Adding a gadget to a blog with a dynamic-view template

This article is about how to add widgets (also known as gadgets) to blogs that have dynamic templates.

Things are looking up:

Beer glasses can have widgets, and
now dynamic-view blogs can have them too

Previously I've described dynamic templates, and how you can turn them on, and also off, on your blog. And when people asked "how do I put a whatever gadget onto my blog", the short answer was " you can't - yet".

But now Blogger have announced that it's possible - their post also shows us how the docked widget bar works.

And if your blog already has a dynamic template, they've added a few gadgets for you. For my test blog, this was Followers, Archive About me and Subscribe - I'm not sure if these are the only ones, or it was based on my layout before the blog went dynamic.

How to add a gadget to a blog with a dynamic template:

This is just like adding a gadget to a blog with a designer or layout template, ie:

Go to the Layout tab (Design > Page Elements, if you're using pre-Sept-2011-Blogger)
Click Add A Gadget.
Choose your gadget, and configure it if necessary.
(NB Blogger appear to be converting all the existing gadget setup screens to the new-interface-look-and-feel, so don't be surprised if the buttons etc inside the gadget parameter windows look different)
Preview to check it's ok
Click Save Arrangement.

It's not perfect yet:

The layout editor window looks somewhat strange, in post-Sept-2011-Blogger anyway:

More importantly, Blogger's announcement says

Gadgets supported in Dynamic Views currently include: Blog Archive, Followers, Labels, Profile, Subscribe (a new gadget - automatically present if either Follow By Email or Subscription installed), and Link List.

So no HTML, no AdSense, no Blogroll (except you can make your own with the Link List), Statistics, Slideshows, Polls, etc ... yet. To make matters worse, there's nothing to tell you what gadgets you cannot add: you put them in, but they're just not there once you save and look at the blog.

But some of them may become available, if Blogger can figure out how to place with within the type of space they're using for gadgets on dynamic views, where we don't really have a sidebar. And until then, the following section from my original post still applies.

In the meantime:

The October announcement did show how you can customize the colors of your dynamic-template blog.

Southern Speakers has been publishing lots of how-to information about how you can format dynamic blog elements by adding CSS rules - his most recent post is about how to remove static page titles. He has also described a way to put gadgets that you can get the code for into a page - this description is specifically for the Followers gadget, but could be applied to other code too, provided you can get the code.

And if you want, you can just switch back to using your most-recent template, and wait for the improved version of dynamic templates to arrive.

Or you could do cunning things, like put AdSense ads into your posts instead.

For history's sake:

This is the body of my original post. It's not true any more, but I want to keep it here, in case I need to use some of this text agaon - or so you can see how much better things are now.

The Full Story:Google told us in late October 2011 that they're working on making this possible. They haven't said when they expect to have this available. If we're really lucky it will be "one day very soon" (and boy will I have a red face if they announce how to do it tomorrow!)

I suspect that it's not an easy thing to do, because dynamic template blogs are basically a totally different way of displaying your blog, using your RSS feed and (now) CSS rules, rather than reading all the design details from the blog itself. Providing this, along with the level of design control that people with Designer and Layout templates are used to, might be quite technically challenging.

I've written this article because I got sick of explaining "no not yet" in the help forum: I really want to give people there the full story, but finding the link to that October announcement every time was a pain. Now I can just link to this.