tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85142467199142618532024-09-10T01:41:05.023-04:00Template tips, tricks, widgets and tools for Blogspot bloggersTradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-19466308686529373142008-10-20T22:18:00.006-04:002009-04-22T17:00:18.897-04:00

I had a bunch of trouble toward the end of last week with my live stock quote widget that retrieves stock prices from Yahoo every 30 seconds throughout the day.Having run into problems with the WidgetBox proxy service that allows widgets to retrieve data from other domains I had converted the widget into a Google Gadget. I then wrapped the Google Gadget within the WidgetBox widget so all those

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-27360639144029226172008-09-28T20:45:00.004-04:002008-09-29T22:16:11.390-04:00

I recently installed a widget on my blog and it turns out that it was causing intermittent problems in Internet Explorer.I was able to detect this situation because I had several AdSense ads in various positions on the page. I have a link unit at the top of the page, a regular banner/text ad a little further down the page, a skyscraper in a sidebar and another link unit at the bottom of the

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-34262675312529090492008-09-01T21:35:00.005-04:002008-09-01T23:08:39.971-04:00

Lately I have been switching the standard AdSense ads to the new managed ad units on both of my blogs (this one and blog.trade-radar.com). Some of these ads are coded directly in the blog template rather than inside a Blogger Gadget or Widget. A good example of where this kind of coding is required is the sliding ad panel that rises from the bottom of the browser window.I have also been rolling

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-65950785047945144272008-08-29T16:36:00.004-04:002008-08-29T17:42:13.548-04:00

I have using Blogger as my blogging platform for over a year and a half and I had implemented the AddThis bookmarking widget within each post. I recently upgraded to the new drop-down widget. Suddenly, I began to see strange things happen to the layout of certain blog posts.As it turns out, any post with an apostrophe or single quote within the title causes a problem with the AddThis Javascript.

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-29133920864459339872008-08-20T20:45:00.001-04:002008-08-21T08:42:53.314-04:00

If you have obtained the code for your ad slider here at OpenLinkz using our wizard, then you are aware that the ad panel is essentially a plain rectangle in a single color with an ad in the middle, a text message on the left and the link for closing the panel on the right.It is quite easy to embellish the ad panel by adding a border or a background image. Here's how it's done.In the CSS style

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-61885450536948382182008-08-12T21:47:00.000-04:002008-08-20T21:51:26.271-04:00

I have had the OpenLinkz ad slider running on my other blog, Trade Radar, for a few weeks now. I am stunned at how well it is performing. The click through rate is more than twice that of any other ad on the site. I am just running a simple Google AdSense 468 X 60 half-banner but it gets plenty of action.There are issues involved that web site or blog owners need to address when using sliding

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-1991191106090168432008-08-06T23:16:00.001-04:002008-08-06T23:16:32.560-04:00

It's come to my attention that some large corporations are configuring their firewalls to block widgets. Right now, I know that widgets from WidgetBox have been blocked.I suppose it was only a matter of time before widgets were targeted. It is well known that many corporate IT departments are against social networking tools. Sites like Twitter, Plurk, Facebook and Mashable are routinely blocked.

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-16503247268167338322008-08-02T21:36:00.000-04:002008-08-02T23:02:33.405-04:00

For those of you who use Blogger as your blogging platform, you may be wondering how to set up ads after each post.Blogger allows users to set up AdSense ads after each post. But what if you want to use ads from an affiliate network or ad network of your own choice? And especially, how do you display a different ad after each post when there are multiple posts on the page? Blogger doesn't have a

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-16208776796151953332008-07-28T21:26:00.000-04:002008-07-28T21:59:17.733-04:00

This post is to announce our newest widget, OpenAdSlider. This is a sliding panel that can contain an advertisement, banner ad, text links or any other message or image. The panel slides up from the bottom of the browser window and stops as soon as it is fully displayed. This means it does not float across the entire page getting in the way of your content.This ad panel will not be blocked by

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-89647966604385367442008-05-02T22:17:00.000-04:002008-05-02T22:33:55.439-04:00

In my work to maintain a widget that retrieves stock quote data continuously throughout the day I have ended up experimenting with several different approaches.As discussed in my last post, WidgetBox on its own will not provide the required functionality so we migrated to Google gadgets. In working with the Google gadget libraries, I initially used their XML-HTTP request as a work-around by

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-24032539881417519862008-04-27T17:08:00.000-04:002008-04-27T17:29:51.448-04:00

I recently wrote about WidgetBox breaking my live stock quote widget by disallowing data in CSV text format when using their proxied XML-HTTP request functionality. (See "WidgetBox tightens up AJAX interface")As an alternative, I set up a Yahoo! pipe to supply the data in RSS format, which seemed to work well.The problem is when a person stays on the page hosting the widget in order to watch the

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-52545566184989390222008-04-23T21:11:00.000-04:002008-04-23T21:47:11.814-04:00

We just experienced a major problem with the widgets that retrieve stock quotes from Yahoo finance.It is fixed now but it was a frustrating experience while I was trying to correct the situation. Here is what I believe happened.The widgets used a proxied XML-HTTP request via the WidgetBox servers that allows us to retrieve data from the Yahoo domain no matter what domain is displaying the widget.

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-54937623283069473852007-09-23T08:35:00.000-04:002008-08-20T21:49:50.986-04:00

Google's (GOOG) press release describing the expansion of a beta program for what are being called Gadget Ads has showed that "widgets" are now a mature enough technology to become a serious component in Google's ad platform.The widgets are just Google Gadgets with some commands added to the API to support tracking user clicks. Currently, the ads are being placed on sites the old-fashioned way,

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-13984438931515074272007-07-24T20:51:00.000-04:002008-08-20T21:49:50.987-04:00

I have provided a new Stock Research widget at Widgetbox. I named it Stock Linkz because it provides the same functionality as the StockLinkz Javascript widget that can be embedded in your web pages. This new variation allows a user to enter a stock ticker symbol in order to search for information. This new widget is not implemented as a pop-up menu, it is always visible.The widget consists of a

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-57067590171242262252007-07-05T08:26:00.000-04:002007-07-05T08:31:10.846-04:00

I have updated the StockLinkz portion of the OpenLinkz product so that users can now search for SEC filings at the EDGAR web site. This service is provided by Google. Filings can be downloaded or viewed online. If you want to pull financial statements into spreadsheets, a format that supports that is available.This is an excellent way to get past the analysts and pundits and look directly into

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-66492317790390016052007-06-09T16:08:00.000-04:002007-06-09T16:21:50.657-04:00

I recently wrote a post describing how someone who likes to keep an eye on the stock market could use a combination of the widgets I have developed at WidgetBox.com. Today I want to announce that I have created a page that demonstrates what I was talking about. It's called the TradeRadar Stock Center - Live Market Monitor.The page provides a configurable list of quotes that is updated every 30

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-69860295447517828242007-06-04T13:32:00.001-04:002007-06-05T13:31:57.455-04:00

I have put together a collection of stock market related widgets at WidgetBox. This post suggests a use for the whole bunch.First, I'd like to list the widgets:LiveStockChartsLiveStockQuotesArticles from SeekingAlpha.comStock Market Update RSS feed from Briefing.comWhat I have done for myself is create a stock market monitoring center by assembling these widgets on several panels and embedding

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-49532250879162204182007-05-31T18:17:00.000-04:002007-05-31T19:25:15.476-04:00

This is probably my best widget so far. It will display stock quote data including current price, change in price since previous trading day and percent change for one or more stocks, ETFs or indices. It updates throughout the trading day (US markets only) at 30 second intervals.You can set this up so that it automatically displays your whole portfolio. You can set it up so it displays all

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-75009710780115219942007-05-23T18:08:00.000-04:002007-05-23T21:40:55.821-04:00

I have developed a new stock chart widget. It is available at WidgetBox.com and is called LiveStockChart. It allows a user to enter a ticker symbol and then displays a small chart from Yahoo. The cool thing about it, however, is that it updates every 30 seconds. You canvisually track the price performance of a stock or ETF all day long (or as long as US markets are open). It also provides a

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-51185474491934352552007-05-11T21:40:00.000-04:002007-05-11T21:54:48.491-04:00

I have rolled out another widget that will be good for the financial bloggers. It allows the reader to enter a ticker symbol for a stock or ETF and retrieve a list of recent articles from SeekingAlpha.com.You can find it at WidgetBox at the following URL: NewsFromSeekingAlpha.

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-42034027808018431092007-05-02T07:56:00.000-04:002007-05-08T18:58:37.194-04:00

I have been experimenting with widgets at the WidgetBox.com site and I have created two new ones. The first one is a small search box that invokes a custom search at Rollyo for News and Current Events. It searches a number of news sites for stories based on the search term you entered. It's called News from Rollyo and you can get it or try it out by clicking on this link which will take you

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-25407787361932454792007-04-27T14:15:00.001-04:002009-04-22T17:05:07.725-04:00

Examples of OpenLinkz have so far been shown on light colored backgrounds. Suppose you have a dark color scheme on your pages? No problem.The OpenLinkz widget can be configured to provide different styles for the appearance of links. There are three options:(1) You can adjust the border underneath the link. It can be solid or dashed.(2) You can adjust the color of the border under the link.(3)

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-85717947957611835232007-04-24T21:57:00.000-04:002007-05-05T19:05:42.524-04:00

OK, so you took a look at OpenLinkz and decided there is just too much typing involved. Should you use the ANCHOR tag or the SPAN tag? What's with all this stuff in the "onmousever" event? And for that matter, why fool around with "onmouseover" at all?You'll be glad to know that we've taken OpenLinkz to a new level of simplicity. Here are the improvements.First, you don't have to add the

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-80283783810002400422007-04-21T14:52:00.001-04:002009-04-22T17:06:43.457-04:00

Use this cheat sheet to make sure you are following the basic rules for setting up the OpenLinkz widget and getting it to work on your pages. Once you have the initialization stuff done (see the prior post on Enabling OpenLinkz for more details), there are just a few things to keep in mind: use the right tags, set up the onmouseover event properly and spell the class name correctly.Load the

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8514246719914261853.post-36946118226467775672007-04-19T12:09:00.000-04:002007-05-05T19:07:14.527-04:00

Enabling OpenLinkz in your pagesIt is very easy to install the OpenLinkz widget in your web page or blog. The script file needs to be loaded. When the page loads, the functionality will be automatically initialized. The following code snippets show you how to do it.To load the javascript file at run-time, paste into the HEAD section of your HTML page the following code snippet:If you are using

TradeRadarOperatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03047992460583043387noreply@blogger.com0