Widgets, javascript, iframes and objects (and all that jazz)

I think this will be a good move - make things a little easier. But, just a couple of questions. Can you be a little more specific about which widget boxes need replaced with textboxes please? And give us a little more time than a week to get this straightened out?

This is the best news ever James! Now we can use coverit live blogging and a bunch of other addons. Fantastic!!! I am going to rereview some if the tools that I have overlooked in the past to see which ones will benefit my blog.

Thanks .. Frank

Here is a test post: http://mizmercer.edublogs.org/?p=392 using iframes

Yep, sorry Alice but they need to be publoished before we can see them :) - James

alice .. we can’t view draft posts .. only you can see it!

Cover It Live blogging to be tested in 2 mins: http://franksblog.edublogs.org/2008/03/16/cover-it-live-blogging-test-new-edublogs-iframes-feature/

Thanks Edublogs I’m loving these changes. So far I’ve added to my side bar: Lijit Search; a blogroll using Googlereader; embedded my Shared Google Reader; embedded my Cocomment widget plus added Technorati charts to my posts. Unfortunately I may have gone a tad widget crazy in my side bar and may require therapy to cure me.

Sue, that sounds like a fair self-assessment! hehe

I am going to start including “historical video games” such as Space Invaders on my class blogsite - http://atwaty.edublogs.org/ Our theme for the year is “Around the World - Across the Years” so a little video game history is a neat addition as a full size thing in a post. One problem however, I went to add some text below or above the Space Invaders game and I was unable to do it. It messed up my whole blog. I ended up just adding my happy historical memory of Space Invaders as a comment rather than on the actual post. Is there a way to add text on the same post as Space Invaders without messing up the formatting of the whole blogsite?

Ding, ding, ding, sorry, forgot to hit publish, it’s there:
http://mizmercer.edublogs.org/2008/03/16/testing-splashr-slideshow/

James, I still can’t figure out how to embed Picasa slideshows which are flash, but have a bunch of “%” s in the file name frustrating my efforts to use the flash embed button…

Big smoochy James. I had a bunch of flickr photos I wanted to get show kids with revolutionary war tag, now I can use the splahsr widget again. Wish I could find a commons only slideshow for flickr pics.

Nice
I am finally working on getting a Shelfari on my blog.
Kevin

Love all the recent changes James. Great job!
And this one is just in time for St Patricks Day :)
Happy St Patricks Day to one and all - Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!
Patricia

Great to get this functionality - I have embedded a couple of Google Presentations which I have been linking to for a while, much better to have it right there in the blog post. I have also thrown together some screenshots on how to embed the Google presentations iframe code into a post - hope this helps.

http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/iframe-goodness-embedding-google-presentations/

James,

I tried to embed a VoiceThread into our “Student Showcase” blog (http://esleflstudents.edublogs.org/) using the new method. It showed up in Firefox, but on top of the sidebar. In Internet Explorer it didn’t show up at all. Then I used the “old” method of using part of the embed code, clicking the Flash button, etc., and it worked fine.

Larry

Unfortunately Larry I take full responsibility. I used Voicethreads as an example for the Edublogger post. I found Voicethreads using this method really tricky and probably was a bad choice by me. Some iFrames and objects code can be a touch temperamental (trying hard not to swear) and you can break the code which means it stuffs up your post - badly. To save you stress the best method is to add the code once you totally written all text and added all images, and only when you are ready to press publish. I found just going back into the post after publishing caused problems which meant I had to recopy the voicethread embed code again.

I would be happy to change my example of embedding in a post from a Voicethread to another — if anyone can think of a better embed that educators would like to see let me know.

PS Tom your explanations of how to embed a Google Presentation are excellent.

@ Sue, thankyou for your feedback - you are welcome to use and reference some of the explanation and images for embedding Google presentations from my post, if that helps :-)

Okay voicethreads was definitely a bad choice to demonstrate on The Edublogger. Thanks to Tom, who contact me via twitter, and told me that he would be happy for me to use his screenshots of embedding Google Presentations. Tom - I haven’t embedded the presentations in my post instead I’ve asked people to check them out on your post and also thank you.

Thanks Tom.

Sweet. Here’s my test post with bytheboxes http://madrona.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/3/

Does this mean that your bloggers can put google’s adsense (or any other ads that use js) in their blogs?

@James:
Now with a way to make money from ads, the question is: How do you prevent the rush of spam blogs and scrapers? I’d really hate to see them dilute the quality educational content of edublogs.

http://room18space.edublogs.org/philosophy/

I have been trying to post up an example my students have been working on, of the online collaborative mind mapping tool from mindmeister.com and have had success!!

Still curious about the height and width settings of the frame - I changed them to make the iframe wider but it did not change on the page?

Apart from that - WOW! Thanks edublogs for making edublogging more interactive and simpler to use.

Andrew
www.room18space.edublogs.org

Yippee - thanks James - love it.

My favourite is Feedjit - allows blog readers to see where in the world other readers have come from. (Very closely followed by Clustrmaps.) I get ‘em from places I’ve never even heard of - better go back to geography lessons. (Does anyone know where Diyarbakir or Hadramawt are?)

See Feedjit bottom of left hand column http://videoconference.edublogs.org then click thru to get your own.

PS: Why is my avatar not there??? I’ve uploaded it.

Ta James - I worked out what was happening. It was reading my identity from my test blog where I hadn’t uploaded an avatar. I’ve now done so - it should be okay.

I found a site that allows you to make mixtapes. The site (www.mixwit.com) allows to search for songs you want from other sites, create a playlist and publish it to your blog. It even uses images of old recordable tapes that we used to use to make our mix tapes. As the songs play the spools move and you can see the tape moving from one side to the other. It looks really cool and could be a neat way to add some kids music to your site. I play a lot of music for my students highlighting different genres, styles and artists from classical to jazz, bobby Mcferrin to the Rosenshontz. This would allow me to put some of that music on the blog as well. It did appear as a very large tape on my blog so I went back and edited the width and height. I dont have one on my site right now but will have one up soon.

I am also enjoying the feedjit and the shelfari which is far cooler in appearance than Librarything.

Ian

Hello All-

May not be the correct place to place this need…but here it goes anyway. I would like to place a picture of one of my newsletters next to a PDF file link. It is just I do not know how to go about placing this picture into my Resource Page.

ourroom106.edublogs.org

I am new to Edublogs, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you muchly!!

Bill

Hey,

Is it possible to use Google Adsense in your edublog. I tried adding one using Text widget but it is not showing up http://hurricanesoftwares.edublogs.org/ here.

I checked the source code and found that the google path in src is empty, though i have inserted correctly. I think that is removed deliberately as of no reason.

Anyone knows of possible reason behind this.

Ash

You can embed a Google spreadsheet along with presentations too. Here is a post with an embedded ssheet as an example. http://tinyurl.com/29g7jq
Follow these steps:
1) On the Google spreadsheet click “Publish”.
2) Under the RSS link click the”More Publishing options” link.
3) From the drop down menu choose “HTML to embed in a web page”+change options if needed.
4) Click “Generate URL”
5) Copy the generated code and paste in the “Code” part of your blog post.
6) :-)

I embedded a Google Gadget Map:
Fusion Finds: Google Spreadsheets Upgrades

I added a “ning” badge in a post and it has appeared smaller than the actual badge. Any ideas why

on my keanderson.edublogs.org

Hey James,

Good work! This looks really cool. If anyone on here needs any help with our widgets, you’re welcome to e-mail support@widgetbox.com and I’ll get to it. So glad that it’s easier to add widgets!!

Dave

Picasa slideshow: http://alicemercer.edublogs.org/2008/03/20/old-bandws-of-leroy/

I was able to upload our mindmap from mind42.com. It looks great, works well and my students can refer to it at home. Thanks so much :)
KimP

Today the mindmaps are not showing on my blogs! The codes are still there but no mind maps. Any ideas what could have happenend?
KimP

it’s a wide room to express my mind. thank you very much for this great feature.

The possibility of embedding widgets more easily is the reason why I’ve moved one of my blogs from wordpress to edublogs. Thanks for making things easier for us!

Hi James, Tried to put Shelfari as a javascript widget in a text box but wont show shelf - show header but not shelf. Also can only choose 9 text boxes - are you going to allow us more?

Don’t worry James, I went back in to Shelfari and this time said I was using wordpress and used that widget. Comes out fine now, just need to tweak the width. Still need to know about text boxes or can all the membership widgets go in the one text box instead of a separate one each?

Hi, I tried to post this vodpod to a post on my underconstruction site (http://drugs.edublogs.org) but failed to make it work.
can anyone point to me whether this is an error or just not supported. thank you.

script src=”http://widgets.vodpod.com/javascripts/recent_videos.js?id=288604&v=2&title=kding%27s%20videos&options[theme]=sidebar3&options[num]=4&category_id=latest&options[color]=606060&options[div_id]=vodpod_widget_311807″>/script

Ok so I have tried to embed a code into the text widget and when I save it it erases on me. What am I doing wrong?! Please help!

Hi, new bloggermates! Being new to blogging as of today, I am excited about possibilities for my students, and learning as fast as I can.

Notice the time posted………..where is this time recorded? It is still April 4th 2008 at 2:33 PM where I am.

can someone please help or at least point me in the right direction. i can’t for the life of me work out how to embed a Diigo widget.

this is more than likely due to me error!

er, sorry to bother everyone; i seem to have done it and now feel really silly!

I’m having difficulty embedding the “standard” Technorati widget into my sidebar, via the text sidebar. Can anyone help?

Yeah, this cool news, i want talk with presidant of my schoo for open edublog to vicenza institute.

The space invaders link doesn’t work right when i embed the code…

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