The New Shelfari Widget

Tonight we launched the new Shelfari widget.  It allows bloggers and social network members to easily post their books wherever they want.  The widget uses a new shelf design that really stands out for those who want to feature their books.  You can choose which bookshelf is best for you: solid mahogany, black-stained oak, or a more modern brushed steel and cherry.  We've had some fun designing the shelf, so we hope you like it.

Now, we also knew that many bloggers aren't about to put a heavy piece of mahogany on their blog.  For those publishers, we give you a simple html list of your books that adapts to your blog's style.  You can choose one or more of the following piece of content for your list: titles, authors, book covers, and buy links.  Bloggers can, of course, insert their Amazon associates ID and get their cut of book sales. 

A few things to point out about this widget

1. It's fully configurable from your new My Widgets page, which means that you post it once, then tweak it to your hearts content.
2. It support tag shelfs and lists in a much easier-to-use fashion
3. You don't need a Shelfari account to get started.  Simply start building your bookshelf, customize your shelf or list, and register once you know it's worthwhile.
4. Blogger and Typepad users can add the widget with one click.

We do hope you like it and welcome your feedback.   

Dave

Comments

[ken yarmosh]

what if you have the old widget? how do you access that now and update it?

why does the new widget NOT allow people to scroll through the shelf like the old widget did?

[MJ Reyes]

How come I don't get past the customize your widget butoon? Before the new widget, I had no problems at all. Now, I can't even generate a code.

[Maris]

The new widget looks great. I can't wait to try it out.

[cj]

do you provide an API for shelfari?

[Buddy]

Great service, but there seems to be some problems with your auto-emailing functionality.

[Chris Bailey]

Hi y'all...what's the latest on customizing styles for the widgets? When I test, I come across to competing problems. If I try to dump the standard div class that generates with the widget, I get an initialization error, which doesn't surprise me because of the way the widget is rendered. But, because of the placement of the embedded style in the header, it overrides everything I do in both stylesheet or header. Any immediate plans on giving us advanced users some ability to really get the widgets looking the way we want? Feedback would be great!

[Cynthia Blue]

Do you have widgets for groups? I would love to put a group widget on my blog. Thanks.

[Kevin Durdle]

Hi Chris,
I've been one of the primary developers working on the widget here at Shelfari. We built it with personalization in mind, even though the styles are inline.

All you need to do is override our class based rules (.shelfari) with id based ruls (#shelfari).

For instance, to override the style of titles, add the following css rule to your page:
#shelfari a.title { display:block; font-size:100%; color: black; font-weight:normal }

Here is a complete list of styles that we would encourage people to experiment overriding with:

#shelfari img { float:left; padding-right:5px; padding-bottom:5px; }
#shelfari a.title { display:block; font-size:120%; font-weight:bold; }
#shelfari div.author { display:block; }
#shelfari div { margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom: 0}
#shelfari a.buy { display:block; }
#shelfari a.page { text-decoration:none; font-size:90% }
#shelfari span { color:#666; padding: 0 8px }

Cheers!
Kevin

[Chris Bailey]

Kevin, that solved it! Thanks so much for the help. Forgive me if I passed over that info somewhere in the widget settings...just didn't see it. Perhaps you could link this information in the style setting in step two of the customization process.

Thanks again for your quick help.

Chris

[Ederic]

The covers of some of my books, especially those published here in the Philippines, are not available in Shelfari. Is there a way I could add them, so that my Shelfari shelf will look better?

[Dave]

Hello Ederic,

We currently support English books available on Amazon.com. We have had numerous requests for books in other languages or books/editions not available from retailers. We're looking at what we can do to support those.

Thanks for using the site!

--Dave

[Heidi @ Carolina Dreamz]

Where do I add my Amazon ID?

[Donna]

Hi! The widget looks great! However, can you please do something so we can manipulate the size. I would like to be able to put the widget on my blog's sidebar.

I tried posting the widget (inside a post, as an entry) in my blog (blogger), but I get a transparent strip at the left side of the shelf. Why? As it is, I'm thinking of just getting an image of the widget and using it as an image link.

Thanks!

[Alek Davis]

Kevin,

How do I change the font for the "Get Your Own Bookshelf" text? I played with the styles you listed, but they do not seem to affect this message.

Thanks,
Alek

[Kevin Durdle]

Hello Alek,

If you're using a "shelf" version of the widget, the "Get Your Own Bookshelf" text is actually a graphic and cannot be changed at this time.

However, if you're using a "list" / "text" version of the widget, you should be able to adjust the "get a shelf" text with the following style:

#shelfari a.pbs { color: red; }

Just in testing it now I've noticed a slight problem when you use a custom style on that element. I'll investigate further when I get back to the office on Monday morning to make it safter for customization. That doesn't mean you can't start using the style now however!

If you have further questions, feel free to contact us!
Cheers,
Kevin

[Alek Davis]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for the quick response. You know I was curious about the .pbs style: I saw it in the page source, but since you did not mention it in message to Chris, I was not sure if it's safe to use it (I'm not really sure what pbs stands for). I'll give it a try. Thanks again.

Regards,
Alek

[Alek Davis]

Just to confirm: setting the .pbs style did the trick. Thanks again. One more question, though: is there a way to display books in a random order in a widget? I want to show a 1-book widget, but I would like it to display different book. Would be really nice.

Alek