NewsGator Technical Blog

Preventing CSS Collisions in Viral Widgets

Our developer wiki acknowledges the need to prevent JavaScript collisions by uniquely naming functions: http://developer.newsgator.com/wiki/index.php?title=Avoiding_Javascript_Collisions

And only recently have we added information about preventing CSS collisions, which can occur with viral widgets. Our widget framework provides a number of ways for keeping your widgets looking top notch no matter where they reside. For best practices and tips for tackling collisions please visit the new wiki article that covers this: http://developer.newsgator.com/wiki/index.php?title=Avoiding_CSS_Collisions

Eyeball widget attention tracking data with a FireFox add-on

At this month's webinar we touched on troubleshooting attention tracking. I suggested Fiddler as a useful utility that can help you keep an eye on the user interactions that are being logged through HTTP requests. The thing with Fiddler is that it works by default with IE, but to get it to play nice with FireFox you have to set it up to go through a proxy. Well, there's an easier way now, with a FireFox add-on called HttpFox. It has all the functionality of Fiddler, but it's built right into the browser. Check it out here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6647

Widget Customer Connect Webinar Recording

So, we had our monthly Customer Connect webinar yesterday, and if you missed out on it you can check it out here: https://cc.readytalk.com/play?id=08yz0ltg

We covered some technical widgetry like wiring up attention data in widgets, giving widget inheritors something different, and a PSA about using hard-coded URLs in widgets (more info about that here http://developer.newsgator.com/wiki/index.php?title=Using_URLs_Inside_Widget_Code)

NewsGator Resources for Developers

NewsGator has the following ways to get information about widget development (well, BESIDES this blog):

We've got a Wiki! Constantly updating, so we'll post important changes here. http://developer.newsgator.com/wiki/index.php?title=Widgets_Main_Page

Our forums are a good way to post questions that you feel would be helpful to the widget development community. http://forum.newsgator.com/Forum53-1.aspx

You can also send support requests to our technical support engineers. Contact us for more info!