Some new borders and decorations

nospam@example.com (carpo) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:47:00 +0000

I spent a little time a weekend ago making some new borders and decoration images that can be used in the templates and documents. I wanted to make a range of borders that could have decorations placed in the corners so came up with a design that includes some square areas protruding from the corner. I made a Reading Camp Survivor template with this that has different book decorations in the corners - though these can be changed to any of the decorations in the system.

These are just a couple of the new decorations that I added too. There is also a red covered book, and images of the books flipped around. I wanted to add some more sport images as well, and spent some time on this Tennis Racket one. I actually made this on so that the strings are transparent .. so any images behind this one will be seen through the strings. I'll be writing up a tutorial soon on how I make these images. Widgely.com allows any user to upload their own images to create templates or use them in other peoples templates. This means you can make a huge range of documents, but it also means you have complete control of how you want your templates to look. We support 24-bit transparent PNG images across all of the major browsers (including IE6) so that your templates that use them look good on all the browsers.

If anyone has suggestions about images they would like to see, please leave a comment and I'll see what I can do

Finished! Template Styles and ...

nospam@example.com (carpo) — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:42:39 +0000

Well, about 2 weeks of intensive programming and testing has seen me complete 2 new features for Widgely that I've wanted to do for a while, Template styles and a Rich Text Box Element.

Firstly I'll talk about styles, why I made them, how they are used and what you could use them for. I'll cover the Rich text box in another post, when I get some time

When I started this project, I had this image in my mind about how people would style their content using the site. I wanted them to be able to use a template, but if they didn't like the way it was laid out, or the colors, or whatever, they could just create their own style to override the default one, or use someones else's style. I pictured a drop down list of multiple styles, made by a bunch of different people, which when chosen, changed your contents look straight away.

Now, I'm not sure if I succeeded in making the actual style workshop as user friendly as I'd like, it is definitely a work in progress, and one I'll be improving more and more, but it is still fairly simple to create a new style for an existing template. As for changing styles on a piece of content, that couldn't be simpler.

Changing styles for your content
To change the style that your content uses to display, you just need to go to your home, and click the "view" link for the content you want to style.

How to view your content on Widgely.com

You should now see you content displayed, with a few options above it. There is a drop down list of available styles, and a box with the embed code needed to place the content on your website. Choosing a new style using the drop down box will change your content straight away. You can click the "Make this style the default" link to make sure the content is always viewed with the current style.

The style options on the view content page

The embed code area contains the code you can use to embed the content on your website. It uses the currently selected style as the style to embed. The copy code link on your home page will always use the default style you have for the content.

Widgely Blog - Tutorials

Some new borders and decorations

Finished! Template Styles and ...