Right now the search, which is supposed to work on the blog being viewed, seems to work on randomly selected blogs. It's kind of cool, but not very efficient. :-)

We're still tweaking.

I like the bug. It's like randomly surfing at Blogspot, without the risk of landing on a spamblog.

Without reading this post I didn't get that the "search" function was "search this blog". Making the button say "search this blog" would be a lot more clear.

This is an awesome new function by the way, I already used it to find an old post of mine that someone had asked about today! Thanks as always Howard.

Thanks for the tip... I thought about that, but then the button gets a bit long, so I put that in the "mouse-over" description text, but apparently it is still not clear. I'll see what can be done.

I agree with jofrog16 re: "search this blog". I love the new search function, and keep the improvements coming! This is a huge step forward.

I don't like how it looks...I liked the clean simplicity of the other...and it goes right over the blog name...am I supposed to fix that some how?

BUT...I DO like the idea!!

just an obsessive-compulsive, nitpicky comment: the "contact me" link at the top bar makes the "contact me" button on top of all the other buttons - profile, subscription, link - redundant. I understand that not all motimers (esp, the old-timers who have not bothered to update their templates) may have these buttons on their blog. So I think the button should go since the top bar works on its own across all blogs anyway.

I like the design's simplicity, btw. Works great on my white template... but with my other blog's customized template, it's hideous. But then we can't please everybody can we.

To sum up: Good job guys. And now that you've brought up the future of ads, howard, I wouldn't mind paying (a certain amount) to have them off my page. I mean, with the kind of service Motime is giving right now, it should be paid. So, a little "donation" for vanity's sake should not hurt, methinks.

We're supposed to be paying attention? ;)

The design of the bar is quite nice. My opinion is that i would like it to be "inline". And it would be great for us to have some choices such as different color themes of the bar or put it on different sides of the screen...:)

Thanks for your comments, they really help.

Sweetpeas (and everyone else): We needed to change the extremely diminuitive top bar that we had for a series of reasons. One of our important goals is to invite more and more people into the Mo'time community. For someone reading a Mo'time blog, the only way to find an easy way to join is through the top bar. The performance of the prior bar was not exactly impressive.

So it needed to get a bit bigger and more intuitive, yet remain as small as possible, non-garish and as respectful to your blogs as we could make it.

We also had some other goals (1) we wanted to encourage more readers to browse other mo'time blogs and to foster more contact between bloggers and their readers, hence the Read latest and Contact links, (2) we wanted to give the new Search feature a prominent and convenient place without having to update all the blog tags again or forcing people to add code to their templates to have it and (3) we needed to start thinking about a tasteful little advertising spot slightly higher than the prior top bar. (Right now we are just using it to publicize some of our features and the instant messaging technology of Tipic, the company that supports Mo'time.)

The bar does not cover your title in any of the browsers that I saw it in. But if you tell me more precisely what the problem is, and what operating system and browser you are using, I can try to figure out how to fix it.

Giuli812, OK you nit-picky commenter, your turn: The double contact button point is well-taken, but the one in the top bar is an experiment in this beta test. We are not going to make any global changes until we observe how people begin to use this new top bar's functions. So the first answer is that it is too early to think about doing that. Secondly, the contact button up top currently dumps you into the profile page, not directly to the mo'mail page... a more gentle introduction. It's a work in progress and your opinion will be considered in our evaluation.

I'm glad you like the design, we went through many versions to get here!

As for ads, yes, we are planning a reasonably-priced paid version: no advertisement bar (Search will be on your blog itself), full feeds, easy mobile, photo and audio blogging and stuff like that. We have some more bureaucratic and technical issues to solve, but we're getting there. Thanks for your vote of support.

moay: We designed the bar with different colored versions in mind, so we're already starting to work on it. It's impossible to find a color that everybody will like. We agree.

As far as placing the bar in different positions, that is technically impossible right now.

What do you mean by "inline"?

it's good to see the reply. :)

for "inline", (infact i'm referring to the css code "display: inline", but it seems hard to be understanded ^^") i mean that when i resize the window, the bar will automatically break into 2 lines. would it be possible to keep it in one?

We are trying different CSS strategies to keep the bar from breaking up when you make the window small, but so far we have not found a solution. With html tables, it would be simple but we want it to be 100% CSS.

the bar goes right across my title name on my computer...are you saying it doesn't on others? (this is on both sites)(sweetpeasme) too.

I am so computer illit.!

I will pay when the time comes to make it go away.

It doesn't on mine. Do you know how to take a screen shot and send it in email? If so, send it to howard(at)motime.com and I'll see if I can help you out, that is until you write me a check (hehehe).

ps...sweetpeasme site is doing something strange....the journal part is UNDER the links, etc. Not sure what's up with that!

no, I don't know how to do that! AS IF! How much do you want? a couple mill?

What operating system are you using? Windows? What version? Are you using Internet Explorer? What version?

There should be "About" links in the menu for you answer these questions... At least I may get some idea of what is going on with the way you see you blogs.

windows 98.....yes internet explorer.

I just tried to send you something....not sure if I did it right...I've got to go to work.

I'll read up on the "about" this weekend.

what version of Internet Explorer?? That's a pretty old operating system. Any chance of upgrading to XP and IE 6? Your problems are almost certainly due to the out-of-date nature of your system.

I got your email -- it was a copy of your html code, not what I had in mind!

can I have one offtopic question? Wouldn't be possible to change a little bit the comments? I miss there a box "name", most of my readers are not motime members, and so I have plenty of unlogged visitors and don't know who they are.

mojito: I understand what you are saying and we have discussed this. If your friends have blogs, they CAN type in the blog address into the comment field and it will be a clickable link to their blog. Putting the mouse over the link, you can read the address. To prevent people from typing in names that are the same or similar to existing members, and "stealing" the identity of others, we have implemented this system. We made registration very fast and easy, and free, and it does NOT require you to have a blog on motime, just to log-in to have your username appear.

If your friends comment often, it might be worth it for them to take the 3 minutes to register.

Howard, I just don't have the time to mess around with this...yes, this whole computer is old, and I'll be getting a new one in the fall, so I'm not going to panick. (even though I hate looking at it). And I don't know what XP or IE6 even is, and I certainly don't expect you to have to worry about it.

I'll ask my readers what they think....I was going to change my look and put a banner on the top, but now I don't know if I want to.

I'm just grumpy.

Sorry to add to your grumpiness -- Do a poll to see how many others see it funky. We'll try to get the paid version online soon, so you can get rid of it! :) It'll still be a month or 2, though.

Hate to burst your bubble, but the black thingy is covering my title (and it's such a good title, too) as well. I use Internet Explorer..whatever the latest one out is cuz I'm always updating. Did you ever say how that gets fixed? I think I missed it. can we shorten the thingy?

Sorry, but the bar goes a little over my title name as well. Im using Windows 98 with Explorer version 6.

Is this my browser - please excuse my uncomprehending nature of the above posts. Was not sure if this was a browser problem or what?

I think the bar/viewing problem is restricted to Windows 98 users. I'll see if I cannot reproduce the problem and come up with a solution in short order...

OK...I don't feel so stupid now.

Just to say, I think it rocks! Nice one ^_^

This is a very nice new feature. As a professor, it will help me locate specific information in my students' blogs without having to read each one over and over again. Way to Go, Howard!

Sharla

i'm using a mac and i go through firefox to view motime so i can have the tool bar. it has not been letting me post the last few days! the little loading thing just stays there for forever with the little smiley face turning. if you can let me know what i could do to fix it, that would be very helpful! thanks!

I use a Mac and Firefox, too. The editor works fine for me. Try this to see if it helps: Close ALL Mo'time windows in your browser and go another site, like Google, for instance.

Open Preferences and find Cache. Clear the Cache and click OK.

Try again.

If that doesn't help, go to this site and see if you can post in this demo. Then clear your Cache again and try again in Motime.

Any luck?

hmmm, i cleared the cache and it now lets me type my post. but, when i hit the preview or post and publish buttons it says that firefox-bin is closing down and closes everything out (i was trying to post a pic with my typing).

ok, it's letting me post correctly now. Thanks for your help!!!! :-D

The bar covers my titles when I use Opera (XP) but not Firefox. Not surprising, since Opera also doesn't seem to support the editing bar. However, I prefer Opera to Firefox, so any help would be appreciated.

Malinov

and now it doesn't - that's what I call service. Thanx.

Malinov

love the bar...and maybe this is something I've changed in my template, but it seems to be blocking the oh so important title of my blog...is it just me?

Try removing the Doctype line from your template, as described here. Let me know if the problem persists.