I don't know about you, but I don't really like the one archive list that is provided in gadgets. I mean, I suppose it's a functional enough list, but don't you find it a bit limited? Storing all your posts chronologically by month just isn't as sexy as some of the other options blogger has to offer.
I've been looking around various tutorial pages and a lot of them have a really nice sidebar list which neatly organizes all their posts alphabetically. Well, I dug around in the code and it turned out these pages were just using a "link list" gadget (or widget I suppose).
Ok, Ok, that seemed to work well enough, but who wants to constantly be typing a link into a list option? Sure, it's not much actual work, but it's still WORK and there should be a program available to do this for me.
To be clear, what I'm looking for is an archive type widget that automatically makes a list of all your blog posts in alphabetical order. Although something like this isn't going to be useful if you have, say, a thousand posts, I think it would be great for a year or two (in which time you can see which posts are popular and switch over to a "100 most popular" list widget or something...does that even exist?).
Well, like I've said before, I'm not a programmer (I read an HTML codebook once years ago but that's it...oh, I also wrote a program in my High School Pascal class that made the computer spark and shut off never to be turned on again...my teacher had insisted such a thing was impossible, but my success didn't earn me the "A" I thought I'd deserved, or any kind of passing grade for that matter). However, in this case, it seems that some kind of programming on my part is required.
I've noticed that the links widget can be set to make a list alphabetically, and the archive widget has some sort of command that simply creates links based on the page content. So, I decided to dig through the two codes and do some cutting and pasting to see if I could combine the alphabetization with the post link creator. I really doubt it's going to work, and even if it does the world needs some sort of real programmer to put together a few more archive widgets with more options. Actually, I'm sure such things already exist, so if you stumble across them please, post a link in a comment.
In the meantime, I'll get back to you on how well my hackjob effort is working.
Update:
Wow, I've been spending the whole day on this stupid project with no results. I did find one page that claimed to have a hack to make an alphabetized index page here, but I can't get it to work. I even opened up the code on the link page where they claim to have the hack working, but searches for elements of the hack came up empty, so go figure.
Google has another gadget called "labels" that you might be able to rig to work, but there appear to be some inherent difficulties to that widget as well.
The thing is, in looking for information you often find other things that are quite a bit more interesting. I've made a half-dozen additions to my favorites, and I'll be exploring those pages and articles in future posts.
I've been looking around various tutorial pages and a lot of them have a really nice sidebar list which neatly organizes all their posts alphabetically. Well, I dug around in the code and it turned out these pages were just using a "link list" gadget (or widget I suppose).
Ok, Ok, that seemed to work well enough, but who wants to constantly be typing a link into a list option? Sure, it's not much actual work, but it's still WORK and there should be a program available to do this for me.
To be clear, what I'm looking for is an archive type widget that automatically makes a list of all your blog posts in alphabetical order. Although something like this isn't going to be useful if you have, say, a thousand posts, I think it would be great for a year or two (in which time you can see which posts are popular and switch over to a "100 most popular" list widget or something...does that even exist?).
Well, like I've said before, I'm not a programmer (I read an HTML codebook once years ago but that's it...oh, I also wrote a program in my High School Pascal class that made the computer spark and shut off never to be turned on again...my teacher had insisted such a thing was impossible, but my success didn't earn me the "A" I thought I'd deserved, or any kind of passing grade for that matter). However, in this case, it seems that some kind of programming on my part is required.
I've noticed that the links widget can be set to make a list alphabetically, and the archive widget has some sort of command that simply creates links based on the page content. So, I decided to dig through the two codes and do some cutting and pasting to see if I could combine the alphabetization with the post link creator. I really doubt it's going to work, and even if it does the world needs some sort of real programmer to put together a few more archive widgets with more options. Actually, I'm sure such things already exist, so if you stumble across them please, post a link in a comment.
In the meantime, I'll get back to you on how well my hackjob effort is working.
Update:
Wow, I've been spending the whole day on this stupid project with no results. I did find one page that claimed to have a hack to make an alphabetized index page here, but I can't get it to work. I even opened up the code on the link page where they claim to have the hack working, but searches for elements of the hack came up empty, so go figure.
Google has another gadget called "labels" that you might be able to rig to work, but there appear to be some inherent difficulties to that widget as well.
The thing is, in looking for information you often find other things that are quite a bit more interesting. I've made a half-dozen additions to my favorites, and I'll be exploring those pages and articles in future posts.
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