I've extended the widget contest.

Blog post here: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2009/04...

I'll go ahead and grab them from the other threads, but if you can, post or repost your widgets here.

You can either post your "sharing" link or a URL to your blog.

Message edited by its author, Apr 28, 2009, 7:17pm.

So you're not following this one anymore?

http://www.librarything.com/topic/61668

My link in the old thread doesn't work any more anyway, so I'm happy to repost here:

http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

It still has the same bug, namely that I picked the "book turning" pre-loader and it uses the "swirl" pre-loader when you follow the link.

When I reinstated the pre-loader it then gave me this link, with a different shareID:

http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

...but the link automatically generated on *that* page (no changes made) also has a different shareID:

http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

I don't know if that could be related to the bug.

I hope I'm not disqualified for causing trouble ;D

Here's mine again - have to test if it works!

http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

Got the swirl preloader instead of the book - changed it and got this ID

http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

Still swirl, but set to show books from my library, which is probably better (I limited it to books with reviews - I have quite a few).

No, sorry, I'll read the old one. I just wanted to give people a chance to refresh what they had their, or not.

I made three:

From my small Donald Duck comic book collection:
Quack! says Donald Duck
http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

same in Finnish
Kääk!
http://fi.librarything.com/widget.php?sh...

My Sweet LibraryThing (random books)
http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

It is a crime (crime fiction)
http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

Edited to add: Noticed today that the characters in my Finnish widget are really something else: Ku00e4u00e4k!

Message edited by its author, Apr 30, 2009, 10:57am.

I don't know how exciting it is, but I made one of currently checked out library books to accompany the Library Loot posts on my blog.

http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

Repost from Original Thread as per blog post instructions: (http://www.librarything.com/topic/61668) Also noted: Original message was post #22, which I believe qualifies me for the free LT laptop sticker, Tim? ;-)

Either way...

Entry #1
Here's a fun basic one, highlighting my science fiction obession. I need to take some time to lean how to really manipulate and customize these! The possibilities are limitless... :-)
http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

Entry #2
Did I mention I really love anthologies?
http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...
*Edited to weed out non-fiction anthologies due to widget title requirements*
*By the way, it seems to me that this widget is recycling only about 20 covers when in reality I have about 60 books using this tag. Is it just me or is that the way these things work?*

Entry #3
Getting a good scare reading late at night is an excelent pastime. Thanks for the widget title, T.S. Eliot!
http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...
*Edited again, animation code options seems to be slipping away on their own.*

Also re: message 30 (widgets in the wild). None of mine have made it out onto the great intrawebs. I tried replacing my old LT widget with a fancy new one for my blogspot blog (it was running as a sidebar to the actual posts) however, due to coding I don't understand in the slightest, it "overlapped" into my actual blog text and covered half of it up. I have no idea how to fix it and wasn't down for placing it as an actaual post on said blog... so they are just located here. Can't seem to find the old widgets back either, so now my blog ( http://www.thegreattim.blogspot.com/ ) is widget deprived.

Message edited by its author, Jun 2, 2009, 3:32pm.

i dont understand what this is 4 can u telll me?

Would this qualify as a widget?

http://www.librarything.com/userpics/19v...

It is my profile picture, and I call it 'Welcome to Belbury.'

The widgets are things for displaying (part of) your LT library on other sites - blogs and so on. If you go to your Profile and look on the right-hand side at the top, you'll see the link to the widget-making page - go ahead and fiddle around. Try different color combos, different arrangements of books, different sets of data (covers, titles, authors, reviews...), try drawing from different tags (do you tag your currently-reading books?). Check out some of the widgets in the other posts - the links in there are the 'Share this widget' code you'll see on the widget page. The other box is what you need for embedding the widget on a different site.

How about this:

http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

Reposted from previous thread:

Number 1:
Embedded in BookMooch:
http://www.bookmooch.com/m/bio/squeakych...
Same one not embedded:
http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

Number 2:
I have no place to embed this one:
http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

Number 3:
I gave up when trying to create it as my computer kept crashing. No time now to work on another one. Had fun trying to think up news uses for the widgets, though!

ETA: I tried to create another one tonight (4/30/09), but when I was almost finished, it crashed my computer again. :(

Message edited by its author, May 1, 2009, 9:23am.

This is a re-post from the original thread, just with an updated URL.

http://www.librarything.de/widget.php?sh...

Could be used in a blog for letting other people know what books you have read recently and what you think of them, without having to create a blog post for every review.

Message edited by its author, Apr 30, 2009, 11:38am.

Here's mine:

http://www.librarything.com/widget.php?s...

Message edited by its author, Apr 30, 2009, 9:12pm.

#13... I think I may have had the same problem as you about half the times I tried to make widgets. Does everything slooooow way down and then finally stop all together?

I've seemed to notice it always around the time I'm naming the widget. The keystrokes show up about a minute after I type them... And then I have to force I.E. to shut down via Task Manager.

--> 16

Does everything slooooow way down and then finally stop all together?

Exactly! You're lucky, thegreattim, because my attempts quit when I'm almost done. It's so frustrating. I tried this both in IE6/XP and FF2. Last night I tried again in IE6/XP and didn't feel like trying yet another time in FF2. Since the contest is almost over (or over already), I'm glad I got the first two up. However, I was getting better as I was going along. The world shall never see my last creation. :)

#17

I'm using IE 7.0.5/Win XP and having the same issues, thought about installing G.Chrome and trying that but have not had the chance yet.

Always almost near the end for me also! After I've edited all my major choices and ususally when I'm naming the widget. Boo.

Squeaky and greattim --- YES, I had the same kinds of problems more than once, and usually when I was trying to name the widget is when things went downhill fast. I was using FF -- probably FF3, it was a few weeks ago -- on XP. It seemed like a Murphy's Law thing: whenever I was just playing around, it worked fine, but when I started trying to be more creative and enter more widgets in the contest, it would take forever. (And then my husband would come by and be like, "What are you doing? Can you put away this laundry?" or some other silly thing! ARGH!!!)

--> 20

What laundry?

*trips over piles of dirty clothes*

Oops! Guess I was trying too hard to make another widget. :)

> 13/16/17/19

1) So far am unable to recreate this bug. Tried in XP using FF2, IE6 and IE7. So does this problem only exists while building widgets or does it appear on pages that have widgets embeded? (to determine if it's the widgets rather than the widget builder see: http://www.librarything.com/widgetsbythe...). I've tried many combinations of options... what options are you choosing?

2) I have made some synchronicity improvements to the underlying widget code that may help alleviate the problem if it's not specific to the building of widgets.

Sorry for the problem. I welcome any additional clues.

-Mike (mike@librarything.com)

>>> ltmike:

I just recreated the problem on WinXP using IE7. It always occurs when building. I've had no problems loading others or viewing the "widget by the ton" page.

I'm trying to build a very tall, narrow widget to run the side of my blog, here what I did, in order:

1)Chose the preset: Basic List
2)Widget Type: Books with details
3)I unchecked: Ratings, Reviews & Tags (leaving covers, authors and titles)
4)Number: 40
5)Sort By: Random
6)Filter: Show all books
7)tag limitation: "Fiction: Science" (I'm probably the only one to really use that tag, but have made it work before)
8)Widget Title" (other)
9)... started naming widget

Step 9 is where everything slowed up and the keystrokes for the name are delayed by several seconds at least, eventually forcing me to shutdown IE (lack of patience). This has hapened other times though (using other presets - one-cover basic black, for instance) not just this exact way...

I'm unsure now how I even got the three submitted that I have. :-)
Good luck with finding the problem!

*edited for missing a step*

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2009, 3:44pm.

22: Thanks for such a detailed report. I repeated your steps in XP/IE7 without that problem, but I'm still looking.

A few questions that might seem pointless but could help us narrow in on the issue by finding something that I'm not doing that causes the issue.

1. Are you using the Tab key or your mouse to navigate through the fields?

2. Are you using a scrollwheel on your mouse to either select things in a dropdown or move the page along when this happens?

3. Are you hitting Enter when you make selections of anything? Do you see the widget refresh between any of these steps? In theory it shouldn't refresh at all after you select "Basic List" until you hit the "Refresh!" button, can you confirm?

Thanks.

Ah ha! Finally got it to break. No clue why yet, but thought I'd keep you posted. Back on track.

Cool! I'm not crazy. :-)

Just for your info regarding msg.23 questions, LTL:
1. Tab
2. No to select, Yes to move page
3. No enter hitting, but in the past I've had had it refresh (after the preset choice, that is) in the middle of the options - without hitting the "refresh" button.

Edited for curiosity...
And has Tim chosen a winner or ten yet?? :-) Curious minds inquire.

Message edited by its author, May 5, 2009, 1:04pm.

> 13/16/17/19/22/23/24/25

Cool, Luke and I figured out the memory leak problem. Should be able to build widgets without crashing browsers (yes, even Internet Explorer). So sorry!

Hi-5 Luke!

-Mike (mike@librarything.com)

Very cool, good work Mike & Luke!

thegreattim, Does that mean the problem is fixed for you? If no, blink once. If yes, don't blink at all -Mike (mike@librarything.com)

This is me not blinking...

On the widget contest, I want to point people to where people posted them, if they did. Frankly, I screwed up in not asking people to do that. I'm going to be looking at where they're appearing and asking people if I can link to those places. I'll also pick some that haven't "made it out" to the wild.

Soooo.... are we all unworthy?

I'm bugging Tim about it at today's meeting. Stay tuned.

And got assigned work for it.

How about the laptop stickers for the first (whatever number it was) submissions? I'm pretty sure I was among those first few to post --- not making any claims about the QUALITY of my widgets, mind you! --- but I'd love to have one of those stickers.

Not trying to bother you, just asking! ;-)

34: I'm working on this right now. You're definitely on the top 25 posters list. Lets wait till I finish picking more in case we need to ship you anything else.

So...no stickers?

Soon. Very...soon. ish. Really.

Message edited by its author, Jun 15, 2009, 11:39am.