After lengthy discussions and weighing up of the pros and cons we’ve decided to allow javascript, iframes and object code onto Edublogs.
This means that you can now just copy and paste pretty much most ‘embedding’ code you can pick up around the web directly into your Edublog.
For posts and pages just click on the ‘Code’ tab and paste the code in there. For sidebar widgets just create as many Text Boxes as you need (under Presentation > Widgets) and copy and paste the code into them.
For example, say you wanted to play this classic game on your blog… simply go there, click on ‘Get Widget’, copy the code and paste it in your ‘Code tab and you’ll get something much like the below:
You can also use iframes to embed things like Calendars, put CoComment and Ligit in your sidebar or add live chat and extra Twitter options.
Why don’t you show us how you are using this new freedom!
Side note: As a result the Widgetbox, Box.net and Video Widgets will be replaced by this approach – so please recreate any widgets you currently have in Text Box form before we remove these widgets (next week).
March 17, 2008 at 12:33 pm Permalink
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?
March 17, 2008 at 1:01 pm Permalink
Cool, first up it’ll just be Widgetbox, Box.net and Video Widgets, then we’ll see how we go (we might just keep the rest – these are the ones that obvioulsy need replacing) – how does two weeks sound :)
March 17, 2008 at 1:06 pm Permalink
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
March 17, 2008 at 1:11 pm Permalink
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
March 17, 2008 at 1:22 pm Permalink
alice .. we can’t view draft posts .. only you can see it!
March 17, 2008 at 1:30 pm Permalink
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/
March 17, 2008 at 1:31 pm Permalink
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.
March 17, 2008 at 1:43 pm Permalink
Sue, that sounds like a fair self-assessment! hehe
March 17, 2008 at 1:56 pm Permalink
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?
March 17, 2008 at 2:00 pm Permalink
A few things I should note:
- Make sure you’re using the ‘Code’ tab
- If you’re using ‘Object’ code, WordPress will break it if you edit and resave any post (so have it ready to paste again or use javascript) – BTW, I’m hoping we can get a fix for this soon!
- You should be able to write above and below it.
- Always post a sample URL so we can take a look at the individual post / page :)
March 17, 2008 at 4:10 pm Permalink
Ding, ding, ding, sorry, forgot to hit publish, it’s there:
http://mizmercer.edublogs.org/2008/03/16/testing-splashr-slideshow/
March 17, 2008 at 4:12 pm Permalink
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…
March 17, 2008 at 4:31 pm Permalink
Picasa slideshows should work now, just put them in the ‘Code’ tab :)
March 17, 2008 at 5:04 pm Permalink
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.
March 17, 2008 at 7:55 pm Permalink
Nice
I am finally working on getting a Shelfari on my blog.
Kevin
March 17, 2008 at 8:17 pm Permalink
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
March 17, 2008 at 8:28 pm Permalink
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/
March 17, 2008 at 11:17 pm Permalink
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
March 18, 2008 at 6:57 am Permalink
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.
March 18, 2008 at 7:14 am Permalink
@ 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 :-)
March 18, 2008 at 9:11 am Permalink
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.
March 18, 2008 at 9:28 am Permalink
Sweet. Here’s my test post with bytheboxes http://madrona.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/3/
March 18, 2008 at 12:42 pm Permalink
Does this mean that your bloggers can put google’s adsense (or any other ads that use js) in their blogs?
March 18, 2008 at 12:43 pm Permalink
Yes, it certainly does.
March 18, 2008 at 1:20 pm Permalink
@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.
March 18, 2008 at 1:23 pm Permalink
How do we prevent all of that? We keep an eye on the site, ban any reported blogs and generally do everything we can to stop spamming.
Our signup form, for example, is waaay harder than a certain blog host that shall remain unamed :)
March 18, 2008 at 5:43 pm Permalink
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
http://www.room18space.edublogs.org
March 18, 2008 at 5:57 pm Permalink
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.
March 18, 2008 at 5:59 pm Permalink
PS: Why is my avatar not there??? I’ve uploaded it.
March 18, 2008 at 6:03 pm Permalink
You need to upload a user avatar for comments > Go to ‘My profile’ or ‘Users’ and click on ‘Your Avatar’… once done you’ll need to hard refresh these comments (hold down F5) to see it.
March 18, 2008 at 9:06 pm Permalink
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.
March 19, 2008 at 8:40 am Permalink
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
March 19, 2008 at 12:54 pm Permalink
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
March 19, 2008 at 2:04 pm Permalink
Hi Bill – correct… the place you’ll need to ask this at (*and have a serach around in) is http://edublogs.org/forums/
March 20, 2008 at 8:33 pm Permalink
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
March 20, 2008 at 10:56 pm Permalink
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) :-)
March 21, 2008 at 12:48 am Permalink
I embedded a Google Gadget Map:
Fusion Finds: Google Spreadsheets Upgrades
March 21, 2008 at 1:08 am Permalink
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
March 21, 2008 at 2:41 am Permalink
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
March 21, 2008 at 6:14 am Permalink
Picasa slideshow: http://alicemercer.edublogs.org/2008/03/20/old-bandws-of-leroy/
March 21, 2008 at 5:03 pm Permalink
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
March 22, 2008 at 1:41 pm Permalink
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
March 22, 2008 at 5:51 pm Permalink
Probably something to do with who’s supplying the mindmaps then…
March 23, 2008 at 6:27 pm Permalink
it’s a wide room to express my mind. thank you very much for this great feature.
March 24, 2008 at 12:46 pm Permalink
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!
March 24, 2008 at 1:04 pm Permalink
Glad to be of service :)
March 29, 2008 at 5:10 pm Permalink
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?
March 29, 2008 at 5:32 pm Permalink
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?
March 30, 2008 at 2:15 pm Permalink
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.
March 30, 2008 at 2:16 pm Permalink
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