LJ / MySpace blog widget

Hi!

I'm just about to test the LJ blog widget. We're still missing a configuration page and color selection, but I've got a nice testable item available. Take a look at my profile for an example of how it's coming along.

[chris]

PS - This will work anywhere you can put an <img src=""...> tag

If anyone's interested, here's a raw link you can play with before the nice GUI front-end configurator arrives:

http://www.librarything.com/ljwidget/widget3.php?view=chrisgann&fsize=9&...

[chris]

Hmm "Liberry" thats an unusual spelling are you going to rebrand the whole site?^)

Very cool! Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work for unicode character sets (example). I'm wondering if there's going to be a cover display option, which would provide a workaround.

3> Yes, the new fruity-licios book cataloging website!

4> I'm working on the Unicode issue -- it's actually about the font, and I have yet to find a Unicode font that plays nice with libttf in PHP. I won't stop until I find something, however!

[chris]

Prompt and educational response! I'm taking a brief pause to idolize you, then getting back to holiday prep. Thanks!

Hey mangaroo... can you give this one a shot?

this link should work

thanks!

[chris]

It works! You rock!

Ok, I've played a bit with mine, and discovered that it's not quite as intuitive as I expected: replacing the black background (000000) with a colour (#6666cc, to go with the rest of my journal's colour scheme) turns the background transparent, makes the dark blue text the lighter blue, and the yellow text goes black... http://bopeepsheep.livejournal.com/profile - not what I'd have guessed I'd see by replacing those colours! Any ideas?

BoPeep, remove the # from the bc attribute (6666cc not #6666cc). That should fix it:



edited to reduce the number of titles displayed

Aha! But why did it do that? (The hex was copied from LJ's color selector, incidentally.)

It happened because for some reason the "#" sign is giving me a hard time in the beta. You know, I manage to do all this really, REALLY difficult programming to make this work, and I'm being foiled by a stinkin #-sign! I'll fix it, but in the meantime, the # won't work :-)

[chris]

Chris, forgive me for being greedy, but is there any chance of creating an LJ widget that includes cover scans?

Boy, I wish we were allowed to do that! Since we get our cover images from Amazon, we have to abide by their Terms of Service, which says that any image must be linked back to the depicted Amazon product. Unfortunately, that can't be done legitimately in the widget. Before I knew that, I had actually created the widget to display cover images. I hope that someday we can use that feature because it was a gas to write!!

[chris]

Here's a usage example, I clipped this one from the LT blog because I was feeling lazy:

<a href="http://www.librarything.com/profile/chrisgann">
<img src="http://www.librarything.com/gwidget/widget.php?view=chrisgann&type=random&num=5&hbold=1&ac=ac8834&tc=000000&bc=EEEEFF&fsize=8">
</a>

This will show 5 random books from my library, and link back to my profile. Here is the example in action:




[chris]

Okay, but where do I PUT this bit of code?

Aha! That's the $100,000 question! (€76 167.26 for our €urpoean friends)

I don't actually know, Tim gave me the password to his LJ, but I kind of forgot where I put it :( I will try to find said password, or maybe someone reading this knows where to put it. Someone posted some instructions in the blog as a reply to the entry.

Please let me know how you make out!

[chris]

Wherever you want the widget to appear, on your LibraryThing profile, perhaps on your blog if you have one.

You will need to check with the documentation of your blog provider to find out where you can put this kind of thing. For example, on Wordpress - you log into the control panel for your blog, go through "Presentation" - "Theme Editor" and click on the "Sidebar" link if you wanted to put the widget in the sidebar of your blog - you'd put the code in there.

You will probably need a moderate knowledge of HTML and/or CSS before fiddling with the stylesheets/layout for your blog, in order to get the widget in the desired location.

I copied the sample on the blog entry and pasted it into my LJ profile Bio field, then changed all the parameters to format it how I wanted it. Looks great now!

Here's the URL: http://staffordcastle.livejournal.com/profile

I did that too and it works, thanks. The W3C html checker told me that you should replace the ampersands in the url by &
This may matter for search engines, because they put sites higher in their ranking if there's fewer html errors.

>20 xtien:

I am afraid I do not understand.

<sidestep>
Oh, of course! You did write "&amp;" but LT solved the code into "&". Whenever you want to show code over here at LT Talk, pay attention to double code your code. That way, after being solved, it will remain (single) code.
Example : If you want to show "&amp;", you should write is as "&amp;amp;", for "&amp;" will resolve into "&", but double-coded "&amp;amp;" will resolve into (single) coded "&amp;".
Mind I had to triple-code in edit mode to show you double code in view mode. To show you triple code, I 'd have to quadriple-code. This is becoming madness though.
<sidestep>

Right so, your W3C html checker thinks an ampersand (&) 'd better be coded within html--i.e. replaced by e.g. "&amp;" or "&#38;". But the URL is not considered to be html, for it is a URL. Within URL's, coding out works out some different. However, if you 'd prefer code above plain readable characters, within a URL, you might replace the amparsand character (&) by its corresponding code--procent sign (%) followed by hexadecimal character code, that is. Therefore, in this case, within your URL, you might replace "&" by its equivalent "%26" code.

borkerij,

You slipped up while closing your sidestep tag - now we are sidestepping twice - nested sidestepping even! Here, I'm feeling gracious and I'll close both of them for you... </sidestep></sidestep>. This thread can return to normal now :-P

Most excellent! I ran off with some code and got it to work in Blogger without too much hassle! I had to futz with the width--the default code Chris gave was too wide for the option it gave me but it's now wonderful! Hooray. Please feel free to check it out! http://hedgehoglibrarian.blogspot.com/

PhireAngel, Blogger's blogspot hosting allows the use of javascript. Have you tried the original widget on the tools page? You can include covers (or do a covers-only version). Also, you can create a widget that allows visitors to search your LT catalog from your blog.

Has anyone had any success with MySpace yet? I've played with it a bit but can't find a way through... Any advice?

Got the code-only version working like a charm. See it here: http://raven-moon.livejournal.com/ It's bit down on the right side, under the links section.

Cheers!

To LiveJournal users:
I have seen that people use the widget within other design than those listed in http://community.livejournal.com/s2howto/47982.html . These people are free account users so it cannot be a feature of paid accounts that allows them to use the widget in other designs.
Anybody willing to help me out here? I know how to customise the designs in above link, but I would like to use a different one...

I've repeatedly tried using the above coding (from chrisgann) on MySpace and it's just not working. It's not a MySpace issue because I've been able to link to images from my Photobucket account. Everytime I try using the codework provided here, MySpace substitutes the img src link for ".." that links to my LibraryThing profile. I've also tried using Photobucket's codework for images (that works) and substituting the links from my account (to test it for corrupt codework on my part). No dice.

Has anyone found a workable solutation yet?

Thank you so much, LibraryThing, for providing this valuable widget.

I am using it in the following places with varying parameters with no problems:
- my LiveJournal profile
- my CommonCircle.org profile
- my CovenSpace.com profile
- my MyBeard.org profile

The only consistent option I use is the &font=arialuni. Otherwise, I have varied colors and widths, but have only used the &tag= parameter once to tailor display for the CommonCircle.org profile. Since it appears that one can only use one tag at a time, I am going to retag my collection for books I would want to show on that site.

Thank you so much again, LibraryThing! This was a great Winter Solstice/Chrismukkah/Festivus/New Year present which I'm really using!

ogambear

N.B. I do not (and would not) have a MySpace profile because I am implacably hostile towards all of Rupert Murdoch's properties.

I use blogger but can't install the standard/original widget in it. Anyone help me please. I can install other javascript code before with no problem. But just this librarything widget, it seems that the blogspot having a dufficulties accepting it. Any way to solve this?

Didn't work for me either.

http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=44339