

If you want people to visit your site it’s better to give them a reason to visit. Write posts than make them want to comment or check out changes to your blog.

Sue Waters´s most recent blog post.. Interested In FREE Online PD This Friday?

Steve
11/10/2008

LoL, how I missed the Browsershots bandwagon is beyond me, but I have never seen that one before! Great tip.

@Sue While I do agree with you, I just don’t see having teasers as quite so much of a sin. If somebody lists the first 150-200 words of their blog post, you can most likely tell whether you want to read more or not. Based on the way you sound like you nurture your blogging habit, it may be inconvenient. But I know many people that would prefer to get the traffic to their actual site, and that’s just one other way to encourage it. Give them a taste, and if they want more they have to visit the page. From my own conversations with other bloggers, they don’t get large numbers of people protesting by unsubscribing and such.

While I do agree with you that it’s my preference to have the full posts be available, it is most certainly an individual choice there.

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Cathy Nelson
11/10/2008

I would agree with Sue on the full feed in the reader. I REALLY detest partial feeds and inwardly call them “wannabe” blogs (i.e. School Library Journal). I did NOT however know that the little dots on my cluster map came from direct hits. But that would explain the difference in my wordpress and other stats vs. ClustrMap stats…or would it? As always THANKS @Sue Waters for the link to see how we look in other browsers.

Cathy Nelson´s most recent blog post.. Reducing Copyright Confusion

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Patrick Balck
11/10/2008

Excellent post, love Browsershots, made checking my blog easy!

Patrick Balck´s most recent blog post.. 30D2BBB – Day 8 – Comment Unto Others

Natalie
11/10/2008

Browsershots is an awesome site! My blog came through with flying colors, but my website seems to have, shall we say, issues. Hmmm. I’m going to have to spend some time on that one.

Natalie´s most recent blog post.. Day 10 of the "Be A Better Blogger Challenge"

Jen
11/11/2008

You killed me on this one — Steve.

I am always on a quest for “THE PERFECT THEME” and now you had me really look at it.

Smiles —
Here is my reflection (emmm….catchup) on the blogger’s challenge:
http://jenuinetech.com/blog/?p=523

Jen´s most recent blog post.. There is NO WAY…..

Sean Nash
11/11/2008

Wow. I have to tell you, I am now more interested in Linux if for no other reason than to have a browser called “iceweasel.”

Good ideas here. I had previously read the Sue Waters recommendation to subscribe to your own blog in your reader (GR here). I think I did so originally when I set up the reader, just to test it out. However, seeing it from that perspective was valuable as well.

Thanks for the Browsershots tip.

Sean

Pam Shoemaker
11/11/2008

It’s good to know about Browsershots! I wrote a blog entry about my experiences with the first week of this challenge. Again, thanks… having fun.

Pam Shoemaker´s most recent blog post.. Week 1: 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger

Jennifer Dorman
11/11/2008

Thanks for the tip on BrowserShots. That was really helpful is investigating how my blog is displayed. My main issue is with widgets. I forget that they don’t always display properly when plugins are absent or not updated nor do they display correctly (or, at all) in many blog readers or e-mail. I have to remember to include the web link for such content in my posts so that ALL of my readers can view the media.

Jennifer Dorman´s most recent blog post.. Animoto Just Keeps Getting Better

Sue Waters
11/11/2008

@Steve Why not have a poll to see which wins — partial or full feed.

Guaranteed most people who read blogs in readers will just quietly unsubscribe than deal with partial feeds. There is absolutely no way that the short snippet gives you any indication of what the post is about.

I do admit to being biased and am totally with @Cathy Nelson on my hatred of partial feeds.

Still seems crazy to me that probably 97 % percent of your readers are reading via RSS and your willing to upset them by changing to partial feeds when full feeds WON’T annoy any one but partial feeds will make some unsubscribe. Doesn’t sound good logic to me.

Especially given the fact the main reasons why bloggers like people to visit their blogs is for the ads and yet most edubloggers don’t have ads. If I want to delve deeper into someones blog I can do that just as well in Google Reader.

@Cathy Nelson Thanks no problem however Aschmitz and Elaine both suggested some extras that I must also try.

Sue Waters´s most recent blog post.. Interested In FREE Online PD This Friday?

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