TIP - Polls (apart) ...

From: David McMahon
To: Terry Fletcher
Subject: Polls in a Post ...

El Tel

Off the top of your head, can you remember the icon that produces a poll in New Blogger? Having done so many all those months ago, I'm scratching my head because I want to embed one in a post!!

Cheers.

David

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Another hot potato!

Why? Because, although I know about the 'Poll' feature introduced by Blogger, I'd only ever tried it out in the side panel where it is automatically lodged if you elect to run a Poll on your page.

How does one add a Poll to a Post? "Piece of cake," was my first thought on the matter. I figured I'd add an <iframe> and insert the code for the Poll into the <iframe>, and that would be that! Yeah, sure! You can try that approach and see how far it gets you.

So, it was off to "Google-Blogger-Land" to see what solutions were on offer. I stumbled across one or two articles about Polls, hundreds commenting they couldn't even find the feature on their site and others, who were able to find it, asking for the feature to be rolled out to include the ability to insert a Poll in a Post. Of course, you've probably guessed by now, most of these discussions were based on NEW-Blogger Beta, at the time that Polls were added as a 'Nice-to-have' feature. Sometimes I despair.

The current state of affairs is that the Poll feature has been rolled out as a 'widget' that can be accessed via the 'Page Elements' of your customization menu. It is a simple "click and accept" feature and, as far as it goes, it works fairly well. There are a few limitations, but it appears that nothing is going to be done to enhance the feature further.

What about a "Poll in a Post"? Tough! This feature is not available, and there isn't any clue as to whether it ever will be. Does that mean it can't be done?

Absolutely NOT!

But it currently calls for a bit of HTML and Template fiddling, and most casual Bloggers will probably not be interested in implementing something that isn't a 'click-and-go' feature.

For those that think it is a 'cool' idea to occasionally add a Poll to a Post, I shall roll out a 'tute' with screencaps in my next offering.

Watch this space ...