Triple browser trial

kw: product testing, reviewing

I started this post using Google Chrome version 12.0.742.112. I use it rarely, but I'm checking out how it works for making Blogger posts. I first prepared the labels and copied them to the "kw" line in the Compose screen. That worked fine (In an older version of Chrome the copy came with some HTML tags that changed the font).

The other features I'll test are paragraphing and font styles. Looking in the Edit Html screen at this point, I find that paragraphs are delimited with "div" tags. I haven't figured out how to trick Chrome into showing the arrow brackets, so we'll have to live with the quote as a substitute. To put the extra line between paragraphs, it uses two sets of "div" tags and a return between.

Next, this text is italicized and this text is bolded. The tags Chrome used are "i" and "b". So far so good. Now I'll switch browsers and continue.

I am continuing with MS Internet Explorer version 9.0.8112.16421. One thing I noticed right away is that the paragraphs left by Chrome now have an extra line between them in Compose mode. Older versions of IE liked to use "p" tags between paragraphs. Another is, that when I use the down arrow on the last line of text, the cursor goes to the end in Chrome, but not in IE.

This begins a new paragraph. Checking… OK, IE is continuing the "div" tags but not adding a return between them. Font styles:

The italic and bold text tags IE uses are "em" and "strong". Now I'll check two more features in a fresh post and return with results. Here we go: Firstly, if I put a label in the labels window and try to copy it into the post, it will not paste. That's one negative mark for IE (This works in FF). Secondly, typing a few paragraphs into an empty post resulted in the paragraphs being separated by returns, not tags. While this is a violation of HTML protocol, it is shared by Firefox.

At this point I'll switch browsers once again.

Now I am using Mozilla Firefox version 5.0. (No long version numbers here!) I first went to the test post that I'd put "p" tags into. Firefox continues them. This one still has the two ways of using "div" tags, and FF has responded as Chrome would have, by showing a double space only if there is an extra set of "div" tags. Depending on the browser you are using, the IE section above may look all jammed together.

Looking in the Edit Html screen, I see that, inside the last "div" section left by IE, FF is simply putting double returns between my paragraphs. Finally, I know FF uses the most doctrinaire font style tagging: the italic and bold tags are "span" tags with a "style" modifier inside:

span style="font-style: italic;"
span style="font-style: bold;"

inside the arrow brackets. While the three browsers try to produce the same look, I suspect this post, with its mixed styles, will not look uniform in any browser!

A writer, an editor, or something in between?

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, writing, reviewing

I seldom read writing about writing. As I hope this blog gives evidence, the way to learn to write is to write (and considering the very few pieces that have been published, to say nothing of remuneration, it is clear I am not destined to rank among the pros).

However, seeing the dust jacket almost forced me to take the book—In Other Words by John Crowley—home to read. Dust jacket, endpiece, and at section heads, the book is illustrated with old etchings by Grandville and others, similar in tone to this one. Picking early 19^th-Century illustrations does neatly avoid copyright dust-ups.

Author Crowley has quite a bit to say about writing, and quite well put. As it happens, after four essays in fifty pages, the rest of the book is book reviews. Giving it another look, three of the essays are reviews of a sort as well, but of a body of work rather than a single volume.

This is sort of like, "who watches the watcher?"...I am reviewing a book of reviews! It's a good thing they are smashing good reviews.

One section contains reviews of a few works each by the authors Robt. Louis Stevenson, Thos. M. Disch, T.H. White, Vladimir Nabokov, and Anthony Burgess. Having read at least one book by each of the five, I found myself nodding in agreement as he extracted something essential from each author. For example, though no single review brought this out, the several reviews of Burgess's work make clear his later torments, and how they showed in the quality of his later writing (rather bad with one stellar exception).

After that section, the reviews are mostly single, ranging over quite a bit of history, including Daisy Ashford's The Young Visitors, written at age nine in 1890 (first edition 1919); comic-book writing (and a bit on illustration) by Walt Kelly (Pogo series) and others; to a posthumous publication of Italo Calvino's unfinished autobiography, reviewed in 2003 but written and gathered over a few decades, and edited by the author's widow.

Considering the way our minds work, I can't help but be influenced by Crowley, but it will be without conscious intention. He thinks very differently...and that's very good.