Typepad widgets have a major flaw

What is a widget? It's a pre-designed block for your sidebar (blocks are called Typelists in Typepad).

All of these blocks that appear in the sidebars of blogs have to be made by someone. Some come with the blogging platform (like 'Recent Comments'), some are created by the blogger (like 'Small Business Blogs Reviewed') and some are made with "widgets" (I have no examples of a widget on Pajama Market because I don't use them).

All sorts of companies have created widgets for Typepad blogs (and Wordpress blogs for that matter). Feedburner is a good example as they have a widget for subscribing to their services. All you have to do is follow a couple of easy instructions and *poof* there is a block in your sidebar that has a link for people to subscribe to your RSS feed through Feedburner.

You may notice that I have this option on Pajama Market. But it is not a widget, it is hand-made. Why? Simple. For some unknown reason, Typepad did not give widgets the same design structure as their normal blocks (Typelists). The difference is that a widget does not have a title like all the other blocks. It just appears on the sidebar unannounced, without a title or nice horizontal line to separate it from the other blocks.

This amounts to confusing design, or at the very least, inconsistent design. For this reason, I don't use widgets. I wish Typepad would fix this, because the idea of widgets is really cool. Adding content to your sidebars from other websites with just a few easy clicks is a great idea. For now, I'll do the extra work so that it looks good too.

Comments

[Harold]

I'll pass this along to the product team. Obviously, they always try to balance out simplicity vs. customization, but I think you're not alone in feeling like widgets don't always look good out of the box. Your workaround is a good strategy to add functions and keep tight control of your blog's look. I use the same techniques myself.

[Brian Brown]

This is yet another reason I LOVE Typepad!

Barely three hours after writing about my annoyance with widgets, Harold Check, the editor of Typepad Featured Blogs, leaves a comment that both reinforces my concern, and passes the concern along to the product team at Typepad.

How good is that customer service? I didn't even have to mention it to Typepad myself, they found me!

Thanks again Harold!

[eljefe]

Well, OK - Brian, I think they are paying a little more attention to you than the average blog - would love to be wrong about that, of course. I agree with you about widgets and the design issue is why I usually don't use them.

I hope they see my comments about multiple photos here :)