Blogger's new Template Designer

I like the simplicity of Blogger, but in some aspects it used to be far too simple. The native choice of templates used to be too limited as well as the ability to easily change them.

I ended up adopting the excellent Scarlett template and, seems this kind of template cannot be edited with the blogger layout designer, I had to spend a good deal of time customizing it without breaking its integrity. Still, I kind of reached my limit in HTML editing and now feel a bit stuck with some details I just can't fix or control the way I'd like.


Now with the official arrival of the Template Designer in Blogger, this might change. I'm considering adopting one of the sample templates and work from there to obtain a result quite similar to the current design, but with the advantage of having more control over my layout and less time to spend editing  the HTML file.


Definitely a big step ahead for Bloggers.

See this video for a quick overview.

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Free code editor and notepad replacement

If you are constantly dealing with different formats of text files (txt, jsp, html, log, ...), the simple notepad.exe needs to be replaced by something more powerful,with line numbering, syntax highlighting, large file support, ...


Here is another ultimate freeware that can compete easily with many commercial equivalents.

Notepad++ is an open source text editor with features found normally in €50 software.


One of the strengths of NP++ is simply its integration into the contextual menu: by right-clicking on any sort of file, the option "edit with Notepad ++" appears, which make the editor very accessible, even for files with unknown or no extension.


Languages: HTML, XML, PHP, C++, Flash, Perl,...
Macros: the macro recorder will automate repetitive actions, like fastidious manual line formatting.
TextFX: offers a wide range of powerful functions, from tidying up an HTML page (re-indenting XML for instance), to converting EBCDIC to ASCII, or just counting words.
Plugins: allows to interface with a spell checker, a FTP server, export to a different format, ...

Give it a try, you may not need any other text editor after that!

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