I just installed the Firefox web browser on my PC. It's what Teal uses without problems, and it apparently fixes some of the issues with crazy text boxes and commenting/replying to comments that some of us have noticed when using Internet Explorer to access MyBloggers on a PC.

Specifically, here were the problems:

Messages/comments: you had an active text box to type in, and what you were typing appeared above it as you typed. As your typing got longer, pretty soon the typing above spilled into the text box and you couldn't read what you were typing, and had no idea if what you finally submitted would be legible.

Replying to Comments: Click on the Reply link, and a text box would come up: Reply to SoAndSo. But then it would go away and become a regular comment box, so your reply would get posted as a new comment. Very frustrating, because if your connection speed is slow, you have to wait for the page to refresh to try again.

Firefox is a free download. I looked at Safari for the PC and Google Chrome, but decided they were not for me for various reasons.

We still have the problem of not being able to customize or update our header design, and the background design for our blog is limited to olive stripe or pink stripe or default, but this is a smaller irritation that doesn't get in the way of everyday blogging.

And we have all these spammers from places we have never heard of signing on to tout handbags and assorted crap. I suppose they are the result of those 'work at home - Indianapolis housewife earns hundreds of dollars a day at her computer' scams where these people get paid pennies a time for signing up for accounts on all the blogs they can find. But due to apathy or whatever amongst our MyBloggers friends, I am almost positive more spammers are posting than real people.

Speaking of new friends, have you noticed that when we finally do get a warm body who sounds like they will be a great addition to our group, they last for one or maybe two posts?

I think this is what happens: Maybelle, sweet retired lady who likes to knit and cook and follow the news, decides she'd like to find out what blogging is all about. So she searches for blog sites on the Internet and comes across MyBloggers. Strange name, but easy to sign up for, and the look of it is not so confusing. So she sets up an account, and tentatively submits that first post. We welcome her once we decide she isn't one of those spammers.

She brags to her friends and family: "I've started blogging, you know. It will be fun to share ideas with people from all over the place. Facebook is okay, but I'd like somewhere different, a little bit simpler and quieter."

But her friends and family have never heard of MyBloggers: "Oh, no," they exclaim. "You need to blog on Blogspot/Wordpress/Blogster. They have all these cool/awesome/far out/crazy wicked customizations, and there are so many more people there who will see your blog."

"Well, I have to admit, the user interface on MyBloggers is a bit wonky," says Maybelle. "Maybe it's my computer, but the text is all over itself, and sometimes the text windows are only on half the screen. I asked someone how to fix it, and they said to restart my computer. That didn't help, of course.

And although in User Settings it says I can customize the look of my blog page, it doesn't work - says 'unrecognized user.' It says I can upload a custom header - use the pulldown box - but that doesn't work like it says it should, either.

And most of the posts seem to be advertising and canned text, not written by real bloggers. Now that I've seen what this blogging is all about, I guess I could do better. Where did you say those other sites are?"

And they never come back, and we sigh for what could have been. Of course we treasure our last little remnant of MyBloggers folks, and will hang in until the bitter end. We try to post something every day, and some of us have set up additional accounts to cover narrower channels to get more posts on the "Most Recent" list, but we are overwhelmed by spammers.

Of course we appreciate Eddie's efforts to keep this site running for us out of the goodness of his heart, and wish there was something we could do to help.