I have had the FriendFeed widget on my blog for a while now, and I
like having it there. However, I think there should be a few more
options when you go to configure it. For instance, how about setting
a number of items/services (the user chooses at configuration time) to
display? Or a means to explicitly configure width?
What also wouldn't be a bad idea is to let the user hide the logo.
Having that big FriendFeed logo at the top kind of offends my
aesthetic senses. Or at least allow it to be moved to the bottom (by
default? maybe). And an unstyled mode wouldn't hurt, marked up
semantically so as to make styling easier.
Speaking of styling, the class names used on the divs within the
widget are pretty generic. I know I've used the class name
"header" (at least) on one of the sites I designed, meaning the widget could potentially look bad or break if I tried to use it on that
site. What would probably be better, from a markup perspective, is to
prefix each class name with "friendfeed-widget-". So you would have
"friendfeed-widget-header" instead of just "header", making classname
conflicts much less likely.
Along those lines, I've also seen widgets which have IDs to separate
each other out, allowing multiple widgets on the same page. Does
FriendFeed's widget support that? I haven't tried to do it yet.
So, those are my suggestions for improving the widget. Judging from
what I've read on this Group so far, I think I can expect a timely and
personal response. All hail FriendFeed!
> I have had the FriendFeed widget on my blog for a while now, and I
> like having it there. However, I think there should be a few more
> options when you go to configure it. For instance, how about setting
> a number of items/services (the user chooses at configuration time) to
> display? Or a means to explicitly configure width?
> What also wouldn't be a bad idea is to let the user hide the logo.
> Having that big FriendFeed logo at the top kind of offends my
> aesthetic senses. Or at least allow it to be moved to the bottom (by
> default? maybe). And an unstyled mode wouldn't hurt, marked up
> semantically so as to make styling easier.
> Speaking of styling, the class names used on the divs within the
> widget are pretty generic. I know I've used the class name
> "header" (at least) on one of the sites I designed, meaning the widget > could potentially look bad or break if I tried to use it on that
> site. What would probably be better, from a markup perspective, is to
> prefix each class name with "friendfeed-widget-". So you would have
> "friendfeed-widget-header" instead of just "header", making classname
> conflicts much less likely.
> Along those lines, I've also seen widgets which have IDs to separate
> each other out, allowing multiple widgets on the same page. Does
> FriendFeed's widget support that? I haven't tried to do it yet.
> So, those are my suggestions for improving the widget. Judging from
> what I've read on this Group so far, I think I can expect a timely and
> personal response. All hail FriendFeed!
The FriendFeed widget could definitely be improved with better customization.
It actually does support a few options, but they are mostly undocumented.
You can change the number of items displayed with the &num= parameters. For example, this html will only display 2 entries: <script type="text/javascript" src=" http://friendfeed.com/embed/widget/paul?num=2"></script>
To change the styling, prefix your CSS selectors with ".friendfeed". You can see examples of this (and also get an idea of which selectors are most interesting) by looking at our widget css: http://friendfeed.com/static/css/widget.css
I look forward to seeing the customized FriendFeed widget on your blog! Good luck at the Robotics competition -- it sounds like a lot of fun.
Thanks
On 3/2/08, Voyagerfan5761 <voyagerfan5...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have had the FriendFeed widget on my blog for a while now, and I > like having it there. However, I think there should be a few more > options when you go to configure it. For instance, how about setting > a number of items/services (the user chooses at configuration time) to > display? Or a means to explicitly configure width?
> What also wouldn't be a bad idea is to let the user hide the logo. > Having that big FriendFeed logo at the top kind of offends my > aesthetic senses. Or at least allow it to be moved to the bottom (by > default? maybe). And an unstyled mode wouldn't hurt, marked up > semantically so as to make styling easier.
> Speaking of styling, the class names used on the divs within the > widget are pretty generic. I know I've used the class name > "header" (at least) on one of the sites I designed, meaning the widget > could potentially look bad or break if I tried to use it on that > site. What would probably be better, from a markup perspective, is to > prefix each class name with "friendfeed-widget-". So you would have > "friendfeed-widget-header" instead of just "header", making classname > conflicts much less likely.
> Along those lines, I've also seen widgets which have IDs to separate > each other out, allowing multiple widgets on the same page. Does > FriendFeed's widget support that? I haven't tried to do it yet.
> So, those are my suggestions for improving the widget. Judging from > what I've read on this Group so far, I think I can expect a timely and > personal response. All hail FriendFeed!
Ah, yes, the descendant selectors. Why did I forget about those?
Though I am still worried about collisions from other peoples'
stylesheets, I don't think it's an issue because the FriendFeed one is
more specific than the generic ".header" selectors I was thinking of.
Thanks for responding. I'll go play with the CSS now and see if I
can't get a better-integrated FriendFeed by the time we start getting
ready to go.
Also thanks for the luck; we might need it. There are some pretty
good robots out there that would give us trouble.
> The FriendFeed widget could definitely be improved with better
> customization.
> It actually does support a few options, but they are mostly undocumented.
> You can change the number of items displayed with the &num= parameters. For
> example, this html will only display 2 entries:
> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://friendfeed.com/embed/widget/paul?num=2"></script>
> To change the styling, prefix your CSS selectors with ".friendfeed". You can
> see examples of this (and also get an idea of which selectors are most
> interesting) by looking at our widget css:http://friendfeed.com/static/css/widget.css
> I look forward to seeing the customized FriendFeed widget on your blog! Good
> luck at the Robotics competition -- it sounds like a lot of fun.
