Getting the blogging tools right

Blogger is a great tool for anyone like me who does not want to spend hours fiddling with code. However it has a couple of key shortcomings which had initially made me look elsewhere for a free blogging host, namely the absence of:

• calendar navigation
• category posting

Thankfully, there are people with more talent, time and motivation who solve these little riddles and make my life (and doubtless many others) a lot happier. Firstly, a big thanks to Ecmanaut for his calendar code hacks and installation tips :o) and also thanks to the guys Dynarch for the overall calendar template.

Secondly thanks to those clever people at del.icio.us for their social bookmarking, which provides a great way to tag, store and retrieve bookmarks and to Greg Hill for the FreshTags which integrate with del.icio.us tags and make the categories work. Thanks also to FreshBlog for guidance and useful examples.

None of this is any fun without good browser software. I was getting very, very frustrated with clunky old IE and have found Firefox to be a breath of fresh air. Smooth integration with extensions such as Performancing have helped me to create a simple, fast, non-technical process for surfing and publishing my blog. I'm also enjoying using Colorful Tabs and SessionSaver is a life saver.