I had put a link to Dynamic Views (simply append /view/ in URL) on top navigation for a very long time. Dynamic Views isn't too bad as an alternative way to view a blog, if you have a nice computer, it's kind of resource hug in my opinion. Anyhow, I'd like readers to have option to choose when it's in arm's reach already.

But two days ago, I noticed it now shows comments and a comment form. I may be wrong since I don't use Dynamic Views, but I don't recall they were in Dynamic Views before, a popup window or something was the way to access comments before.

I went to change Comment Location to Hide, I thought it did what it meant, hiding the comments. And it did hide the comments section, but it also disallowed commenting. This caused my blog showing no comment section for almost two days until I just found out moments ago.

Why I mention disallow when it seems to be implied as you choose to hide comments? Because I use Disqus and I enable the comment synchronization, so the comments will be posted back to Blogger's comment system from Disqus' for backup purpose.

The first problem is it hides not only the comments but also the comments in normal Blogger layout, it's a simple template design issue. I can bypass it, but the problem is the Hide means Disallow, so Disqus can no longer synchronize back the comments. I have no choice to turn it back on, if I want to backup comments.

Why in the first place I do not want comments to show up in Dynamic Views? Because I can only make comments synchronize back to Blogger, not the other way around, or duplex. Therefore, I must not allow regular readers to have chance to access Blogger comment form.

If you want to suggest why not just enable Disqus in Dynamic Views? Because we can't, maybe in future. Dynamic Views is a unique interface and I totally agreed with that, but it should be little more flexible on option on/off.

There may be a way to get around, I think you can add Disqus embed code in each post to have it, I saw some project for having Gist embedded in Dynamic Views. However, it's utterly impractical as how much effort you must to put in for Disqus to show up.

I tried to add a message to Comment Form Message to ask people not to comment in Dynamic Views, that setting doesn't work for Dynamic Views, same as Embedded/Full page/Popup window, comments always embedded in the post.

Anyway, since I have no control for comment section in Dynamic Views, I decided to take that link down, even though people can still append /view/ to access it.

I have to say, I hardly see any blogs use Dynamic Views. Not even Google's blogs. It seems Blogger team developed a product doesn't gain much utilization. Much same to Blogger Stats, but in the value bloggers give to it. The worst part is not the lack of customization, but no option to turn them off completely.