Stubborn Fanatic – Tech Blog

Category: suggested

  • Hack updates

    Hello all,

    Here is your round of hack updates which covers recently introduced new hacks for blogger beta.

    1. Expandable/collapsible post with Peek-a-boo style (updated to Super peek-a-boo)

    Ramani has come out with another hack where in users can provide their reader with a summary view of their post and a peek-a-boo style link to view the rest of the post. This is a very good hack for people like me who use one blog for publishing hacks, writing musings, diary notes, book reviews etc. And it also allows one to display more number of posts on the main page with out making the posts section super long.

    Update (Sep 22):Ramani and Hans of beutiful beta have jointly developed a modified version of this hack (super peek-a-boo) which allows one to have expand/collapse post feature and skip offering this functionality where they don’t want it. You can down the hack from hackosphere or beautiful beta. A non-beta implementation is also available on their blogs.

    2. Hoctro’s hacks

    Talking of flexibility, Hoctro has been doing wonders. He has brought out a series of hacks on blog navigation and template design. I highly recommend you check out his recent hacks like:

    a. Creating a Table of Contents
    b. Yahoo-ui-libraries for blogger beta
    c. Adding breadcrumbs navigation

    3. Bloggeratto’s updates

    For more hack updates please visit Avatar’s bloggeratto. Also, Avatar plans to announce a hack on how to auto-hide the navbar in blogger beta. So stay tuned to bloggeratto.

  • Linklists don’t open in a new window and new hacks

    Just a quick update. I found that links added via the link list feature do not open in a new window. This might take away traffic from your blog. The solution to this is however, very simple. Open up you template’s HTML code in expanded widgets format. Copy the entire code into notepad or some text editor and search for a particular link list using its title. (In my case the title is “friends on www”)

    Scroll to the line which reads a expr:href=”data:link.target’ blah blah blah… and append target=’_blank’ over there, as shown in the example below. As this piece of code is in a loop (b:loop) you need to type it only once and there you are. So go ahead and make the modification.

    <b:widget id=’LinkList2′ locked=’false’ title=’friends on www’ type=’LinkList’>
    <b:includable id=’main’>

    <b:if cond=’data:title’><h2><data:title/></h2></b:if>
    <div class=’widget-content’>
    <ul>
    <div id=’link’>
    <b:loop values=’data:links’ var=’link’>
    <li><a expr:href=’data:link.target’ target=’_blank’><data:link.name/></a>
    </li>
    </b:loop>
    </div>
    </ul>

    Also check out some cool new hacks I came across recently:

    1. Turning labels into menu tabs (used in my blog)
    2. Peek-a-boo label drop downs (used in my blog)
    3. Convert link lists to thumbnail picture list

    Update: I found an article which tell why one should avoid setting all links to open in a new window. It tells how this setting can backfire and kill traffic. Read it here.

  • From rags to riches and hack updates

    I found this article on rediff.com. It’s about a man who came out of absolute no where and completed his engineering/MBA from premier institutes in India to become an entrepreneur. A very inspiring and touching tale. Click here to read the article.

    On the hacks front:

    Please make a note of Hacks Wiki. This is a one stop database which contains most of the hacks that are available out there. However, the latest hacks or a few others might not be in there. Many if not all of the old blogger hacks can be re-engineered to fit in the new beta blogger interface. Also check out some interesting links I have found:

    Add calendar navigation to your blog

    E-mail icon generator

    Scroll lists in your template (used in my sidebars)

    RSS chicklet creator

    Chicklet drop-down creator (javascript based and used in my blog)

  • Hacks from Hoctro’s place and other hacks

    Hey all,

    There is a nice add-on or improvement to Ramani’s original hack on sorting and display of search, label and archive results available here. Here is a description of the hack:

    “My improved hack is based upon not showing the date at which a post is created, and make the posts indented as a nice bulleted list” – Hoctro

    However if you do want the date header on the label search pages, just insert the line in red, in that code, as show here:

    <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType != “item”>
    <h2 class=’date-header’><data:post.dateHeader/></h2>
    <ul><li><a expr:href=’data:post.url’><data:post.title/> </a></li></ul>

    In addition, if you are trying to get to terms with the beta blogger code (like me) and wish to understand more of it, there is a tutorial by Hoctro on defining and calling functions in beta templates. Do check it out here.

    Ramani has come up with another hack. Blogger, by default limits the number of posts that can be displayed on a single page when a label’s contents are viewed. This has been modified to show upto 100 results per page (useful if you have Ramani’s search hack through which only post titles are shown instead of the entire post, on label and search pages). check it out here.

  • Hide your Nav bar, add search and other blogger beta hacks

    Hiding the navbar in blogger beta is not much of a task but it has been made a piece of cake by praveen of apt thinking…. Click here to learn how to hide the nav bar in a jiffy.

    The search box on my blog has been picked up from here. Simple code and no scripts make it light and cool . You might also want to checkout that blog for it’s unique design and look.

    Have you tried Ramani’s new Multi style widget labels? It offers reader to select from a zoom view, a menu view and a list view to view the labels on a blog. My labels box is using this hack. Check out the hack here and stay tuned for more of such hack from hackosphere.

    Phydeaux3 has presented code for developing a label cloud which you can check out from here. Nice work there!