Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Upgraded Blogger Template to New Layout System.

I've just finished something that I've been putting off for a long time: upgrading my blog template to Blogger's new Layout system.

At first, it appeared to go quite smoothly. The same basic theme/template was still available, and all my widgets and hacks worked as HTML/Script blocks with no problems.

I ran into the first issue when I wanted to increase the width of the main post window. This little comment in the HTML of the template says it all:


/* Page Structure
----------------------------------------------------------- */
/* The images which help create rounded corners depend on the
following widths and measurements. If you want to change
these measurements, the images will also need to change.
*/


Happily, the HTML of the new template was nearly identical to the old one, so I just reused my wide rounded corner images from the old template.

Anyway, glad that's done. Now I can get back to posting without being annoyed by the old layout code every time I look at things.

For those of you who subscribe via feed readers and never hit the blogger pages, here's what's changed.


  • Switched the header image from the St. Croix river to Mt. Nguaruhoe.

  • Got rid of the "Days in New Zealand" counter. It'll be two years in April. That counter originally started as a countdown to keep me motivated in my moving preparations. It's not so interesting anymore.

  • Added a feed for my shared items from Google Reader.

  • Added a feed for my code snippets on Snipplr.

  • Added a "What I'm Reading" badge from my Anobii bookshelf.

  • Added a quilt of my iTunes album covers from LastFM.

  • Added a blogroll of shared feeds I read from Google Reader

  • Added a tagroll of my bookmark tags from Del.icio.us. (Although I mostly use Google Bookmarks and Google Notebook now. Unfortunately, Google bookmarks is still missing a few cool features from Del.icio.us. It's main advantage, and my reason for switching, is that it doesn't get blocked by most Surfwatch Big Brother programs)

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