May 21, 2009
How to use HTML on your WebEden website!
More exciting news here at WebEden! This time its strictly for the advanced users amongst you.
Our Sitebuilder developers have been burning the midnight oil and have produced an ‘HTML widget’ that lets you place pieces of HTML on your WebEden website. You can find it in the File manager and its called ‘HTML Snippet’. Beware though - its still in BETA, and there are some very good reasons why its not on full release yet.
What does it do?
It allows you to add HTML snippets to your site! Add your Amazon links, web rings, banner ads, friends list from Facebook or try any other snippets you find on the web. We can’t guarantee it will work for everything but it’s worth trying.
How does it work?
Place the widget on the page and using the ‘Setup’ tab on the ‘Editor’ paste in the HTML for your snippet and click ‘Apply’. If a height and width is detected in your code you will be given an option to resize the widget accordingly. To view the HTML widget use the ‘Preview’ button on the ‘Editor’ or click ‘View my site’ on the toolbar. If a visitor is using a browser that doesn’t support the widget it will render as a broken image link and the HTML will be displayed just below your site along with instructions on how to fix the problem.
Issues
There are known bugs with this widget.
Currently the HTML widget only works correctly if you view the site using Internet Explorer 6 or above, with Flash Player 10. So for Firefox users, it displays the HTML content below the site so they can still see it, but its not ideal.
We’ve had some exciting news from Firefox that the bug that prevents the HTML widget correctly displaying in your site for Firefox users will be fixed in the 3.1 release of the browser, due sometime in the next couple of months (hopefully). This is great, as this bug was something we couldn’t fix ourselves.
The main bug that we’re looking at on our side is why some HTML snippets don’t load correctly, which seems to be mainly those that use external JavaScript files in the HTML. Hopefully we’ll be able to fix that too and open the net wider.
Once the HTML widget is fully robust we hope to be able to offer many different pre-configured flavours of it. There will always be the generic ‘paste in any HTML’ widget, but we’ll also do some that are focused on particular services.
Have a go, and let us know what you think!
woooohoooooo!!!! This is truly excellent news! Well done your team!
So this means that if I find a nice carousel widget, I can drop in in here?!
There are loads of little widgets that I’d like to use - can’t wait to get started…..but it will be next week before I’ve got time to fiddle around with this new feature.
Really well done! I think that there will be lots of builders who are just as pleased as me to see this feature.
Even if it still has some bugs! :-)
AX
Comment by Alison Cross — May 21, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
Nope - couldn’t wait! Loaded in the Twitter widget onto my front page for the Tarot Association of The British Isles (which I write SEVERAL times a day)
And it works!
AX
Lovely - thanks guys!
Comment by Alison Cross — May 21, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Nice one Alison - and thanks for the feedback, it is appreciated.
BTW don’t look at your site in Firefox, you won’t like it! Come on Firefox 3.5, we’re waiting!
Ken
Comment by admin — May 21, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
The whole site is getting an overhaul over the next week or so.
Too many words - I bet *that* surprises you LOL!
AX
Comment by Alison Cross — May 21, 2009 @ 1:10 pm
Super news will investigate this next week thanks!
Comment by Graham Lawrence — May 21, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
Good luck, let us know how you get on!
Comment by admin — May 21, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
Ken - Does this mean that we can create buttons in our paypal accounts and copy the HTML snippets to our websites - eg for gift vouchers or donations?
I can create and see the button ok, but when I view my site and click on the button to test, not a lot happens - it obviously links through to something, but only a box the size of the button box stays open?
Hmm - is this too ambitious or perhaps I’m just not terribly good at this yet?!
AX
Comment by Alison Cross — May 30, 2009 @ 11:30 am
Hi Alison,
Yes it does mean that you can create buttons in your paypal accounts and copy the HTML snippets to your websites, for payment.
It sounds to me like you need to make the box with the HTML snippet in much bigger. You should be able to do this without making the actual button bigger.
If you have no luck, let me know and we’ll have a go!
Ken
Comment by admin — June 1, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
Yes - that worked beautifully. I hadn’t realised that one needed to increase the size of the box in order to see the whole page! It also meant that in order to see the full width of the gift voucher, I had to increase the width of my pages….and a lot of further footering about with the previously entered page content to resquare it up again!
I’ve zapped it off for the moment, but will reinstate it when I’ve finalised the content of my pages!
That might make a good tutorial - how to insert a Gift Voucher button or a Donations button onto your website?
Comment by Alison Cross — June 1, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
Glad that worked - well done.
You’re right, we’ll definitely be doing a tutorial on this. We just want the Firefox update to be out of the way first, otherwise we’ll be creating more problems that we’re solving!
Latest from Mozilla is that Firefox update should be done by mid July. Once that’s sorted we’ll go HTML crazy. I mean do a tutorial…
Ken
Comment by admin — June 1, 2009 @ 9:09 pm
Loving this so much!! Google Calendar embedded fine. Haven’t tried it in chrome but latest edition of firefox seems to work fine :)
Thanks Webeden team
Comment by Georgina — June 9, 2009 @ 12:10 am
No problem Georgina, thanks for the feedback, and happ site building!
Ken
Comment by admin — June 16, 2009 @ 2:46 pm
Do we know if the Firefox update has fixed any problems with it
I’d love to get stuck in and start using this feature.
Comment by Ben — July 31, 2009 @ 1:48 pm
Hi Ben,
Yes, it has fixed almost all the features. We’re going to be taking this out of Beta shortly.
the only problem that we’ve found is that Firefox 3.5 is a bit unstable. (That’s for web browsing generally, not our widget). Oh, and plenty of people haven’t yet upgraded to it yet. I just checked our stats for yesterday and 18% of people were using Firefox on our site. Of those, just 20% had upgraded to 3.5.
By my calculations I think that means 14% of all web users are using an earlier version.
Before too long, Firefox will force their users to upgrade. At that point the problems will disappear!
Ken
Comment by admin — July 31, 2009 @ 2:18 pm
Any update on the HTML editor?
Its still playing up in Firefox, which most of my visitors use, and Im using the most updated version, 3.5.3 at time of writing?
Thanks
Comment by Chris — September 14, 2009 @ 6:31 pm
Hi Chris,
Could you let me know what part of your site you have added the HTML widget so i can go and take a look at it and let you know what the problem is.
Thanks
Ray
Comment by admin — September 15, 2009 @ 12:38 pm
Ray,
Thanks for getting back to me.
If you go to the bottom of the homepage or the 2012 page you will see what I mean, if you look at it in firefox that is. Its just what has been said here, the graphic appears out of place at the bottom of the screen.
It will be such a useful feature when its fixed! Thanks again.
Chris
Comment by Chris — September 17, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
Hi Chris,
Could you please send me an email to design@webeden.net so i can reply with hopefully an answer to your query.
I can see the Bookmark HTML i think you talking about but want to confirm.
Kind regards
Ray
Comment by admin — September 17, 2009 @ 5:14 pm