Search your LibraryThing from your blog
Christopher has put together an extremely elegant new search widget. Put it on your blog and your visitors can search your library--or a group library--without having to go to LibraryThing. Color and size it various ways. It works like a dream, with animated "expanding" action. You are not as sexy as this, and never were.
Try it over on the left, or make your own. (Note: These is on my library, not yours.)
There is, of course, no reason it needs to be on a blog. Put it on your home page, or that of your church, academic department, bowling league, etc. It even relevancy ranks the results. (It beats your OPAC and it's the size of a half-eaten stick of gum.)
Lastly, we're not taking any guff about trivial features. This is an amazing piece of work. There are literally thousands of blogs sporting our original LibraryThing widgets. They are a great thing for LibraryThing—one of the main ways people find us. I'll go so far as to say that, without the widgets, LibraryThing would have never succeeded, and I'd be making websites for lobster canneries.
PS: If you watch the site closely (many of you do), you'll notice some major changes. They are already significant and will get bigger and "deeper." We're not going to blog about them again until we finish up.
Try it over on the left, or make your own. (Note: These is on my library, not yours.)
There is, of course, no reason it needs to be on a blog. Put it on your home page, or that of your church, academic department, bowling league, etc. It even relevancy ranks the results. (It beats your OPAC and it's the size of a half-eaten stick of gum.)
Lastly, we're not taking any guff about trivial features. This is an amazing piece of work. There are literally thousands of blogs sporting our original LibraryThing widgets. They are a great thing for LibraryThing—one of the main ways people find us. I'll go so far as to say that, without the widgets, LibraryThing would have never succeeded, and I'd be making websites for lobster canneries.
PS: If you watch the site closely (many of you do), you'll notice some major changes. They are already significant and will get bigger and "deeper." We're not going to blog about them again until we finish up.
posted by Tim at 1:41 PM
38 Comments:
Very cool!
Awesome. Could you have it not expand if there are no results?
Looks like the groups are getting their first spam attack - check out the entry "Physics Foibles" under the Science! group. It's an ad for a book. Also, there is no name attached to the entry, which seems odd. Perhaps using groups should require being signed into an account?
More goodies for my blog!
Yey!
Exvivre: Thanks. We have a "report abuse" flag feature almost done. That will help there. Also, speaking as someone who does "search engine optimization," I can tell you we set up the links so they don't give sites better placement in search engines. So, it's pretty useless to spam the LT forums...
Can I assume this lovely new widget also won't work in LiveJournal?
One more, and I'll have to get another blog just for LT widgets! ~smile~
Is it just me, or does the Joy feature changes name to Fun/Tools when using the blog page?
(I kinda of like the Fun/Tools better, but that's just me!) ;)
That is a thing of beauty and I would kill to be able to put it on my livejournal.
Aquila
Yup, Javascript doesn't work with LiveJournal or Vox. Ho hum.
Wow.
That makes me want to get a blog just so I can put that on it.
So, your saying we might have known you as the LobsterThing? :)
I love it!
Bug report - it doesn't like you specifying a title with a single quote in it. Strangely, this appears to work on the widget construction page, but generates javascript with a string that terminates too early when I try and include it on my site.
I tried escaping the quote with a backslash - the backslash got escaped, but the quote was still left alone!
The bit of code that needs fixing is here:
Error: missing ) after argument list
Source File: http://www.librarything.com/ltsw/mySearchWidget.php?option_userid=felius&option_title=What's%20on%20my%20bookshelves%3F&option_width=238&option_height=300&option_title_color=%23FFFFFF&option_color=%23999999&option_border_color=%23555&option_searchsource=1&option_group=132&option_linkSocial=1&option_covers=1&option_linkAuthor=1&option_showRel=1&option_amazonAssocCode=&build=%C2%A0%C2%A0Rebuild%20this%20widget%C2%A0%C2%A0&option_searchboxText=Search%20my%20library
Line: 185, Column: 43
Source Code:
document.write('<div id="ltswTitle">What's on my bookshelves?</div>');
Lilithcat: No, work in LiveJournal. (The only thing that will is a static image. We have plans there, but it's hard to do much.) As for Vox, don't get me started. Keeps track of your recent reading, sort of, but without any ISBNs, so it's impossible to export from it, grab from another service, etc.
Syrin: Not your imagination. Our error. We can't auto-update the blog, so sometimes we forget.
Mindboggingly cool!
Huh??!! Who cans lobster? I just got back to looking at the blog (sorry!) and am blown away by this announcement (and I can't wait to read the next!). Now I'll put this on m blog! Thank you, thank you!
Does the search term have to be in a title? Because I tried typing in the last name of an author I know I have in my library, and got a "no books" result.
Julia, Did you go to the make your own widget, make one, and try searching it, or did you search the one on the blog page, because in that case I think you are searching Tim's library.
Aquila
Aquila,
Ah. That would explain it. [sheepish grin]. Pardon me while I channel Roseanne Roseannadanna ... "nevermind."
Nice widget, but all I get is results for the Mainers group (which I don't belong to). I am building my own widget, so referring to Tim's library shouldn't be the problem.
Ned. We are checking on this problem. I'll post when we figure out what is going on.
And the problem of "always searching the Mainers group" has been solved.
Unfortunately, you will need to use the widget creator to create a new widget because the bug was in the widget-generation code.
Incidentally, the Mainers group is the default setting in the code. It was just falling back to that because of another error on my part.
Sorry about that. We don't call it "beta" for nothing!
I'm working on the widget code right now so some people might see some strangeness going on for a short time. Just FYI.
Julia, the only reason I knew what you were doing wrong was that I'd done the same thing. *g*
Aquila
Is there anyway to get reporting on what people search for? I'm interested in knowing if people are actually using the widget and why.
I have had absolutely no luck copying & pasting either the old or new widget html code into my blogspot bug. Help!
When I tried pasting the widget into my sidebar with my other LibraryThing list, it moved the whole sidebar down to the bottom. Apparently, I am not smart enough to use this widget.
Charles,
We are storing a count of the number of times a widget has been accessed (only for our own curiosity about usage trends), but not the search terms.
Re Opera rendering problems:
I'm not sure that this is a bug with the widget as much as it is a bug with Opera's rendering engine. Unfortunately, I don't have access to THAT code. :)
Jenny:
I'm not sure what could be happening with the widget not appearing correctly. It should be as easy as a copy and paste of the entire script tag from the widget builder (make sure you get the entire script). What type of blog are you using? MoveableType, Blogger, BlogSpot?
Kaethe, re: Widget shifting things down:
I am really at a loss to explain this. It might mean that there is an unclosed tag somewhere on the page (could be in my code, but nobody else has mentioned such a problem). email me (my email is on my LT profile: conceptDawg) and maybe we can figure something out.
I've tried 3 different times, making sure I copied & pasted the whole thing (in Blogspot.com). I keep getting the same error message when I try to publish it: Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not allowed:
What am I missing?
More than likely you are having the same problem as those people above with LiveJournal. BlogSpot just won't let you use script tags. If that is the case then you won't be able to use the widget on your BlogSpot blog.
Christopher and Jenny!
NO NO NO! You just have to ignore the warning. Blogspot (and blogger) warn against it, but they accept it if you click the box "dont warn me again." That was true when I posted it too.
Of course, you MAY not want it in the body of a post, like this one had. More likely, you want it in your template. (There too, you MAY need to tell it to ignore the warning.)
Tim
Thank you, anonymous. I discovered later that when I just closed it, it worked anyway, despite the warning. I was rather surprised to see it there. :D
All those bare ampersands really should be entities...
Very cool feature, but when I have a lot of results, I get multiple errors that pop up one after the other. This does not happen when I use the LTSW at library thing, but it happens when I try to use it at my site.
Any idea why the search button is in the line as the search box in the preview, but when I save the template changes, the button moves into the next line. I tried all kinds of changes (different sizes, text etc.) but the button will not get into the same row.
Would love to add this to my blogspot page as a sidebar but so far have been unable to do so. From what I've read on this post others are having the problem...anybody have any luck? If so, where (exactly) do I insert the code in order for it to appear on my sidebar in the correct position? Thanks...
I tried to put this on my blog but it pulls from "The Mainers" group library, not mine. :( I have no idea why since I'm in the opposite corner of the country!! Any ideas why this is happening?
Robin
(sorry I have to post as anon - I just upgraded my blog to beta and can't log in and post on a non-beta blog)
I just posted this in my new blog, but it only gives me results from the "Mainers" group. Looking back at previous comments, I can see that others have had this problem over a year ago. Is there any fix?
Regarding the "Mainers group bug" thing, I found the same problem just now, editing my blog using internet explorer (and building the widget in IE). When I did the same thing in firefox, the bug disappeared. I have no idea how this stuff works, but I suggest building the widget in firefox to generate bug-free code.
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