How to hide the Google logo in Google Gadgets
~ 23. February 2011 ~
A working knowledge of Google Gadgets is pretty important if you want to do much with Google Sites—that’s the only way to insert an iframe, anything that includes JavaScript, etc. I’ve found Google Gadgets to be a really handy way to display RSS feeds as html, even outside of Google Sites.
Of course there are several ways to get this done, using Feedburner’s BuzzBoost, feed2js or other magpie derivatives, or any number of freely available widgets, but often these hamper your ability to tweak the code and involve either putting some scripts on your own server or relying on calls to third parties. If I’m going to do the latter, I’m happy for that third party to be Google, since Google is generally reliable and fast. (Yes, Feedburner is also Google.) Google gadgets are great because even if you host the file on your own server, Google caches and optimizes it for speed. Lately, though, I’ve just been using the handy Google Gadgets Editor to host them on Google’s servers.
So anyway, if you include a Google Gadget anywhere but in iGoogle or a Google Site, viewers see a footer with a Google logo and a link. The logo links to a page that would allow others to get embed code, so sometimes this is useful, but if your goal is view-only it looks a little tacky.
This footer can be hidden, though, if you insert the following into your stylesheet:
.gadget img {display:none;} .powered {display:none;}
So, there you go, use Google Gadgets without the tacky logo.
I sort of wonder about the Google Gadgets project—seems like it never really took off to the extent Google had hoped. When you look at the documentation it looks like they were thinking it would become implemented in all sorts of contexts, but you rarely see them outside of Google Sites (itself not hugely adopted) or your own iGoogle page…
Twitter fail–worth it?
~ 2. September 2010 ~
I’ve been thinking of Twitter as a flexible way to disseminate library info, but unfortunately it’s got some costs too. I use Twitter’s basic widget that they apparently originally created for the Blogger platform—it takes recent tweets and outputs HTML (which can be fully styled via CSS) with clickable URLs and relative timestamps that link to the original tweet. Twitter doesn’t actually provide this code anymore in their “Goodies” section, but lots of people continue to use it. I’ve put it in our D2L widget and on the pages I created for our outreach centers.
Now I had been noticing a problem where periodically the tweets simply didn’t show. This is not ideal, but it’s not a disaster either. Much worse was earlier this week, when Twitter started throwing up “Authentication Required” dialog boxes (exact text varied according to browser—Firefox version shown below, with transcript of my reaction).
Not deadly if limited to the Centers pages. Much worse was the D2L widget, which currently gets upwards of 8,000 page views daily. Anyone loading a page containing the widget—i.e. home pages for dozens (hundreds? probably not) of courses at SCC—got this weird dialogue box that seemed to ask them to log in. Bad stuff, even if it only lasted an hour or so—our Distance Ed coordinators got calls about it and later posted a notice about it laying blame at our door (where it in fact belongs, but still, painful!).
I’m guessing this glitch was related to changes Twitter was making in its API requirements that day (and I’m seeing some similar reports on the Web). On the other hand it seems to have cropped up periodically before, and makes me wonder exactly how necessary this sort of thing is if I end up alienating users—they could reasonably react by removing the library widget from their course…
So for the time being, even though the errors are no longer showing, I’ve taken out the offending code. The standard Twitter widget is not an option—too bulky. I know there are other ways, using RSS-to-HTML tools, but I don’t understand quite how to make the URLs auto-link, or how to keep each tweet from starting with “SacCityLib”. See e.g. from feed2js (which can of course be fully styled via CSS).
Date is funky—could of course simply not use it—but link is not clickable. People have developed auto-link scripts in PHP, JavaScript, who knows what else—not sure how to use them though! Here’s one option that is nearly useable. One post over at SitePoint might have a solution…
Redesign of Centers pages
~ 27. August 2010 ~
The SCC website has special sections for our outreach centers. A couple semesters ago I put up web pages that outlined what services were available (requesting books via OPAC, off-campus database access etc.). Just recently I redid these, putting contact options at the top (with some big free icons I found via Smashing Magazine or Webdesigner Depot or something), and cutting some text out to make it less overwhelming. IM widget is now “above the fold”—this should drive a little more traffic.
Also created some more “friendly” URIs for them:
Unfortunately I found that when I view the pages on the iOS, the embedded YouTube video doesn’t display as they usually do! I assume this is caused by our CMS… So I’ll have to insert a link to them. (EDIT: I found that using YouTube’s dead-simple iFrame embed code fixed this problem.)
Also added Skype as a contact option, which I can monitor from my netbook. I don’t really don’t expect anyone to use it… I’ve also looked into TokBox and TinyChat—TinyChat is surprising powerful, with desktop sharing, whiteboard, and document collaboration built in—but, as Char Booth has suggested, these are all very possibly a waste of time and effort.
jQuerying follow-up
~ 10. August 2010 ~
As I mentioned previously, I’m working on embedding videos on the library site in some sort of coherent way. I’m intending to use the following URI: www.scc.losrios.edu/~library/videos. The page is live, though still rough. Below is a video description of what I did.
(If embedded version does not display, view here)
Why include a video rather than just blabbing on and on textually? I wanted to test Screencast-o-matic’s latest features, which include webcam picture-in-picture. They’ve also added a bunch of editing features, such as image overlays and zooming, that I played with but didn’t use here. Glad I picked up a Pro account for life when they were offering those a while back (price has since risen and is yearly rather than permanent).
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