Working around Blogger

Sometime in the past few days, the Blogger team has made a change that breaks in-line JavaScript coded into a template. I first discovered this when I happened to check in on The Geek Tribune this morning and found that my layout was broken because the JavaScript-generated date text in my masthead was missing.

The reason the script stopped working is that newlines are being stripped from code such as...

<script language='JavaScript' type='text/javascript'>
<!--
 (javascript code)
//-->
</script>

...so that it appears to the browser as...

<script language='JavaScript' type='text/javascript'>
<!-- (javascript code)//-->
</script>

This, of course, effectively comments out the script.

One could simply delete the <!-- --> pair, but then – if you're using an XHTML 1.0 doctype, as I am – Blogger's template editor complains about the XML not being well formed.

I admit I've never liked using CDATA, mostly because I find the syntax difficult to remember, but it seemed like it might be just the thing to keep Blogger from messing with my XHTML template. I replaced the HTML-style comments with...

<script language='JavaScript' type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
  (javascript code)
//]]>
</script>

...and voila! My scripts are back in business.