Blogspot blues, redux (updated)

I switched over to the new version of Blogger, and made a few minor design changes, like the font and color of my blog title. I tried to change that color once before, and it looked fine on the front page, the blog title in maroon, the subtitle in red, but on other pages it was an ugly purple. The interface on Beta Blogger (yes, they’re calling it Beta Blogger, which sounds like beta blocker) is more user friendly, for those of us who only speak Pig HTML.

I was going to ask for a show of hands about some of the elements (for example, what color should I use for hyperlinks and visited hyperlinks, currently blue and grey respectively), but I’m having a major problem with comments.

Does anyone know how to re-install Haloscan in Beta Blogger? Haloscan’s automatic install doesn’t work, and Blogger rejects the html generated by Haloscan’s manual install. Instructions using very simple words would be much appreciated.

(Update: there are comments for this post only which should work, but it's not something I can use normally, so I still need Haloscan help. Anyone else having problems with or comments about the blog's appearance can also comment).

(Update: attempting to simply insert html [which may not work in Beta Blogger since it was designed for old Blogger] into the template including phrases like "/www.haloscan.com/comments/wiiiai/<$BlogItemNumber" and "...javascript">postCount('<$BlogItemNumber$>" produces the reaction from Blogger: Invalid variable declaration in page skin: Variable is used but not defined. Input: BlogItemNumber. Does that tell anyone what the problem is?

I also need to figure out how to make the Blogspot bar at the top go away again, as the “search this blog” feature sucks.

Let me point out one nice new feature: at the bottom of each individual post page, there are links for “newer post” and “older post.” This means you can navigate the posts in chronological order rather than reading down the home page in reverse chronological order. If your computer accepts cookies, you can tell which posts are new since your last visit by the color of the post titles (blue or grey, remember?) in the archives section in the right-hand column.

Other bloggers on Blogspot should probably not change to Beta until a few more of the bugs are worked out. Also, my blog was off-line for 2 hours while they transferred it, which I'd have done in the middle of the night had they warned me. And don’t forget to save your old template first; I had to extract from mine the code for my Sitemeter, PayPal, Amazon, Powell’s and Google search functions (although the Beta interface made it very easy to plug them in). Only HaloScan was a problem, about which, let me repeat, HELP!!