Please see my Singpolyma Templates for the New Blogger

This is the first Blogger BETA custom template based on my Singpolyma Templates. This will not be a final version because it still has some slight bugs, but I would like feedback from users before I make any changes. You can preview the new template at my BETA blog. The spirit and look of the original basic template has been ported to the new widget system, and all fonts and colours can also be edited from the new panel for that purpose. Minor known issues are:

1. Not even close to XHTML compliant. This is not my fault. There are significant JavaScript sections on Blogger BETA that are malformed XML and thus break any sort of compliance. I’ve written support, but I doubt that will do any good. We need to find a way to put serious pressure on them to correct this. The new template system is in XML, make XML-well-formed output (and perhaps even XHTML-compliant output) has never been easier, and yet so far away. The changes they would have to make are minor (like, adding commented CDATA sections around the JavaScript). I don’t see a thing about it on Known Issues.
2. Ditto to peek-a-boo comments. This is a limitation in the BETA as far as I can see… I really hope they can be persuaded to fix this.
3. The pre-included blogroll is XOXO compliant, but has fewer features as the manually-created ones did (ie, no option for feed data).
4. No link to main comments feed (it doesn’t seem to be generating, I believe this is a known BETA issue…)

The profile section supports both single and group blogs, unlike the original which assumed a single-authorship blog. I could also add previous/next links on item pages and a labels sidebar widget if people want it. Versions with my other hacks (as before) will be forthcoming.

To install this template on your blog, cut-n-paste the template from here into the ‘Edit HTML’ view on your BETA blog, click ‘Save’, and if you are asked to confirm the deletion of existing widgets click the affirmative option. Then you can add/edit widgets or change the colours!

Since I did all the research on this yesterday to get it working, I figured I’d share it with the world in case someone else is having problems with it too! These instructions assume Ubuntu, but should work on pretty much any Linux system with minor modifications.

1) You must have a GStreamer player installed. Totem (the defaul GNOME movie player/media player) is what I used because it was already installed.
2) Install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad with Synaptic
3) Go to MPlayer and download the binary codecs for Linux. Unpack the file into either the /usr/lib/win32/ directory or the /usr/lib/codecs directory (depending on your system, I put it in both to be safe).
5) Install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll with Synaptic (if available) or get it from a mirror.
4) Install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly with Synaptic

That should be it! You should now be able to listen to Internet radio stations in the Windows Media format.