0 Simple adjustable way to hide Navbar

An email from a blogger regarding his problem with hiding the navbar caused me to revisit the hiding the navbar issue plus recheck the Blogger TOS (Terms of Service) plus discovered a very simple way to hide the navbar which I tested at A-Z Products and adapted from Disable/hide navbar.

In order to hide the Blogger navbar, all you have to do is to sign into Blogger dashboard, click LAYOUT then EDIT HTML to open the template editor. Look for the body section in the stylesheet which in the standard Blogger Minima template is as follows:

background:$bgcolor;
margin:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
}

Now all you need to do is to copy and paste this small bit of CSS

margin-top:0px;
position: relative;
top: -40px;

and paste it, say, at the bottom of the above script just before the last } like this:

background:$bgcolor;
margin:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
margin-top:0px;
position: relative;
top: -40;
}

Depending on your template, you can play with the variable -40 until the extreme top of your blog header sits right at the top of the browser window or at any position according to your desire. To illustrate, see the screen shots below showing the original, the appearance with the variable as -50, then -40:

Original appearance with standard Blogger Minima template with Blogger Navbar plus space visible

Blogger Navbar plus part of Header hidden

Update: A commentator commented that the comments of J and Carol helped him, I think, with the new Blogger Template Designer, so I figured I will add their comments into the post proper:

For those using the new Template Designer, go to Design - Template Designer - Advanced - Add CSS.
Paste this code:

div.navbar {
opacity:0.0;
display:none;
}
body
{
margin-top:0px;
position: relative;
top: -50px;
}

Curse Blogger for making me spend two days on this!!!!

0 Blogging tip - search definition (general)

I plan this to be a series of tips and tricks for blogging in general, not only related to Blogger.com platform, but applicable for any blogging software including Wordpress, Live Journal, Jomlah, etc.

I will start off by one simple little search engine trick I often use. Frequently, I like to define some word before writing about something related to that word. What I will do is just to type the word "define" before the word in a search engine.

For example, I want to publish a post about diabetes. Searching for [define diabetes]. Further, you can use different search engines depending on what kind of results you want.

If you use Google.com, the very first result will usually be the Web definition:

Web definitions for diabetes
a polygenic disease characterized by abnormally high glucose levels in the blood; any of several metabolic disorders marked by excessive urination ...
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn - Definition in context

If you use other search engines, the first result will not be as consistent. For example, using bing.com, first result was from www.diabetes.org:

American Diabetes Association Home Page - Aerican Diabetes ...
The American Diabetes Association is leading the fight against the deadly consequences of diabetes and fighting for those affected by diabetes.
www.diabetes.org Cached page

but the first result for asthma was from

Asthma UK - Homepage
Asthma UK is the charity dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the 5.4 million people in the UK whose lives are affected by asthma.
www.asthma.org.uk Cached page

0 Cannot add gadgets with template designer? - solution

A blogger who was unable to add gadgets when in design (clicking on "add gadgets" takes me the blogger back to my dashboard page). Also, if he try from layouts, thru new template designer, all options are deactivated.

The blogger solved his problem quite simply in the end:
(1) adopted new template, and
(2), changed to mozilla firefox browser... "add gadgets" got enabled again...

Well if you have a similar problem, perhaps his experience can help you solve the problem