ON BLOGGING ~ That's A Wrap...

I was curious to see if I could successfully wrap my text easily around images in Blogger. A few weeks ago Susan left a comment stating she was looking for a solution to this very issue on her Blogger blog. I will confess that the reason my images are always front and center is that I myself have had issues wrapping text cleanly around them when attempting a left or right positioned photo. This is true whether I am composing posts in the Edit HTML tab or the Compose tab view. It is especially annoying when it looks perfect in the editing view but then the Preview shows a complete disaster. Ugh. So I went searching around online for a solution.

One tip that I found in my instructional searches was that you should insert the image first. Then type your text after it. When trying to insert an image into existing text it doesn't seem to work so well. These first 2 paragraphs are the result of me inserting an image and clicking on Left or Right positioning when using the Edit HTML tab. Then I typed this text immediately after the image. As you can see, the text is wrapping itself right around the photos quite nicely. But what happens if I type the text first and then try to insert the photo? It has been said to cause a big blank space in the post where the image was intended to be. Lets give it a go...

This worked without trouble for me!!! But if you get gaping holes where your pretty photo was supposed to be, put the photo in first, then the text and see if that helps. Another piece of advice that I found in searching for tips on this text wrapping business for Blogger was that you need to ensure your actual settings allow for it to begin with. You can check this by going to the Settings Tab, click on Formatting and then make sure the election next to "Enable Float Alignment" says YES. I believe this is the default, but it doesn't hurt to double check if you are experiencing wrap issues.

Finally, I tried inserting the image and then typing the text in the Compose tab to see if the formatting worked as planned. I had to align the image position after inserting it which is different than when doing so in the Edit HTML tab, where I select and position all in the same step prior to the insertion into the post. It also left huge blank spaces between the image and where the next line of text began even though it looked fine prior to previewing. So I just went over to the Edit HTML tab and deleted those blank lines that were inserted for reasons unknown to me and things returned to a normal appearance. I find it easier to create in the Edit HTML tab because I can make sure the text is living cleanly amongst all the fancy tags that create the formatting instructions. But if you are scared of HTML, the Compose tab will let you create wrapped text - you just may need to use the Edit HTML tab view to see and remove the ugly gaps and other gremlins. The only other issue that could be causing trouble is if your blog's template is not set widely enough for the images you are inserting into your post. It might look just fine while composing/editing. And then when you preview or publish it disappears or gets chopped off. That would involve either resizing your images so that they are smaller, or modifying your blog's template to have a wider viewing space - like when watching movies on DVD and selecting Wide Screen instead of the normal view. Or just pick a different template.

Knowing how to get your text to wrap around your images in Blogger can make things more visually interesting, segment your thoughts into a more digestible format for readers or just be a way to express your mood at the moment. Hopefully these suggestions will help Susan out in her mission and do the same for your wrapping efforts. If they don't, we've got more research to do!!!

Image courtesy Wade Kelly via Fotopedia