Archive for December, 2006
Lightbox JS v2.0 Integration with Blogger Template
53Create a simple Photolog using Blogger.com and Lightbox JS. A step by step guide for photo bloggers; to Integrate Lightbox with their existing Blogger publishing system.
Blogger is a popular weblog publishing system, which supports custom designs and templates. Meanwhile Blogger is not much popular as other blog publishing system like WordPress, etc for its support to Plug-ins. In other hand Lightbox JS is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It is lightweight and works with most of the browsers with Javascripts enabled.
Yesterday, I was trying to publish my own Photolog. I was looking for a good web serice so that it would ease my task. I am with Blogger for a quite time and still I have not moved my blog to WordPress, even I wish so. So I decided to go with Blogger again with the FTP publishing enabled. But blogger didn’t have any ready made plug-in for Lightbox so I had to hack the code little bit. Blogger with Ligthbox would give any blog a realistic Photolog look.
Step by Step Guide:-
- Download the Lightbox JS script from Here and copy the scripts to your web server most likely where your blog is been published.
- Login into Blogger system and go to Template –> Edit HTML
- Add the below line into the Meta section of HTML tag
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/lightbox.css" type="text/css" media="screen">
- Add the following scripts tag in the header section of the HTML template
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/prototype.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/scriptaculous.js?load=effects"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/lightbox.js"></script>
- Check the CSS and make sure the referenced prev.gif and next.gif files are in the right location. Also, make sure the loading.gif and close.gif files as referenced near the top of the lightbox.js file are in the right location.
- Once you’re done Save the Template.
- With Blogger, we will not able to tweak their system directly, since it is not open source software. So we need to have little manual effort every time before you publish a photo log entry.
- After creating a blog entry in Blogger system, do the following steps before publishing.
- Go to Edit HTML option in the Post window as show in the figure

- Once you have uploaded the image you will see an entry similar shown in the figure below.
- Replace the selected code above with
rel=”lightbox”as shown below
- You can also add title tag in tag to enable Caption in the LightBox displayed
- Now you’re all set and you can publish your Photolog.

If you like to have image sets for each post entry then you need to add rel="lightbox[group_name]" for all the images that you which to show in that particular group image set. It should be similar to the below image.
Now you have a wonderful Photolog to start with as I do; Visit my PhotoLog at The PhotoLog
Pandora.com, My favorite internet music station
5Pandora is an automated music recommendation service based on previous users selection and free Internet music radio service created by The Music Genome Project.
Pandora is Music discovery service uses an open-source development platform to connect users to the songs they love. Listening to music in Pandora is much easier; trust me. It will just ask you to enter the name of artist or song title. Pandora service will instantly creates a radio station that plays songs that share musical characteristics associated with the artist or song provided. You can tell them your taste using their Feedback system on each played songs. You can also skip from hearing the particular song if you dislike.
The site stats says,
“A user can make up to 100 unique stations that play all kinds of music — pop, rock, jazz, electronica, hip-hop, old and new — from a library of more than 300,000 songs from over 10,000 artists.”
This is amazing! Isn’t? Do you like to Explore Pandora, read a good O’Reilly article; Inside Pandora: Web Radio That Listens to You.

The coolest part is Pandora is completely web-based and you need not install any software to start listening to music. Conrad says, “Lots of other people have already done that. We wanted to build something that was really, really simple — sort of a one-click radio [station].” Conrad is Chief Technical Officer at Pandora.
Out of curiosity about this uncommon name Pandora, I just researched on the same. In ancient Greek mythology, Pandora, whose name means “all gifted,” received many gifts from the gods, including the gift of music from Apollo. She was also very curious. Unlike those gods of old, who were displeased with Pandora’s curiosity, the developers of Pandora.com say they celebrate that trait and have made it their mission to reward the musically curious with a never-ending experience of musical discovery. If you like to know more about the Greek Pandora read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora. This Wiki page turned out interesting in finding more other stuff with name Pandora.
Bottom line, Pandora.com is a free and ease to use internet radio service that can play my favorite music.
Next time if you’re looking to play music online, go to Pandora.com
Update : Pandora is not available outside the US











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