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Followers Gadget Opens Followers Inside An IFrame

The Followers gadget was recently changed - and not for the better.

Find the Followers (aka "Google Friend Connect") gadget, on this blog. Look for "Follow Me" near the top of the sidebar.

Click on any icon in the community display - or click on on the community "pop out" window icon at the top right of the gadget. See how it now opens all Followers content, where the gadget is located?

The Followers community icons, and the community "pop out window" icon, when clicked, used to open various pop out windows.

Various Followers community displays used to open in pop out windows.
The pop out windows provided screen space for well designed displays. They allowed easy viewing of the individual Followers profiles - and paging back and forth to view more Followers icons, and individual profiles.

Community displays now open inside the Followers gadget iframe.
All of that content, that used to open inside pop out windows, now opens within the iframe which contains the gadget window. The space used, by the resulting display, becomes no larger than the space occupied by the gadget - generally a section of the sidebar.

When you can see a portion of a Followers profile, inside the iframe, you will have a list of some blogs - but no ability to access the full profile - and no ability to view the complete list of blogs for that Follower. You can open other blogs, in new tabs - and look at the Followers gadgets on those blogs.

Randomly clicking on links to other blogs, you can find the Followers gadgets on those blogs. Almost every blog that you find, that hosts a Followers gadget, will show the same behaviour.

Followers administrative controls and utilities open as before.
If the gadget allows you to sign in to Following
Already a member? Sign in
the "Sign in" link will still produce a pop out window, so you can authenticate yourself, for that blog. And if you are signed in as the blog owner, the Followers administration menu ("Options") appears to work, as before.

But all Followers community content now opens inside the iframe, which contains the gadget. This makes surfing the Following community, on any blog, impossible.

Followers community displays do not work, when confined to the iframes.
The Followers community icons set is formatted carefully, to properly display inside an iframe. The Followers profile displays, and the popout window community display, were formatted to make a separate window - and these displays do not fit within the iframe which is sized to fit in the sidebar of a typical blog.

Apparently, somebody changed the code in the gadget - and this did not improve the gadget.
(Update 6/1 12:00): Blogger Engineering is looking into the problem.

Comments

Darnell said…
I left a comment yesterday. Of course, today the followers thumbnails came back! Just wanted you to know. Thanks for all you do to make your blog so informative and helpful to us!! Darnell (www.djkardkreations.com)
Andy said…
Is there fix on the way. The gadget has been screwed up for months.
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Andy,

At the moment, no. I asked about this issue, a couple weeks ago, and was told "We are working on it." - and no more.

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