Now having translated most of my hacks to the new Blogger, it is time to unveil the templates. I myself will likely be switching soon, and my template will be based on the code here published. The features are similar to the first set, but optomised for the new Blogger.

To install one of these templates, just cut-n-paste the code into the ‘Edit HTML’ section of your blog and save. Confirm deletion of widgets (Yes, unfortunately, you lose you widgets. You can make them again).

Templates

• Basic template – all the basic features of the original set, including peek-a-boo comments and backlinks.
• Comment Form – based on basic, my lightbox comment form added in.
• Comment Photos and Highlighting – based on basic, my comment photos and highlighting hack (as translated by PurpleMoggy) added in.
• Basic Asynchronous – Same as basic but with asynchronous peek-a-boo comments.
• Comment Form Asynchronous – Same as comment form but with asynchronous peek-a-boo comments.
• Comment Photos and Highlighting Asynchronous – Same as comment photos and highlighting but with asynchronous peek-a-boo comments.

It seems that another feedreading project is recognising XOXO! According to this post Plagger has, if I understand correctly, added the ability to import subscriptions from an XOXO reading list and also to export that as OPML. Not recognising XOXO enough to provide an export mechanism for it yet, but a step forward nevertheless!

For templates for the new Blogger see the updated post.

Due to some of the feedback I’ve been getting from hack implementors recently I have decided to roll out my own set of templates for Blogger, implementing various and sundry features that different persons have expressed interest in. These templates are all loosely based on the Blogger Minima concept, with some inspiration from my blog also. They have been written from scratch, however, and all have the following features:

• Conformance to hAtom and the XOXO Blog Format
• XHTML validity as much as is possible with Blogger
• Support for comment feeds both on the whole blog and individual posts
• hCard markup on the profile section of the sidebar
• ‘Standard’ comment markup
• XOXO Blogroll Format blogrolls
• Backlink counts

So, if you’re looking for a new template, or just want some of these features or some of those that follow, this is for you.

• Basic Template – Peek-a-boo comments and backlinks
• No Peek-a-boo – Same as basic template, but without the peek-a-boo comments and backlinks
• With Comment Form – Peek-a-boo comments and backlinks with my inline comment form
• Asynch Comment Form – Peek-a-boo comments and backlinks with my asynchronous comment form
• Comment Photos – Peek-a-boo comments and backlinks with inline comment photos and author highlighting

If anyone wants another version of this template created (ie, some combination of the hacks, or for another hack) feel free to contact me. If anyone has any ideas or feedback at all concerning the usefulness of / look of these templates, again, I have an open ear. I would ask that you keep your comments positive. ‘This Sucks!’ is not all that helpful to me, even if that’s how you feel 😉

Notes to advanced users: Hopefully these templates will also be useful to you in examining my code, etc. To remove peek-a-boo from comments or backlinks in any of the above templates, simply remove the onclick handler from the appropriate link. It should also be mentioned that these templates all support both versions of blogger comment permalinks. If you have any questions about the features on these templates I’m just an email/comment away!

A reading list is the organised list of all feeds that a person reads using their feed reader. There are two primary file formats for reading lists, XOXO and OPML (see What is XOXO?). Reading lists are popularly used as an import/export format for moving subscriptions between feed readers. If they are made available online they can also be used as dynamic reading lists.

Dynamic reading lists are reading lists that are aggregated by a feed reader. One folder or module is always updated to contain the most current subscriptions from the reading list. This allows users to subscribe to other users’ reading lists to see what other’s are reading, for example. Directory sites like Share Your OPML (which, as the name indicates, is anti-XOXO) also allow users to share their subscriptions en masse.

Feed readers currently supporting the dynamic reading list concept are:

• BlogBridge
• BoxtheWeb

Dynamic reading lists can be previewed or included as a widget in a webpage using Grazr. Grazr currently only supports OPML, but XOXO is on the todo list.

If you know of any other programs that support dynamic reading lists or other interesting uses for reading lists, please leave a comment below.

If you have any suggestions on how this introduction to reading lists could be clarified, please leave a comment below.

If you combine S5 with XOXO you get a format you can use to build simple slideshows for the internet and that makes sense to microformats parsers. S5 is a simple slideshow system with many features that can pull the data for slides right out of an XOXO block. To use S5 you will have to download the JavaScript and CSS files from the homepage and then build a page with slide content that links in these files. While there is a quite adequate S5-with-XOXO reference, the format will be summarised here for completeness.

Notes
S5 documents must be DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Strict, and there are certain <meta> tags that are required. See the specification for more details.

Meta Data
Meta data in S5 is encapsulated in a set of <meta> tags. This means that the data will not be available to XOXO-only processors. The page <title> must be the title of the presentation and the <meta name=”version” content=”S5 1.1″ /> element is also required, along with the tags to include the JavaScript and basic CSS.

There is also a controls/header/footer section that must be present first in the <body> tag before the XOXO data. The code for this section follows:

Where SLIDESHOW HEADER and SLIDESHOW FOOTER are the contents for the header and footer of the slideshow, respectively.

Classes
In order for the S5 code to interface with your data properly the class ‘presentation’ must be present on the main <ol> or <ul> tag. The class ‘xoxo’ is also reccomended in accordance with the XOXO specification.

Nodes
Each root node in the XOXO tree for the slides must have the class ‘slide’. The direct contents of the node (along with any XHTML markup) are considered to be the text (/images etc.) of the slide. If the first element in the node is an <h1> element the contents of that tag are considred the title of the slide. Subnodes are rendered as points in the presentation. If the <ul> or <ol> root tag for the subpoints has the class ‘incremental’ the points will be introduced one at a time. Additionally a <div> element of class ‘handout’ will not be rendered on-screen but only when the presentation is printed.