Checkout My Widget
If you haven’t seen it already I would appreciate any feedback on the Friends Widget that I have added to my sidebar. Mike has become enthralled with widget design lately since many of them that we find tend to look like ass so we did one up for ourselves and you can see the results on the left. Anyways, if you could let me know what you think.
Many thanks all you kind people out there. Oh, also let me know if you are having trouble with my feed because WordPress and FeedBurner don’t seem to be best of friends right now.
Related reading:
I like it. I like the clean design of it that Mike put together. It blends in with the site really well. I take it that this will be a 9Rules-only thing?
By Frank 'viperteq' Young on January 23, 2007 6:34 am
Why you would use it?
By Scrivs on January 23, 2007 6:38 am
I’d use it!
By Mary-Ann on January 23, 2007 6:47 am
I was wondering when you’d bring it up, Scrivs. It looks nice, you should consider releasing it in one way or another.
By TDH on January 23, 2007 7:04 am
It is slightly-busted in Safari ( I think ). I sent you a screenshot via email.
By Colin D. Devroe on January 23, 2007 9:35 am
How are you deciding what posts show up? Communities, certain people, or what?
I think it’s a tad redundant to have two links to you right next to each other, as pretty as it looks.
By Richard on January 23, 2007 10:22 am
I’m not quite sure how the widget functions. It looks pretty sleek, but as of now it just looks like a feed of random blogs. Does this automatically update via some sort of RSS feed reader thing? If it does automatically update via RSS feeds, I would extend it so that you aren’t limiting it to 5 entries (by possibly adding a scrollbar or something?).
By Nick O'Neill on January 23, 2007 11:25 am
I’d definitely set it up so that only one link shows per person.
By engtech on January 23, 2007 11:50 am
Colin, thanks for the email man, after switching from Safari to Camino (gasp!) I’m not as well aware of such things.
Richard, the small text above the content area says “My Friends’ Entries”, so it’s from individual people. How those individuals make it onto someone’s widget is still a work in progress :)
Good idea about 1-link per person.
By Mike Rundle on January 23, 2007 12:21 pm
Oh ok. I was just wondering because, well, I’m on there!
By Richard on January 23, 2007 12:33 pm
I want one :(
By Ralph Dagza on January 23, 2007 12:44 pm
Nick, the user who puts the widget can set how many entries they want via a quick variable, it can be as long as you want. It does work via RSS but it’s not parsed on the fly as that would really bog down the pageload, how’s it loading for everyone? Pretty quick?
By Mike Rundle on January 23, 2007 12:55 pm
Could you post on how you made it, or maybe some of the code behind it? I’d love to see how you created it, I’d like to do something similar.
By Brandon on January 23, 2007 1:08 pm
That is more or less a work of art. So many widgets try and shoe horn in adverts and links or just look plain nasty!
That’s well impressive :)
By publicenergy on January 23, 2007 4:18 pm
i think its too big, and a little ugly on this site.
The site design is so simple, but that big block of grey is adding a lot of weight.
Maybe make it a little lighter
By Freddy on January 23, 2007 8:07 pm
I kind of agree with the person (Richard) who said that “I think it’s a tad redundant to have two links to you right next to each other, as pretty as it looks.”
That is if he is talking about having the “name” and the “little arrow” both link to the profile…
What would be interesting is if the little arrow flipped the widget over when you clicked it… showing information about the user on the “other side”… kinda ala Dashboard widgets in OS X
By Brian on January 23, 2007 11:35 pm
Freddy, great feedback. Site owners should have the ability to pick and choose a widget design that works best for their site.
By Mike Rundle on January 24, 2007 2:23 am
I think the friends widget is a great idea! I like it.
One thing that I do wonder about though is how you decide which posts/entries appear on there or is it like someone said previously, random blogs via a RSS feed?
By Aidan L on January 24, 2007 1:15 pm
Will there be different sizes, as everybody doesn’t have the same size sidebar? Or, even better, will people be able to style it themselves?
By Elliot Swan on January 24, 2007 1:28 pm
I’m assuming that we have the ability to style it ourselves (like the MyBlogLog widget). Either way, I love the actual use of it. It helps spread 9rulers around.
It loads quick for me though and I have no problems at it. :)
By Edrei on January 26, 2007 7:25 pm