April 25, 2007

Blogger Widgets

Kirk, my favorite Blogger tweaker, wrote a very simple yet elegant code that sends you to a random post from a Blogger blog. It uses Blogger's JSON API and it's available as a widget if you upgraded to layouts or as a JavaScript code easy to paste in your template. I placed a link that uses this code in the right sidebar and it's addictive. Because it can send you to any post from the entire archive, it's a cool way to (re)discover a blog.
I wouldn't have thought many people would think something like this would be useful, but a recent post on Techcrunch goes ape over Wordpress having a 'random post' widget now. I figured if Wordpress has one, New Blogger should as well.

Kirk wrote even more complicated widgets for Blogger, like Picasa Web slideshow, archive calendar and the spectacular tag cloud. If only someone could build an automatic way to upgrade the classic templates to Blogger's new layouts.

Update: Blogger's API has difficulties, so you won't see a "random post" link in the sidebar. The error returned is: "Too many instances of callback".
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6 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 25, 2007 at 10:02 PM

    Thanks for the mention Ionut, very nice!

    But it would have to be on the same night that the blogger feeds have gone wonky. :-) If anyone is seeing the widgets not working as advertised, it's because of a temporary problem on the Blogger side with certain feed requests. Should be resolved soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJanuary 18, 2008 at 5:40 AM

    Thanks for the mention Ionut, very nice!

    ReplyDelete
  3. BlogHerFebruary 26, 2008 at 1:52 PM

    Hi! I've spent hours trying to get the Feeling Lucky widget to work on my blog. Could it be that it won't work with Minima Stretch?

    Thank you,
    Clarice

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousMarch 31, 2008 at 7:03 PM

    Thank you for the info!

    I would like to get a list of the random posts and not just a link, like you have at the bottom of this blog ("Random posts from the past"). Would you mind sharing how we can do this? I tried copying the code from your source, but it didn't work. Thanks in advance!

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownSeptember 17, 2008 at 7:10 PM

    5+ Bloggers Widgets and Tools For Blogspot Blogs Is a Blog Post Displaying all top Blogger Widgets.

    ReplyDelete
  6. msn sözleriMarch 31, 2009 at 9:55 AM

    thankss i love blogger widgets

    ReplyDelete

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