Techtrends

Favicons are the little icons that show next to bookmarks and in the address bar of most browsers which provides an identity to a site. Favicons are 16 pixels square ico files. Here is a simple, online favicon maker where you can draw an icon or upload an image to make a favicon. This favicon maker supports alpha transparency.
If you prefer only text / letter instead of image you can prefer Antifavicon to generate favicon. You only required selecting color of text and background and just typing text for your favicon.
. Read full story .

Disqus is an enhanced, free comment system for blogger that allows the user to track comments and replies, and categorize them. Leaving a comment can be as involving as writing a blog post.Every time a user posts a comment, a new thread is started in his own forum, and replies posted in that thread are linked to the original. Every commenter has a profile that is used on all blogs enabled with Disqus. More details....Disqus has full integrated support for WordPress, MovableType, Tumblr, Blogger, and TypePad. If you do not use any of these, Disqus also provides a general code snippet for any website. While Disqus was designed with blogs in mind, any newspaper, website, or web application would also likely work. [source]
. Read full story .

In blogspot there is no facility to back up or download all your post and comments left by readers as in Wordpress blog. However there are some third party utilities to helps you, among them Blogger backup is the most suitable for this purpose. This utility saves all your Blogger posts to the hard disk and can easily restore them in case you accidentally delete your blog or some of the posts.
After installation, just login with your Blogger account and select your blog to save locally. You can either save all your posts in to a single file or let the software create new file per blog entry. It can also backup reader comments.
If you want to restore any of your post from the hard disk that are deleted from your blog, just hit the ‘Restore Posts’ button, select the post and they will be back online.
The application follows the incremental backup style, that is, if you run the Blogger backup again after a week, it restores the posts that published in that period, not the entire posts. [Source] Download Blogger Backup
. Read full story .

There are many reasons for increasing the page load time of a blogger or a web site. For example flash content or too many images takes longer time to load a page in a browser. Another very important reason is messy CSS file of your blog or site. That is more lines of code in your template takes longer time to load in a browser.[CSS code determines your blog’s entire style which lies in between <b:skin> and </b:skin> in the case of blogger.]
What is a messy CSS file? CSS file with multiple spaces, space around character like :{}:, multiple empty lines, space between selectors, unnecessary semi colons, etc causes an increase in your blog’s page loading time.
So it is the time to optimize your template. Just copy and paste your CSS file at CSS Drive. last year I published an article about it, now it comes with some bugs fixed. This online tool compresses your CSS file in to a smaller unit.
In the case of Blogger copy and paste the whole code that lies in between <b:skin> and </b:skin>.Remember to back up your template before doing this. Just choose a normal method (or liter or super compact) to compress the CSS file. Thanks to David
. Read full story .

Most of the Wordpress blogs and some of the Blogspot blogs are using the related article/post widget on their blog and are very useful for a reader to find similar articles. Here is a special related post widget for your blog – Arkayne, which automatically links your pages to similar content around the web. All you have to do is simply install a widget (JavaScript code) on your blog and Arkayne will do the rest. No need of RSS feed URL or account setup to use Arkayne. Details here.The Arkayne widget can be easily customized to match your site. You can configure the widget like the number of links displayed on your blog or the minimum relevancy required, etc. Currently this widget is available for Blogspot and Wordpress users and the set up is also quite easy.
[source]
. Read full story .

We know that in blogger /blogspot, readers need to click on a new page or new popup window to leave a comment on our post. The worst thing about it is that, sometime this just makes the reader too lazy to leave a comment, even they want to.

There are some methods to replace this type of comment system. Jackbook.com introduced a hack for it. But, required some knowledge about template and html coding are to do it successfully. Another one is Haloscan, but limited features.

The Intensedbate commenting system is one of the best among others which have more control over comments with a social flare. It is really easy to do, just download your full template and upload to IntenseDebate, they do the necessary changes, then you can copy paste your template (expand widget before copy paste) A comment widget is also available.

I think there is no need of much explanation required, just visit the site and follow the instruction. Features here…

>>The only thing I dislike with this is that it can’t work on browsers with JavaScript disabled.

>>See a live demo site here

[Via – Makeuseof]

. Read full story .

The Cheats’ Guide to Blogger Template Design is a free e-Book which helps you create a new look for your blogger blog. This e-Book will offer you many options and examples to customize your existing Blogger template quickly and easily.

Divided in to 5 chapters, this e-Book will help you understand the basic techniques of blogger template design, from configuring background images to creating a custom header, using clickable buttons and much more!

Each chapter in this e-book covers different aspects of Blogger template. Following are some of the features of this e-Book.

• New examples of template customizations
• An entire chapter about customizing stretch (fluid) templates
• How to use buttons, banners and images
• Many useful resources for template customization
• An optional download folder containing all of the templates and images used in the e-Book

>>Download the e-Book
>>Related posts:A handy reference guide to Wordpress

. Read full story .

Blogroll or link list of blogs are one of most common and recommended element of a blog. The latest widget, Blog List from blogger helps you do more than that.

”Blog List displays a list of links to your favorite blogs with an optional icon. If you link to a blog with an Atom or RSS feed, however, the Blog List can show the date of the blog’s last update or even the title and snippet of its most recent post” quoting from Blogger in draft.

Remember that the new widget is in beta stage, if you want to access it, log in to your account from Blogger in Draft and not regular log in

Following are some of the features of this widget:

>>Options to set the number of blogs to show in the list and whether they should be sorted by update time or alphabetically by blog title.

>> The list of blogs can be imported directly from Google Reader

>> It gives the possibility to include every blog your favicon automatically

To add this on your blog, just login to your account from Blogger in draft and select Bloglist from the ‘Add page element option and add url of a blog or import directly from your Google reader
. Read full story .

Whether you are using Blogspot, Wordpress or any other blog, you are all know that, the HTML editor provided by the blog site does not have what you want. For example, to insert a special character like ►⇒»Œ inside your post, create tables, or background color to texts in Blogspot are required to edit HTML which is somewhat error prone process, especially for non-professionals.
Here I am talking about Write Area an add-on for Firefox enabled by FCK Editor. You may all hear about FCK Editor, an open source, web based fast and simple HTML editor which can be used to create tables in your blog posts, create list items, add Flash animations to posts without the complexity of HTML coding, and anything is easily possible with it.

Like that, Write Area will do everything, and as an add-on for Firefox it can be activated by right clicking from any text area boxes of any website or blog (see the image for example); that is text area provided by the "Edit Source" or "Edit HTML" feature. Just write or do what you want and click on ‘source’ button and select all ^(CTL+A) and copy ^(CTRL+C) and paste it.

Remember that Write Area is still in Sandboxed, means in beta stage and required registration with Mozilla to use it. While registering, you need to enable showing sandboxed plug-in in your user preferences otherwise you can’t download it.

>>And if you want to use FCK editor to create your blog post, you can use their demo page.
Track - martinkou
Related post - Give your blog post a different look
. Read full story .

Most of you may already know how to add previous post/latest entries in your blog by using Feed burner feed address. In older blogger or classic blogger it is even easy by just adding the following code in sidebar section

<BloggerPreviousItems>

<li><a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"><$BlogPreviousItemTitle$></a></li>
</BloggerPreviousItems>

There is another special method from Betabloggerfordummies, which I think much better than the other method.

Just follow the steps described below.

• Enter the site Feed2js (or copy the URL http://itde.vccs.edu/rss2js/build.php, and load in your browser). This is an online tool that helps you format a feed's display with the information you want to use on your web site.
• Enter your RSS feed address in the text field
• In the select option, ‘Show channel’ select ‘no’. Select ‘title’ if you want to display title.
  
• Number of items to display – enter 0 for all post titles or enter any other number you want.
• Show item descriptions – enter 0 for no descriptions, or enter 1 for full description, n>1 for display first n characters of description.
• Show item posting date - Select yes/no to display the date
• Open links in a new window - Select yes/no to open links in a new window

Then click preview, if you satisfied, click “Generate JavaScript” button and copy the JavaScript code along with a no script code (for those browsers without JavaScript )and put this code in your side bar widget (for new blogger) or sidebar section (classic blogger) or any other website.
(You can also modify the look and feel of your entries by using their style tool section)

. Read full story .

The Yahoo! Shortcuts is a plug-in for Wordpress blog which makes it easy for your readers to see interesting related content in the context of your post.

As you compose your blog post, the Shortcuts plug-in looks for content related to what you are writing about. A Shortcut may lead your reader to a finance quote for a public company, a map of a point of interest, a Flickr image, or information about specific companies, products, and people.

When it finds relevant content, it lets you know. Shortcuts can appear in your post in different forms. You can have it appear as a link with a preview on hover, or embed it directly into the post as you would with an image and it works best with English language blog posts.

--Official site

. Read full story .

Want to add calendar archive in your Blogger blog like Wordpress? Visit Purplemoggy or just click here to get the code and instruction. You will be provided with detailed instruction to add it on your template and also view a working example there.

And if you are using older blogger template and want to add calendar navigation to your Blogger template just click here.

. Read full story .

The number of subscribers is very useful for bloggers to determine the popularity of their blogs. Analytics from Feedburner (assuming that you are using Feedburner for RSS feed) shows you an idea about your subscriber count and other details.

If you want even more detailed analysis and report you can try Feed Analysis from Blogperfume (just provide your RSS address) which can provide details about number of subscribers, total hits, views and clicks for every single day, the best or worst day of the week, and also give you an estimated value for your blog or site all with beautiful interactive charts.

. Read full story .

<Div style = "border: 1px solid brown; padding: 10px; background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 50%; width: 95%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: - moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial ">
<h4> Give your blog post a different look </h4> Searching through the blogosphear .................... a simple html idea and can be utilize this in some occasion.
<div style="margin: 10px; background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; color: brown; width: 150px; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; float: right; opacity: 0.4; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica; font-size: 28px; line-height: 26px; text-align: right;">
<center>This post itself is the example</center>

<small> pullquote </small><strong> is useful in some</strong><small> occasion </small>
<strong> to draw attention</strong><small> of a reader </ small>
</div> </ Div>

<p>This post itself is the example</p> <b> This is simple </b><p>
See the code below. Select "HTML" .....................</p>

</div> </ Div>

<div style="clear: both;"></div>

Source for this tip- cabalasvirtuales

. Read full story .

I am sure that many bloggers do not know how to use ‘blockquote’ in their post. It may be, because of their poor knowledge about html or unaware of it. Blockquote uses, when you required a text block either in different background color or inside a border in your posts to attract the attention of a reader.

Here is how to use blockquote.Just add as following in your post, where text block is required <blockquote> your text here </ blockquote> writes your text in the red area. Select ‘html’ mode instead of ‘compose’ mode while adding blockquote. You can also click on 'blockquote symbol' from the tool menu after selecting the words (block of text) . You only need to select 'html mode' if you have more blockquote like blockquote1 etc.

To make attractive blockquote, you may need some changes in your template. Here is some simple method. In blogger template style sheet (CSS) Find ‘blockquote’ that decides its structure. Select ‘edit template’ and locate ‘blockquote’ and replace it with any of the following code or change according to your taste. blockquote {background-color: #f1f1f1;
border-top: 1px solid #042B55;
border-bottom: 1px solid #042B55;
padding: 5px;
margin-left: 5%;
margin-right: 5%;
font-style: oblique;}
--------------------------
blockquote {
float: left;
width: 200px;
padding: 4px 0 4px 0;
border-top: 1px solid #CCCCCC;
border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCCC;
text-align: center;
font-style:italic; color: #FF007B; }
. Read full story .

Many of you may know how to show HTML code in your post. That is by replacing < with and replacing > with
If you have more angular bracket in your code you can use notepad to replace < code >. Copy all your code in notepad and go to ‘Edit’ – Replace - and type < in ‘Find what’ and type in ‘Replace with. Do the same for > with .
Here is another, even simple method. Go to Simplebits and copy and paste all your code in the markup box and press ‘Process’ and it will spit out entity-encoded markup suitable for < code >. Now you can copy and paste it in your post.
. Read full story .

Image loader is useful in many application and website. For example to load a big image on web site take some times, especially in a dial-up connection, there you can add this to show the image is loading.

If you like to add such an image loader on your blog, here is a simple solution. Go to Ajaxload where you can select different types of image loader and download it. You are allowed to select any color from the color picker for your image loader that matches you.

The process is simple - Select the type of indicator you want - Enter the background color you want (Tick "Transparent background" if you do not want one) - Enter the foreground color you want then press "Generate it” and download it.

To add in blogger (classic/xml), just upload the loader image, for example, to Google Pages and add the following code on your style sheet (css).

img {background: transparent url (http://example.googlepages.com/ajax-loader.gif) no-repeat center; }

source - blogandweb
. Read full story .

Even though many of you already know how to install blogger template, here point out some important tips. Please read it.

1. Before installing new template save your old template by downloading it on your computer. (Layout – Template – Edit HTML- Download full template)

2. For installing XML template (new blogger) do not copy paste, only upload from your computer. (Edit HTML – Browse – Upload).

3. After installation, it may ask you to delete some widgets, just delete them.

4. In some case you can’t save the template. This is simply because of more than one unique Id on your template, For example Label list, HTML, Adsense etc. In that case, go back to your old template, click on ‘Page elements’ and delete all widgets (later you can add it).

5. You can delete only the widget that causing problem, if you note it while installing new template.

6. Many blogger templates includes images, like header background image, icons, main background image etc and are stored on sites like Imageshack, Flickr, etc. There is no guarantee to access these images properly in some locations of the world. So it is better to upload all these images in some convenient locations like Google Pages?. (Get the image URLs from the xml code and download all images. Upload (Google Pages?) and change the URLs accordingly).

If you have any doubt feel free to contact me
Subscribe to RSS feed for updates
. Read full story .

Here's an easy way to create a favicon for your site or blog. For favicon, a 16x16 pixel image with 256 color icon is desired. You can create any icon with IcoFX, a freeware icon editor. It is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing. It is designed to work with Windows XP and Windows Vista icons supporting transparency. You can convert your favorite images into icons, or icons into images.

Creating a favicon- Download the IcoFx icon editor, after installation open it and select ‘new’ from ‘file’ menu. In the dialogue box ‘new image’, select 256 color and 16x16 size. Now you can create your own icon from the tool menu according to your taste and choice and save it as ico file. To import an image for your icon, from the ‘file menu’ select ‘import image’ (remember that you need to crop or reduce the image size to 16x16 for better accuracy), and edit or save it as .ico file.

To put it in your blog/site just upload the icon file to ‘Google pages’ (every one can create Google pages with a Gmail account) or any other and note down the URL of the icon file.

. Read full story .