Laszlo Blogbox

Nudging the World Wide Web forward ever so slightly

Last night, Sarah Allen and a merry band of collaborators including Mark Davis, Yossie Silverman, Marc Canter and myself launched a first incarnation of a simple 'widget' that the world at large could customize and add to their personal blogs and web pages. It was an honor, really, to be invited to assist such a stimulating crew (I was the best HTML designer available for the project...don't laugh, my services were free :-).

The technical implementation of the Blogbox is of note. The entire app, currently sitting in my blog gutter, contains a mere 113 lines of code comprised entirely of XML tags and JavaScript. This app is deployed and thus centrally updated from a server, and works within any Web browser enabled with the Flash Player (version 5 and above).

What do users get as a result? They get an app that can be discretely added to any web page, accessed from over 95% of the world's deployed Web browsers, and can be customized to suit by editing a simple xml file hosted anywhere on the Web (mine is on Yahoo GeoCities). For the hacking inclined, by generating that xml file dynamically with a CGI, the Blogbox's list of links can change at will. Perhaps some creative souls out there may spot in all this new opportunities to make the Web an ever more integral part of all of us.